The Persian Palms

Published July 21, 2016 James Eli Shiffer Today’s guest blogger is James Eli Shiffer, author of the newly published book, The King of Skid Row: John Bacich and the Twilight Years of Old Minneapolis. If Minneapolis were to create a dive bar hall of fame, the Persian Palms would be the first inductee. A bland…

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The Pioneer Hotel: Welcome to your cage

Published April 6, 2016 James Eli Shiffer Today’s guest blogger is James Eli Shiffer, author of the newly published book, The King of Skid Row: John Bacich and the Twilight Years of Old Minneapolis. This Thursday at the Mill City Museum, James will be talking about his book at the opening of a new exhibit  that features…

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“We Don’t Want a Hitler Here”

Published December 9, 2015 by Kirsten Delegard In August, 1946, one year after World War II came to a close, hundreds of demonstrators converged on downtown Minneapolis to protest the man best known for promoting fascism in the United States. Gerald L.K. Smith has been forgotten today, having been long consigned to the proverbial “dustbin…

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“Plymouth Avenue is gonna burn”

Published December 4, 2015 by Kirsten Delegard Early yesterday police cleared away the Black Lives Matter encampment at the Fourth Precinct station. This occupation–which following the police shooting death of Jamar Clark on November 15th–has focused the eyes of the city on this stretch of Plymouth Avenue North. Fifty years ago, this same block was…

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“The last outpost of urban paradise”

Published November 17, 2015 by Kirsten Delegard The nation was grappling with twin threats in June 1973, when a photographer named Donald Emmerich visited Minneapolis. The “urban crisis” had dovetailed with anxieties about the environment to make many Americans question the viability of city living. The newly created Environmental Protection Agency had hired a team…

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The forgotten campaign of Jack Baker

Published November 4, 2015 by Kirsten Delegard Yesterday was election day. The polls were pretty quiet in Minneapolis. But this civic occasion gives us an opportunity to revisit a long-forgotten political campaign. This broadside was created by Jack Baker, a candidate for Second Ward Alderman in 1973. This leaflet casts Baker as a fairly conventional…

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“It was our university”: Sumner Library and the old Sixth Avenue North

Published October 8, 2015 by Kirsten Delegard Sumner Library is celebrating its centennial this Saturday. You may shrug. But this really is a cause for jubilation. And a moment to contemplate the diverse history of one of Minnesota’s most interesting neighborhoods. This lovely little library on the city’s north side–built with funds provided by Andrew…

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Covenants and Civil Rights: Race and Real Estate in Minneapolis

Published September 22, 2015 by Kirsten Delegard In Minneapolis in 1946, it was virtually impossible to find a place to live. Years of economic depression and war had stalled home construction even as the city’s population continued to swell. And demobilization had escalated the wartime housing shortage into a crisis. The “train stations filled and…

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“The Joys of Camp Life”: Vacation at Mendoza Beach

Published September 8, 2015 by Kirsten Delegard Labor Day means that summer is over. Sad as I am to say goodbye to warm weather and a relaxed schedule, I count myself lucky that I enjoyed lots of vacation time during this lovely time of year. Which makes me very different from working women in Minneapolis…

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Who was Floyd Olson?

Published September 1, 2015 by Kirsten Delegard In August, 1936, Minneapolis lost a native son. “One arid afternoon, the people buried Floyd Olson under the trees by a lake,” journalist Eric Sevareid remembered. “When the news hawkers shouted the announcement from their corners, the noises of the street died down and their voices with the…

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Back in the day, you could bring your guns to school

Published August 24, 2015 by Kirsten Delegard Students return to school in the Minneapolis Public Schools today. These two photos celebrate the start of a new academic year. At the top we have a 1925 scene from a “hobby fair” at Burroughs Elementary School, which was an opportunity for the children to share their hobbies…

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Playing Ball at the Lake

Published December 9, 2015 by Kirsten Delegard   The shores of the lake we now know as Calhoun have always been the site of play. In August, 1834, a missionary named Samuel Pond wrote his first letter to his mother from his new home on the banks of this lake in the northern interior. He…

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Names matter: the story of Bde Maka Ska

Published December 9, 2015 by Kirsten Delegard Names matter. They serve as cultural signposts that articulate the social geography of a community. They declare who is remembered and who is revered. And this is why the body of water now known as Lake Calhoun needs a new name. Or in this case, an old name…

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Where did the Gateway Turtle Fountain go?

Published June 4, 2015 by Kirsten Delegard One reader asked me yesterday whether the Gateway Turtle fountain had been destroyed. The fountain–which sat at the center of the park’s Beaux Arts Pavilion–features prominently in images of the district. Once it became a gathering spot for Skid Row denizens in the 1930s, the city drained the…

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Scenes from Skid Row: the Minneapolis Gateway District during the Great Depression

Published June 3, 2015 by Kirsten Delegard The Minneapolis Gateway District drew the eyes of the nation during the Great Depression. It started with the 1934 Truckers’ Strike, which pitted the Teamsters’ Union against a seemingly invincible employers’ association. Led by Trotskyites, who employed all kinds of novel organizing tactics, the truckers triumphed. But their…

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Looking for the lost Gateway District of Minneapolis

Published June 1, 2015 by Kirsten Delegard On Saturday morning, Historyapolis will again team up with James Eli Shiffer to lead a Preserve Minneapolis tour of the lost Gateway district of Minneapolis. This will be our third year doing the tour, which poses some challenges since we have to re-create a world that no longer…

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“Into the boulevards”: Abby Mayhew and the lady cyclists of Minneapolis

Published May 14, 2015 by Kirsten Delegard In honor of bicycle week, Historyapolis is going to pay homage to those who laid the foundation for our thriving cycling culture in Minneapolis. In the 1890s, the United States was seized by what historians have called a “bicycle craze.” Minneapolitans were not immune to the seduction of…

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Happy May Day!

Published May 1, 2015 by Kirsten Delegard Over the last century, May Day has inspired parades that celebrate both political radicalism and community solidarity in Minneapolis. This 1937 photo shows labor movement activists marching through what was known as the Loop or the Gateway District. The photo was snapped at what was perhaps the apex…

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The Bohemian Flats: “A quaint little village” or den of iniquity?

Published April 30, 2015 by Kirsten Delegard In the last quarter of the nineteenth century, when Minneapolis was in its infancy and housing was almost impossible to find  in the growing city, new Americans created a squatters’ village on the banks of the Mississippi River. Home to 1,000 people, this enclave was tucked beneath the…

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Putting Minneapolis on the LGBTQ Map

Published March 31, 2015 by Kirsten Delegard Today is international Trans Day of Visibility. Please honor our friends, family and community members by helping to make LGBTQ history more visible. Follow your own muse. Or join one of the initiatives organized by the National Park Service. The NPS is calling on all Americans to assist…

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One last glimpse of 425 Portland Avenue

Published March 30, 2015 by Kirsten Delegard   The Star Tribune newsroom left 425 Portland Avenue on the end of the day last Friday. This film captured the scene–more than sixty years ago–when this soon-to-be-demolished building was first unveiled to a curious public. The mood was festive as thousands of Minnesotans stood in line for…

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Goodbye to All That: “A Trip through Newspaperland” at 425 Portland Avenue

Published March 25, 2015 by Kirsten Delegard In 1949, the Star Tribune brought the bling to 425 Portland Avenue with a Hollywood-style extravaganza that celebrated the unveiling of its state-of-the art editorial and printing facility. This comic, which offered a graphic tour of “Newspaperland,” was produced for the event. And readers were invited to star…

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Ferris Alexander and his “empire of smut”

Published March 10, 2015 by Kirsten Delegard Between 1970 and 1990, local businessman Ferris Alexander confounded city leaders, enraged neighborhood activists and infuriated feminist anti-pornography activists in Minneapolis. Alexander built a chain of movie houses and bookstores that specialized in pornographic materials, profiting from a burgeoning desire for semi-public sexual explorations. For two decades he…

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When Olson Memorial Highway had pedestrians

Published March 9, 2015 by Kirsten Delegard Planners and policymaker have recently condemned Floyd Olson Memorial Highway for being hostile to foot traffic and bikers. This photo shows the old Sixth Avenue North on this day in 1936, before it was widened and renamed for the radical governor who died that same year. Much to…

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“Gentiles Only”

Published March 6, 2015 by Kirsten Delegard In the spring of 1942, the Minneapolis Morning Tribune published a rental advertisement for a duplex on 34th and Holmes Avenue South. The opportunity to inhabit the elegant Tudor-style building two blocks from Lake Calhoun would have been attractive, especially in light of the wartime housing shortage. At…

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The “Met” and the Waikiki, Remembered

Published February 10, 2015 by Kirsten Delegard Yesterday I wrote the history of the Nicollet Hotel site and how city planners have tried different strategies over the years to bring the “right” mix of people to this section of downtown. This history is relevant in light of news that city planners have endorsed a proposal…

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Christmas in the Gateway

Published December 24, 2015 by Kirsten Delegard This scene shows the city’s Christmas tree in Gateway Park in 1937. This romantic image is a far cry from the iconic photographs taken on the same spot earlier that year. Russell Lee, a photographer working for the Farm Services Administration, created this and other images of the…

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Christmas Shopping, 1937

Published December 22, 2015 by Kirsten Delegard Ernest A. Kjorlie captured these Christmas shoppers in front of Dayton’s Department Store in 1937. At 1:35 pm, the weather looks gray instead of snowy. Perhaps as a result, the shoppers look determined rather than festive. But it could have been the economic context. Minneapolis was still mired…

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The death of Jack Trice: was this a hate crime?

Published December 19, 2015 by Kirsten Delegard This piece by local author John Rosengren revisits the circumstances surrounding the 1923 death of African-American football player Jack Trice. Trice–who played for Iowa–died after sustaining injuries in a game against the Gophers. Almost 100 years after this tragedy, the question remains: was Trice murdered? And if so,…

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Festivals of Light

Published December 17, 2014 by Kirsten Delegard This week, Minneapolitans are celebrating two festivals of light. This Saturday, Scandinavians observed Santa Lucia Day. This holiday features a girl–and in recent years increasingly a boy–who portrays Lucia, the saint credited with bringing hope and salvation to the starving masses at a time of crisis in the…

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Minneapolis and the rhetoric of civil rights

Published December 16, 2014 by Kirsten Delegard As our last two posts have illuminated, Minneapolis was seen as a bastion for civil rights in the 1940s and 1950s. Yet today the city is known for its racial disparities. A new study just ranked Minnesota the second worst place in the nation for African Americans. How…

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Minneapolis and the Freedom Rides

Published December 14, 2014 by Kirsten Delegard The civil rights movement fundamentally reshaped life in Minneapolis. By the 1950s, the city had cultivated a national image as a paragon of racial liberalism. Perhaps because of this image many Minneapolitans saw the civil rights movement as something that was going on somewhere else. They believed that…

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