We drove downtown one Saturday afternoon recently to take advantage of the Doors Open event arranged by a variety of businesses and organizations who agreed to open their doors to curious visitors under the auspices of the city. It was a cool, drizzly day, which gave the urban scene a romantic luster.
Our first stop was the Star-Tribune production warehouse. But there was a line outside, we were told the wait would be an hour, and the tour forty minutes. That would pretty much shoot the afternoon. No thanks.
Our next stop was a narrow brick warehouse called the Iron Building that some young entrepreneurs were gutting and converting into condos. Our tour guide was one of the owners.
"This building used to sell iron parts for repairing horse-drawn buggies," he said. "They didn't make anything here. But a long line of bays ran this way and people would bring in their buggies. We've had our eye on the building for ten years." He showed us where the timber beams had been replaced by concrete beams, and where the basement space jutted out under the sidewalk above, so heavy iron parts could be lowered easily into the building.
"This is a historic building," he said, "so we have to abide by lots of rules. And aesthetics has nothing to do with it. If a given feature dates to before 1930, we can't change it without permission, whatever it is."
He led the small group upstairs so we could see the apartment layouts. One woman inquired about buying one and he gave her his card. "This is a small building, and we focused on maximum living space for the dollar, which means no parking and no outdoor spaces."
Gutted buildings, like Greek ruins, are always interesting; the open space for the imagination. On the other hand, I worked in a building just like this one, the Bookmen, for twenty years. I was also reminded of the genuine loft where an artist-friend who also worked at Bookmen, Ann Penaz, lived with her husband. She hosted a party once where a film that Hilary and I had made with friend received its world premier. You reached the loft space via a freight elevator, and as I recall, Ann and John had an enormous black-and-white photo of Joseph Beuys on the wall behind the kitchen table. All the walls were white, or course. In those days there were several galleries nearby, and the chic New French Cafe was thriving, and there was talk of calling the North Loop neighborhood "Nolo" (you know, like Soho). Ann and John knew their days as illegal tenants were numbered. And also that the neighborhood would soon be gentrified beyond recognition.
Our next stop was Dayton's. Once the premier downtown retailer, It's mostly empty now, though there was talk of a food court before the pandemic hit, are enough businesses and offices have moved in on the upper floors to support a very nice gym and a stylish "library." The young woman at the desk started to explain to us what the building had once been used for, but I politely cut her short. "We know about Dayton's," I said. "In fact, I once saw the Butterfield Blues Band in the eighth-floor auditorium."
"Who?" She looked confused.
"The Paul Butterfield Blues Band," I added a first name to clarify.
"I like blues," she said cheerfully, "but I've never heard of them."
Hilary, hoping for better luck, said, "and I saw Jefferson Airplane here."
The woman shook her head. Negative. "I have heard of Prince, though," she said.
We took the elevator up to the eighth floor to see the swanky library and sitting room, and from there we wandered out onto the open-air deck overlooking the city. The buildings to the east looked sleek, glassy, and impressive—beautiful, even—though I didn't recognize any of them. To the northeast I spotted one flank of the Norwest Tower and a piece of the Grain Exchange, I think. The Crystal Court of the IDS Tower was directly below us.
We returned to our car and puttered a few blocks to the east side of town, where we found a spot right in front of a small walk-apartment building called the Oakland on 9th. Hewed in a vaguely Richardsonian Romanesque style, it was the first building designed by Harry Wilde Jones, whose more famous works include the Butler Building, the Lindsey Brothers Agricultural Implements Warehouse, and the original Lake Harriet Bandshell. A sign in front describes the numerous challenges associated with preserving the relic here in the midst of parking lots and skyscrapers.
We were headed for a much larger building, the Hotel Ivy, which began its civic life in 1930 as the ten-story pebbled-concrete tower of a Christian Scientist church that was never completed. Over time it served other uses and was also scheduled for demolition at one point. It now functions as a luxury hotel. The lobby is on the third floor, with a spa on the second and a restaurant on the first. We were allowed to take the elevator to the penthouse, a one bedroom, two-story suite overlooking the city that rents for $5,000/night. As our tour guide explained, "This is not a room for visiting soloists with the Minnesota Orchestra. It's a room that Oprah or Cher might occupy.
I wasn't impressed. The spaces were cramped, the style was minimalist modern, and the views were only fair to middling. We won't be staying here any time soon.
Hilary convinced me to skip the free snack buffet on the third floor, and also the tour of the whisky cathedral in the basement, and we hurried a few blocks west to Orchestra Hall. We've heard many concerts here, but the backstage tour might have been interesting. Naturally, the greeter wanted to introduce us to the building. "We've been coming here since the seventies," I said.
"Oh, so you remember the colored pipes they used to have on the exterior?"
"Sure. Like the Pompidou Center in Paris. What? Did they take them off?" We skipped the forty-minute tour and walked out to Peavey Plaza, only to discover that the pool had been drained and replaced by stone tiles. Probably a good idea.
Our final stop was City Hall. We zigzagged north on foot past the Dakota Jazz Club and the old Young Quinlan Building—soon to be a bookstore! As we passed one old-fashioned cafĂ© with tall glass windows I said, "Hey. That looks like Peter's Grill." Hilary was a waitress at Peter's back in the 60s, and she assured me that, indeed, it did look like Peter's. But it wasn't.
Our tour guide at City Hall was a man named Jerry, who identified himself as the supervisor of maintenance and building security. He walked us through the building while reading off of little 3 x 5 cards, and his halting yet informative delivery was perfectly suited to the ethos of the building. He took us to the city council chambers, where decisions regarding the city are made, and it struck me that politics does take place somewhere other than in the pages of a newspaper, and that real people, elected by other real people, make decisions that affect everyone in Minneapolis.
He took us to the mayor's office, which looked like a dentist office I used to visit on Lake Street thirty years ago.
We looked across the beehives in the building's leafy inner courtyard to the windows of the county jail beyond, where, Jerry told us, as many as 700 people could be incarcerated at any one time while awaiting trial. I had no idea.
Weary and inspired and sobered, we walked south toward our car past buildings I'd never heard of. Whatever happened to Lutheran Brotherhood? And the Dahlberg Drum Shop? And where was the Handicraft Building? Glancing down one street to the east we could see the old Normandy Inn.
"I always hated that building," Hilary said, and I had to agree.
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