Secrets of the City

Good name change for a worth organization, but I think an invitation for “Team 007 Cocktails” sounds more inviting than “Cocktails with Preservationist.”

Shaken, not stirred.

Totally, completely awesome! I just signed up.

DO NOT WANT

“Booze N’ Snooze” with the most boring people on earth, PRESERVATIONISTS!

Useful, probably nice, but will lull you to sleep by even looking in your direction. Hobbies include arguing about lamp-post bases and variances, playing “Olde Towne Preservationist Tycoon” video games, snorting grant money off antique mirrors, and Werther’s Originals.

I’m a hipster preservationist. Think your way out of that one!

Anyone who has to assert that they’re a “hipster” ANYTHING is obviously….not.

That’s not true. He’s saying he’s a hipster, not that he’s hip. The former can be self-applied, the latter can’t.

Wow. Tough crowd.

I’ve been called one in the past. I don’t really think I am or want to be, though.

also way to ruin the joke, jerk

I’ve been called one in the past. I don’t really think I am or want to be, though.

What? A preservationist? or a hipster?

I checked out the tour that they offered of the Foshay tower before it was closed down for its current hotel renovation. The tour was jam-packed, including quite a few hotties. I could not verify their hipster credentials, but it was surprisingly quite the scene.

There was, admittedly, a bit of historical arcana, but that’s good for you, and you got to wash it down with wine.

I’ve always appreciated people who are willing to take their own property, which, for the average property owner, represents a great proportion of their worldly assets, and pull it from market economic treatment, and thus give up potential profit from it, in order to foster our preservation of history. That kind of charitible concern for society is admirable.

Huh? . . . . What do . . . What?

Oh, they just want to exert control over OTHER PEOPLES’ SHIT?!

Never mind.

Whatever. I’m just hoping these guys can help me figure out what’s the deal with this alleged “lost neighborhood” of Oak Lake. I can only do so much with Google.

From my searches, it sounds like that neighborhood was the Jewish quarter.

Link one, a review of Harrison Salisbury’s memoirs. “His middle-class, ‘Victorian childhood’ was spent in the heavily Jewish, Oak Lake neighborhood of Minneapolis”

Link two, a website about Jewish immigrants in Minneapolis

Ranty, I’m sure you already know this, but there’s still a two block long length of street called Oak Lake Avenue, between 6th and 8th Avenue N just north of the farmer’s market.

I’ve seen old maps that show this area as being once upon a time laid out with a curvilinear street pattern, much like Prospect Park or Tangletown. It’s not clear to me when this area would have been redeveloped, but everything over there appears to be post WW2.

If you track down an Irish Jewish community, let me know. Hell, it could even just be UK-Jewish; grote and I could be neighbors, and he could serve kosher haggis while I pour kosher Jamison.

Wow Elizabeth, that was FAST! Thanks!!!

Yes, I do know about the street, and also yes, I think that’s right about the n’hood layout.

I have been searching through old books and house photos trying to find pictures, but so far no luck. (No reason for this, mind you, other than the fact that I am obsessive-compulsive.)

On the second site I linked to, there’s this map from 1912. Which looks to be this area now.

bobby_b, you’re the best.

SAVE THE GUTHRIE!

Here’s a pic of the Mikro Kodesh synagogue in Oak Lake circa 1910, from the Minnesota Historical Society’s online photo archives.

Now, I am ready to aegue the shit out of some lamp-post bases and variances with somebody.

dude it’s a dirt field now

That map is so cool. I’m guessing that was called Bradford & Bassett’s Add’n to Minneapolis? (I only see “ford” but since the street is called Bradford, I suppose that’s it.)

I gotta get back to the Hennepin Historical Museum and look at their maps again. They are fascinating. (Or boring, depending on who you are, I guess.)

max…I already serve kosher haggis…I just call it kishke. also, my Scottish ancestors were more of the seaside cod-loving variety.

I have a great railroad map of the lake street line all across the city.
It was done on silk. I’ll have to dig that out and take a look at the date.

I liberated it from the Milwaukee Road Depot when it was undergoing asbestos remediation.

Save the Stillwater lift bridge. It is a piece of our history in Stillwater and deserves to be saved. It shoud be used for local traffic, not just bikes and pedestrians as proposed when they finnaly build a new bridge wheenever that may be.

Does anybody remember a street called Grey Place? It was a north/south residential street that used to run between Washington and Third Street No. just south of Lowry Avenue in North Mpls. It along with its houses and a couple of businesses along Lowry Avenue were demolished in the late sixties when the work for I-94 was started. If I remember corectly, one of the stores sold fishing tackle and bait. Another one was some kind of small repair shop for appliances. It’s been a long time I may be wrong on what the bussinesses were. Just think when you drive down 94 going into Mpls. you are driving on land where Grey Place used to run what used to be

“ . . . and deserves to be saved. “

“Deserves” makes it sound like there’s some moral debt owed to the bridge, for something it’s done that was good or selfless, or nice. It sounds better than “I like it, and I want you to save it because I like it . . .”, but the second is probably more accurate.

We have an old map of our neighborhood and house, like the one Elizabeth linked to, from the 1890s. We got it at an antique shop on, I think, Lyndale (if anyone is interested I can look it up.) They had tons of them from all over the city. Very cool.

I think I’m going to join this group too. They seem awesome.

Where did you ever find those old maps of Mpls. from the early nineteen hundreds. Did you say they had them at the Hennepin Historical Museum. If so where is it located? and do they have maps and information available on line.

They do have online info and archives, though they’re by no means complete. The Minneapolis Library has resources online as well, with the same caveat, of course.

Don’t forget about the mysterious disappearance of Lake Sandy.

I happened across an old map online of Hennepin Avenue from like 200 years ago and since then have been fascinated by old maps. It was so cool to look out my window at Hennepin Avenue and think about how it’s been there since the Indians took Father Hennepin or w/e happened back then.

Love old maps.

Hennepin History Museum

And whoa – I never knew about this lake at 22nd and Lyndale… is that for real?

Last night I found this crazy map of Minneapolis that Rex linked to a number of years ago. The original site is gone, but I had it an email. It’s a really odd ethnic and cultural map of Minneapolis from 1935.

If I can find it when I get home, I’ll put up a link — I’m going to Triviasco, so things might get blurry.

Hobbies include arguing about lamp-post bases and variances, playing “Olde Towne Preservationist Tycoon” video games, snorting grant money off antique mirrors, and Werther’s Originals.

I think this group looks very interesting and fun, but I must say, Shitty McDivott, that made me laugh until my insides hurt.

And whoa – I never knew about this lake at 22nd and Lyndale… is that for real?

wuh? wait, N or S?

if S, it might sorta make sense to me since there’s that giant dip at lyndale/franklin

Re: 22nd and Lyndale S.

From everything I’ve read, it wasn’t a lake per se, but it appears to have been a swampy lowland, and the topography drains down to it significantly from all sides.

I sometimes walk through there after a heavy rainstorm (esp. the 2200 block of Garfield, which is really the low point), and you can see all of the parked cars with high water marks up to the tops of their wheel wells. Also, the way the apartment building at 24th and Garfield (behind the laundromat) is settling, you can tell that it was built on pretty poor soil.