Join R.T. Rybak for a talk about Pothole Confidential: My Life as Mayor of Minneapolis. In a memoir that is at once a political coming-of-age story and a behind-the-scenes look at the running of a great city, three-term Minneapolis mayor R.T. Rybak takes readers into the highs and lows and the daily drama of a […]
In the late 1920s and early 1930s, pioneer aerial photographer Joe Quigley was hired to take images of all Minneapolis schools. These remarkable high-resolution photos have been in the school district files for 80 years. Join local historians Michael Wilson and Tom Balcom to view the Southwest neighborhoods circa 1930.
Join us as a Dakota historian speaks on the Dakota cultural perspective/name restoration of Bde Maka Ska, including the new public art installation (completion date, late summer). The Minneapolis City public arts project at Bde Maka Ska celebrates the history of Heyata Otunwe, a village at Bde Maka Ska/Lake Calhoun (1829-1839) and honors Mahpiya Wicasta/Cloud […]
Most known for Widow Hamilton's guest house overlooking Lake Calhoun (now called Bde Maka Ska), where Henry David Thoreau stayed in June 1861, members of the Hamilton family lived at times on both the south and west shores of the lake for more than 40 years. Explore this untold history of early days before the […]
Racial covenants were used to bar people of a given race, ethnic origin, or religion, from buying or occupying property in Minneapolis. These discriminatory deeds underpinned an invisible system of American apartheid. This project, Mapping Prejudice, is headed up by a team of activists and scholars who are researching the city covenants with the help […]
Robert Fischer was the most unusual artist ever inspired by Minnehaha Falls. From about 1900 until 1940, he created tens of thousands of delicate sand designs in clear glass containers, using nothing but the natural colored sands found in Minnehaha Park. Only a few of these still exist. Fischer lived in the Falls neighborhood for […]
Architectural historian and freelance writer Dick Kronick will lecture on the history of architect John Jager, who laid out the Red Cedar Lane neighborhood in southwest Minneapolis. Research conducted in 2018 uncovered previously unknown information about Jager's life, and buildings that he designed.
Fort Snelling at Bdote background reading list from Linden Hills Public Library For millennia, the place where the Minnesota River joins the Mississippi has been a crossroads, a place of strategic power. But that symbolism is complicated. This tour is a powerful reminder that most Minnesotans today are descendants of immigrants, living on conquered land. […]
Just over a century ago the Minneapolis City Council directed the Milwaukee Railroad Company to construct a trench located just north of Lake Street, between Hennepin and Cedar Avenues, and 37 bridges for roads spanning the trench. This provided a grade separation between the railroad and the city’s automobile and streetcar traffic for three miles, […]
James Eli Shiffer, author of The King of Skid Row: John Bacich and the Twilight Years of Old Minneapolis, will visually take us to visit the nucleus of the old Gateway at Hennepin, Nicollet, and Washington Avenues. Though office towers, upscale hotels, and condos abound here, imagine this intersection 60 years earlier where you are […]
