Century In St. Cloud: Breen Hotel Opened Same Year as Paramount
ST. CLOUD -- This year not only is the Paramount Theater in downtown St. Cloud celebrating its 100th anniversary, so is the building next door.
Originally known as the Breen Hotel, it opened in March of 1921.
Derick Segerstrom is the Manager of the Visual Arts Department at the Paramount Center for the Arts. He says the Breen offered an upscale overnight experience.
It included a fine dining restaurant located in the lobby, shopping in a couple of boutiques on the main floor, a small barbershop, and a reception room in the lower level known as the Winter Gardens.
He says they've always been separate buildings, but their histories are intertwined, including the present day.
So where our box office is located and our administrative suite is that's where the lobby and restaurant were. Our gift gallery is where the boutique shops were. And, the visual arts department is located where the Winter Gardens space was. So, in part, the Breen is now the Paramount.
Segerstrom says there are old newspaper ads in the 1920s and 1930s that ran side-by-side promoting both businesses together
Segerstrom says the name eventually changed to the Germain Hotel but it remained a hotel until the mid-1980s. It is now an apartment complex known as Germain Towers Apartments.
The WJON series "A Century in St. Cloud" is a once-a-month feature on the News @ Noon Show highlighting the history of the 100-year-old building the Paramount Theater.
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