The Westgate Theater opened in 1935 as a neighborhood showplace in Edina, across Sunnyside Road from the Convention Grill. For decades it survived on second‑run features, long after bigger downtown houses had shown them. Yet this modest venue became legendary when it held Harold and Maude on screen for 115 weeks — an unprecedented run that turned a quirky comedy into a cult phenomenon. In Held Over, author John Gaspard traces the theater’s journey from its grand opening through its unlikely brush with history, capturing how one small movie house helped shape the legacy of a film and a generation of moviegoers.

Dr. Christopher P. Lehman, author of It Took Courage: Eliza Winston’s Quest for Freedom, will talk about the life of enslaved woman Eliza Winston and her persistence in her pursuit of liberation. Born in 1817, she spent her childhood and early adulthood enslaved by President Andrew Jackson’s family in Tennessee. In 1860, after seven years in Mississippi, her enslavers took her on their vacation to Minnesota. There, she found allies who helped her successfully plead her case for emancipation. She became the first and only enslaved person freed through Minnesota’s courts.

At the turn of the century, mammoth steamboats and tourism began to leave the lake and Excelsior township and village began to dissolve into five communities, with Excelsior taking its place as the downtown of the south shore. Served by the streetcar from the Twin Cities and home to the popular Excelsior Amusement Park for almost fifty years, tiny Excelsior’s history is still evident today. Joanie Holst with the Lake Minnetonka Historical Society will share Excelsior’s rich history.