First Avenue, Minneapolis — Purple Rain

First Avenue opened in 1970 in a converted Greyhound bus terminal at 701 First Avenue North in downtown Minneapolis and became within a few years the central venue of the Minneapolis music scene — a room that held around 1,500 people, with a smaller attached club called the 7th Street Entry, and a policy of booking emerging artists that made it the launching pad for an implausibly rich local music culture. The exterior of the building is covered in white stars, each bearing the name of an artist who has sold out the venue. Prince's star is there.

Prince played First Avenue obsessively in his early years — it was where he developed his live show, where his local following became a local cult, where the Minneapolis sound he was developing found its first sustained audience. When he made Purple Rain in 1984, First Avenue was the location: the film's concert scenes were shot there over three nights in August 1983, with a real audience recruited from Prince's actual fanbase. The performances captured on those nights — including the title track's premiere — were recorded and became the backbone of the album. Purple Rain went on to sell over twenty million copies and win two Academy Awards. The venue where it was filmed continues to operate seven nights a week.

First Avenue has since expanded to include additional spaces and stages while retaining its original character as a working music venue rather than a tourist attraction or heritage site. The stars on the exterior keep accumulating. The 7th Street Entry next door still books the kind of shows that First Avenue itself once hosted when it was smaller and less known. For Minneapolis, the building is not merely a landmark — it is the building where the city's identity as a music city was established.