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 […]

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.

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 […]

Author and historian Brian MacMahon will discuss how the Ford Motor Company transformed Minnesota as detailed in his award-winning book, The Ford Century in Minnesota, published by the University of Minnesota Press. The impact of the company will be seen locally, including the introduction of the Model T, the building of the Twin Cities Assembly […]

Until the 1970s, large swaths of Minneapolis were devoted to railroad use -- depots, switching yards, freight houses, and shop facilities. Much of that has disappeared, along with the industry that depended on the railroads. Historian Aaron Isaacs takes us on a tour of the city showing what was here before and what has replaced […]