The daily digest of Twin Cities culture | 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.

DO NOT WANT

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

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.

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

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'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.

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

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.)

bobby_b, you're the best.

dude it's a dirt field now

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.

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

" . . . 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.

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

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.

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.

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

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.

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.