The theatre was used as a morgue after the West Hotel caught on fire next door.[2]
Charlie Chaplin performed at the Unique very early in his career.[3]
When vaudeville declined in the 1920s, however, the theater became a single-screen movie theater, built in the Renaissance Revival style.[3]
The theatre was torn down in 1943 after being called a "menace to the public" due to poor structural integrity.[2] Following demolition, the lot it had occupied was repurposed as a parking lot.[4]
(This was planned to be occupied by part of a Minnesota Shubert Performing Arts and Education Center,[5]
which was realized near the end of that century—though that eventual result entailed construction of a new building, which was—years later, without having opened to the public—raised from its foundation, and moved several blocks away, by extraordinary measures.
