Secrets of the City

I’ve always liked the weird, funky little Ivy Tower in Minneapolis, near the convention center. Of course, I’m very old school.

Here’s mine.

I know it’s cliched, but I love the Wells Fargo Tower. It’s gorgeous in the daytime, it’s great lit up at night. I love when it’s snowing or foggy in the winter and it looks like something out of a dream. I keep meaning to take a picture of it reflected in the IDS as seen from Nicollet Mall. When you’re driving 94 westbound into the city, there are views where it looks like the building with the halo (225 S Sixth) is eclipsing it.

I love the Minneapolis City Hall, I think it is just beautiful.

I’m also a fan of the Lake Street LRT station. I think it is super neat how it sits up above the street all sleek and cool.

I love the AT&T tower, with it’s artichokey looking top and all the pretty reflective glass. It was the first building I remember seeing in downtown Minneapolis and I still love looking at it.

http://www.emporis.com/en/wm/bu/?id=122712

IDS, State Capitol, St. Paul Cathedral (especially at sunset).

There is a Ralph Rapson hosue for sale in Plymouth that is really sweet. If I can find the website I’ll post it.

For skyscrapers, I kind of like 225 South 6th (Except it needs to be renamed…)

On the other hand, I like the witch hat water tower too…

I love the burned-out Adolphus Gustavus Union Hall on Lake Street around 12th Avenue. It could be rehabbed into something spectacular, though I suspect it will eventually be bulldozed.

I moarn the loss of the old guthrie. i think it is an absolute crime that they tore it down.

I’m a fan of this old warhorse, unpopular as it may be……I just think suspension buildings are cool, and I have lots of good skateboarding memories from there!

I like the downtown minneapolis post office especially inside. Whenever I was there (which was often), the postal people were always nice too. I alway imagine the long hallways would make an awesome runway for vintage inspired fashion show.

Oh, I’m also fascinated by Minneapolis South High. A totally scary, concrete-slab, prison-style, windowless dungeon of a place that was built to be “riot-proof”. Pretty interesting, and vulgar in its own strange way.

Not really related, but I spruced up my TC dream transit map.

My favorite is the “crack stacks”. One of Ralph’s shining achievements.

wayne, putting the obvious need for a Hennepin/Lyndale route aside, I think it would be more feasible to run the SWLRT from the Hiawatha’s Franklin stop.

And don’t call Marquette Plaza an old warhorse. It’s freshly overhauled, with all its rough edges smoothed over by Cancer Survivors Park, or whatever they call that thing.

Is that what that old building is? I think it’s east of 12th avenue, but I ride by there on the bus and think the same thing.

Some of my favorites:

The new library makes my bookworm heart hum whenever I see it.
Took a lot of language classes at this faux Italian palazzo.
This government facility is pleasing to mine eye.
The A Mill rocks my limestone world.

I also have a deep love for the Wells Fargo. The Mineral Resouces Research Center on the knoll of the East Bank (which is currently under construction to be completed this fall) is awesome, especially when viewed from the 19th Ave Bridge.

I may be a bit old fashion, but I still like the looks of the Foshey Tower. Especially the view of the city when you could access their observation platforms near the top.

I also liked the looks of the old North High School that stood on Fremont Ave. No. & 17th Ave. No. until they tore it down in the name of progress about 1973 or 1974 and built the new school over on James. It was an awesome, somewhat indiminating sight for a 16 year old girl just starting her high school days in the late sixties. I spent three years attending school there, and have to say I enjoyed most of it.

Buildings I like–the Guthrie is fun to run past, although that billboard tower is pretty useless. Wells Fargo was designed very well, especially for a place that gets snow like us. And the Mill City Museum, looking all half-bombed-out, is awesome on the outside.

Somebody at a BBQ this weekend was telling me about lost Minneapolis architecture–anybody know where I could get a peak at the original central library? What about the one building where all the floors were made of glass?

Most buildings already mentioned and

The chapel at Lakewood Cemetery
Christ Lutheran Church by Eliel Saarinen

“What about the one building where all the floors were made of glass?”

That was the Metropolitan Building. There’s a lot of really good information about it in Larry Millet’s Lost Twin Cities.

The Lost Twin Cities book makes a nice birthday/holiday gift.

But if you’re feeling a bit cheap, Lileks does pretty well with the Minneapolis Long Gone section of his website for free, and if you don’t mind pleading, TPT will most likely run at least one of their Lost Twin Cities productions when they run another bait-and-switch pledge drive. Why do the best shows only come out sandwiched between pleas for money?

Some other great commercial buildings with huge writing on them that I love are the MODERN storefront on Chicago Avenue in Powderhorn (I don’t know what it actually is, but it’s somewhere a couple blocks south of Lake — I couldn’t find a picture, but it’s a really elegant little storefront with a great midcentury color scheme and says “MODERN” out on the front in huge letter), and the creepy Freemasons building on Central near the Holy Land that is also a bowling trophy supply store, but says in similarly huge letters out front ARCANA.

Man, I could go on about this all day. Perhaps I will

I’m a huge fan of Larry Millet’s Lost Twin Cities too, and I wish it was required reading for all urban planners. To see Minneapolis a half century ago, you’d think you were in Paris. Seriously, anyone here would have their jaws drop by the former architecture of this city. There are small remnants still here, including the warehouse district which is really a disservice to what I’m saying because that was then the “bad” part of town.

The Lumber Exchange, Ivy Tower, Foshay, City Hall begin to show a glimpse into history but not well.

We also tore up thousands of miles of urban rail track. Ugh.

The MODERN was a dry cleaners. See page 61 of “A Guide to the Architecture of Minnesota” by David Gebhard

This is a really interesting older interview (1997) with Larry Millet just prior to “Dayton Hudson” building the downtown Target headquarters on the old part of Nicollet Mall — a project that made my heart crumble.

As for residential architecture, the Nowhaus is pretty awesome. As is the (rather) local Wee House. I have an affinity for the crackstacks but admittedly they have not aged so well.

Speaking of guides, the American Institute of Architects has just released the AIA Guide to the Twin Cities. I’ve seen a copy of it, and it’s very impressive.

See here.

To see Minneapolis a half century ago, you’d think you were in Paris.

This was a big part of the point I was trying to make in the other thread!

But everyone yellzed at me ):

Oh oh oh and the Forum Cafeteria. Which is no longer here but I loved that place. It was amazingly cool and the tapicoca and pie were nummy.

Hey, I wonder if that “earth house” is still all tunneled into the ground along the frontage road by the Riverside exit off 94? It was not beautiful but it was interesting as a cultural relic from the early 70s. Kind of hobbity, only very dark, as if it were the place where the hobbits from the wrong side of the tracks lived.

Speaking of guides, the American Institute of Architects has just released the AIA Guide to the Twin Cities. I’ve seen a copy of it, and it’s very impressive.

This is a great book! I have not put it down since I bought it. Twincities.com has a cool contest where you can win a walking tour with Larry Millet –

I’d add the Minnesota History Center to this thread. It’s a very cool building.

Here’s the link for the walking tour contest:

http://extra.twincities.com/contest/millett/

Always happy to do a little overkill…

LOLIDS
LOLCapitol

Hey, I wonder if that “earth house” is still all tunneled into the ground along the frontage road by the Riverside exit off 94?

A similar building, at the foot of the 5th St. exit off I-94, across from the Humpty Dome, is another relic of the “energy-wise” ’70s. It was built as an office building but was, a couple of years ago, turned into a parking ramp.

Ralph Rapson is an overrated hack. His buildings are oppressive in appearance and poorly engineered.

I like the AT&T Tower for its art deco crown, blue reflectivity, and because it creates the sense of being rendered on an old 1980s Cray supercomputer. More Tron buildings, I say.

And I know its neither cool nor popular to say so, but I love the Weisman. Put that in your pipe and smoke it.

YES!

The earth houses are surprisingly bright. One is for sale now, see the listing here.

Oh yeah, I also love the Guthrie, but then I’m a sucker for blue things.

And another thing (as it seems I am unable to marshal my thoughts or my grammar this morning – I meant “it’s” two posts up; fuck)… I love the design of the new library but I can’t bring myself to wholly love it, because it’s such a vanity of a boondoggle.

The Hennepin Center for the Arts is located at a former Masonic temple, designed in a rather entertaining and confused blend of neoclassical and baroque. I don’t know whether to form a dance troupe or abjure Zuul to come in the form of a giant Sloar every time I walk past.

mmm, ikea

Funny you should say that, Wayne. I happen to own a table designed by that nice Mr Jean Nouvel, the Guthrie’s architect.

It looks like something you’d get from Ikea, only it weighs about 300 lbs, made as it is from sheet steel. It looks beautiful. I love it, and hardly ever move it. I will accede that this is par for the course in modern design.

Better yet, I found it on Craigslist for a couple of hundred dollars.

No one’s mentioned our cities castles!

Landmark Center and Swedish Institute!

They need MOATS though. Stocked with walleye.

I love blatantly medieval architecture in the city.

And, I’d like to offer a second fond endorsement for the Weisman. Put that in your juice box and suck it.

Tib wrote: “Kind of hobbity, only very dark, as if it were the place where the hobbits from the wrong side of the tracks lived.”

You probably mean boggies, then.

That is a very nice table.

I like it. But it betrays its understated minimalism by weighing a freaking ton. I worry that one day it will undergo gravitational collapse as its mass increases to infinity. Less is, as they say, more.

I just rearranged my apartment and it’s looking pretty great. But I need to make a trip to IKEA to do some decoratin’.

Check out google maps!

How long have they had this 3D isometric overview of the larger buildings when you move into a closer zoom on map view? It’s awesome – an architecture student/cartographer/psychogeographer/urban planner/GIS nerd’s wet dream.

Well, it’s a new feature to me, anyway. Have a look.