• comopark2

    Saint Paul’s Municipal Menagerie

      In 1873 the city of Saint Paul acquired 300 acres of land around Lake Como for use as a public park. Saint Paul’s experiment with a municipal menagerie began in 1897 when the city fenced pasture in the park to hold a gift of three deer. Como’s Art Deco zoological building was designed in [...]

  • 1905 Postcard

    Calhoun Boulevard and 36th

    Originally called by the Dakota “Mde Maka Ska”, which meant White Earth Lake, settlers later named it with the Dakota name “Medoza” or Loon Lake. The United States Secretary of War, John C. Calhoun, sent the Army to survey the area that would surround Fort Snelling in 1817. Calhoun had also authorized the construction of [...]

  • minneapolis sheridan

    At the Edge of the Richest Shopping District

        The Sheridan was built around the corner from the old Minneapolis Auditorium and Lyceum Theater in 1926. The hotel was one of at least six brick courts at the southern edge of downtown. In 1938 one could get a single with a bath of $2.00. Many of these old places became residential in the [...]

  • 1stME

    The SteppingStone Theatre Then and Now

      Designed by Thori, Alban and Fischer the corner stone for the the First Methodist Episcopal Church was laid on  October 15, 1907 and the building was completed in 1910.  A dedication booklet noted that the church faced Holly Avenue in a “situation ideal to show its classic and simple architecture, the massive columns of the portico [...]

  • hampshirearms

    A Hotel of Rare Charm

      The Hampshire Arms Hotel spent the better part of the last century standing on the corner of 4th street and 9th. The hotel was popular for its lovely courtyard. Famous doorman. George Route greeted guests at the Hampshire Arms for fifty years. When he passed away in 1953, Jet magazine ran an obituary for [...]

  • papermoon1

    Night in Minneapolis

      These Night in Minneapolis Postcards were printed in the 1920′s by the V.O. Hammon Publishing Company of  Chicago. Oh Gosh, Lena! Look at all those electrical lights!

  • yqpostcard

    The Youngest Old Building in Minneapolis

      The Young Quinlan Building was designed by Magney and Tusler with Frederick Ackerman. Miss Quinlan spared no expense when building her elegant five-story building at the corner of Nicollet Mall and Ninth Street. She sought out an architect that would design her “home” with an Old World atmosphere. The building’s dedication ceremony and open [...]

  • downto12

    Back When Minneapolis Was A Big City

      Minneapolis was a bigger place when these postcards came out. The population of Minnesota’s largest city has declined by almost 140,000 souls since climbing to a  peak of 521,718 in 1950. In the middle of the last century, approximately 70.0% of the metropolitan area’s population was concentrated in the city limits of St. Paul [...]

  • loeb

    The Loeb Arcade

        The four story Loeb Building  at 7 5th street was built by Samuel Loeb in 1915. The building was designed by Chicago architect Henry Ottenhiemer. The Loeb’s three story shopping arcade arcade had room for 90 shops inside a curving skylit gallery clad in gleaming terra-cotta tiles. In 1920 the building was remodeled [...]

  • Where Men Meet Men: Built at 9th and  Lasalle in 1919 the old YMCA building in downtown Minneapolis originally had a...

lilifeature

The Anatomic Bomb

  Lili St. Cyr came into the world as Willis Marie Van Schaack in Minneapolis. Her parents moved to Pasadena, California when she was 7 years old. The entertainer’s early life is somewhat of a mystery. She had a sister, Rosemary Van Schaack Minsky. Her grandparents, the Klarquists, reared her and her show business siblings, Dardy [...]

century3

Cinerama at the Century

The Century Theater opened as a vaudeville house called the Miles in 1908. In 1915, the place was rebuilt, and reopened as the Garrick Theater. In 1929 the Garrick was gutted and The Century Theatre was created in the old theater’s shell. The Century proclaimed the most modern movie house west of Chicago. The new [...]

Bayne3

Beverly Bayne

  Pearl Beverly Bayne was born in Minneapolis in 1884. Her family moved to Chicago when she was only six. Little Pearl was told she had a camera face and began began work at Essanay Studios making salary of $35 a week when she was 16 years old. Beverly Baynes made her first two movies, [...]

augies1

Find out Augie’s Secrets at the Calhoun Village Barnes & Noble May 18th, 1-3pm

A treasury of family secrets exposes the seamy underbelly of Minneapolis—gangsters, gambling, brothels, and the social life of organized crime. Augie Ratner, the proprietor of Augie’s Theater Lounge & Bar on Hennepin Avenue, was the unofficial mayor of Minneapolis’s downtown strip in the 1940s and ’50s. In a few blocks between the swanky clubs and [...]

comopark2

Saint Paul’s Municipal Menagerie

  In 1873 the city of Saint Paul acquired 300 acres of land around Lake Como for use as a public park. Saint Paul’s experiment with a municipal menagerie began in 1897 when the city fenced pasture in the park to hold a gift of three deer. Como’s Art Deco zoological building was designed in [...]