Yesterday and Today: The Interactive Beatles Experience Garde Arts Center New London

The Garde Arts Center is a cinema and performing arts center located in New London, Connecticut. The venue owns and operates the Garde Theatre, which is a historic movie palace. The theater broke ground in 1962 with the architecture being done by Arland W. Johnson. He designed the venue as a vaudeville house and movie theater, with a Moroccan-style interior. The center also includes the Garde Office Building, a 120-seat music performance space, the Oasis Room, the Meridian Building (a service facility), and the Mercer Building, where the Center's offices are located.

The Garde Arts Center was built under Arthur S. Friend's direction and named after Walter Garde, a New London and Hartford businessman. The center opened for the public on September 22, 1926, with the Marriage Clause's silent film. The center was said to be one of the finest theaters in New England by the press. The venue hosted various acts of music, comedy, acrobatics, and magic during its initial years. Eventually, Warner Bros. purchased the four-story Garde office building along with the theater for $1 million.

The Garde Arts Center was one of 18 theaters in New England purchased by Warner Bros to introduce their new "talking pictures" technology. The venue was closed under the ownership of RKO-Stanley-Warner in 1977.