Preserve Minneapolis walking tour

I branched out to more walking tours!

After how much I enjoyed the Minnesota Historical Society's Summit Avenue tours, I wondered if other Twin Cities organizations offered similar excursions. Late last summer I discovered Preserve Minneapolis, a group dedicated to identifying and preserving the city's historic architecture. A big part of its mission also includes creating educational opportunities for the general public: A couple of months ago, I attended my first event with the organization: the regular Breakfast with a Preservationist event, held every other month at the Mill City Museum. (A Happy Hour with a Preservationist event is held in months that don't feature the breakfast discussion!)

In addition to these year-round events, Preserve Minneapolis also coordinates more than two dozen walking and biking tours around Minneapolis each summer. When I first read about the tours last summer, they were all sold out, so as soon as this year's schedule was available, I chose my first one: the "East Hennepin: Behind the Scenes" walking tour of Northeast Minneapolis.

An excerpt from the website's description of the tour:

"The bustling commercial district surrounding East Hennepin Avenue has hosted many names throughout the years, but everyone knows its unforgettable landmarks: Surdyk’s, Nye’s, Kramarczuk’s, Historic Main Street, and Our Lady of Lourdes Church. . . .  The last decade has brought dramatic change and the area around East Hennepin is now considered one of the trendiest and most exciting places in Minneapolis to eat, shop, and live. Fortunately, the area has managed to maintain its old-world flavor to this day. Join us for a “behind-the-scenes” history of the busy streets, unique businesses, and colorful people that have shaped this popular walking neighborhood."

The tour was set for a Sunday morning that happened to feature an ominous forecast. I drove over to Northeast in steady rain that turned into an on-and-off rain for the first part of our tour before the clouds cleared out by the conclusion. (Rain isn't a problem for the tours, but they are cancelled if there's lightning.) Lots of umbrellas in the early stages made for a spread-out group, especially since there were about 18 of us on the tour.

One of the tour's overarching themes was the neighborhood's layers: different cultural influences shaped by immigration waves, businesses and storefronts that ebb and flow and change. I was aware of the neighborhood's strong Eastern European heritage, but I didn't know that the neighborhood includes the city's oldest church, which was founded by French Canadian settlers and continues to connect to its deep French heritage.

That's Our Lady of Lourdes Church, its steps and doors with the fleur de lis symbol visible in this picture of our group (in the rain):

As we walked along the route, covering about 10 blocks, many of our stops included explanations of the layers of businesses and history that preceded a given space's current occupant. As promised in the tour description, the guides also talked to us about longstanding, well-known and well-loved Northeast institutions such as Surdyk's liquor store, Nye's Polonaise Room and Kramarczuk's Sausage Company. 



Across the street from modern condominiums, the interesting give and take between old and new continued: the tour ended in Chute Square at the Ard Godfrey House - per that website, the oldest surviving frame home in the Twin Cities. It's a space I've run by many times and always wondered about its history.



One of the tour's memorable highlights was our knowledgeable guides: two longtime Northeast residents that made the tour richer and stronger because of how much they love their neighborhood. The 75-minute tour was a great introduction to the area that also showed me how much more there is to learn about the neighborhood, its intricate history and its current era of development. It was only my first Preserve Minneapolis event - but if that was representative of the others, I'll be back for more.

James J. Hill House tour

Earlier this year, I bought a Minnesota Historical Society membership. I've had wonderful experiences with the organization's museums (including the Mill City Museum and Minnesota History Center) as well as the Summit Avenue neighborhood tour and the F. Scott Fitzgerald-themed walking tour, and I'm excited to support its great work and learn more about history, locally and statewide.

Last week, I visited St. Paul's James J. Hill House for the first time!

James J. Hill was a railroad magnate who built the Great Northern Railway that connected St. Paul to Seattle in 1893. His mansion was finished in 1891, and he lived there with his wife and most of his 10 children. I'm learning more about houses (thanks to lots of HGTV) and one detail that floored me was that this home is not 5,000 square feet or 10,000 square feet, but 36,000 square feet. The tour guide—who also led the Fitzgerald tour I took!—did a delightful job of blending architectural details with stories about how the family used each space. The 75-minute tour surveyed all three floors plus the basement, though there are additional tours that take different angles (such as the Nooks and Crannies tour offered in the summers, which sounds great). Our group of six or seven also paused toward the end for a short video, played in the Hill boys' schoolroom, that provided some context about James J. Hill's work.

I didn't expect this, but knowing I could (and likely will) drop by sometime soon for another tour left me feeling more relaxed. Instead of trying to absorb every tidbit our tour guide told us, I'd think more about a story she had mentioned, imagine the house back in the 1890s, and notice more details that piqued my interest.

And, oh, the details were plentiful:

The end of the tour brought our group to one of the mansion's several porches. I have a soft spot in my heart for porches and I liked wrapping up the tour by visiting one of them.

If you can't already tell, I enjoyed the James J. Hill House tour greatly and highly recommend it. I loved learning some of the stories and history behind a Summit Avenue landmark I've passed by so many times.

Marvelous Monday: Week 11

I hit "publish" too soon on Saturday's post about bubbly ice! Look what I saw on Sunday's run:

Okay, let's start off the week with five tidbits for Marvelous Monday:

1) I tried a new recipe last night for Thai chicken curry, with red curry paste instead of yellow because I had a jar already in my cupboard. Thumbs up from me, especially with cilantro on top. (I didn't buy basil but I think the combination would be pretty good.) I think this is the first time I've actually trusted the chicken to cook during the simmer instead of cooking it separately and adding it in later, and that made everything a lot easier!

2) Josh and I have a list of about eight household chores that we try to do weekly, which means that everything usually happens on Sunday. Josh was out of town over the weekend, so we did most of them on Friday instead, and it was fun to enjoy a clean(er) house all weekend instead of just starting the week with one.

3) Last week's purple tulips are hanging around!

4) Reading: F. Scott Fitzgerald's This Side of Paradise. Fitzgerald wrote his debut novel in St. Paul and I heard a lot about it on the walking tour I took awhile back, so it's fun to read it with some context from Fitzgerald's own life in St. Paul. (Also, remembering that tour reminds me that spring and summer bring more neighborhood walking tours, and I need to do some research.)

5) I'm signing up for a 25K trail race with Molly and am very excited about working back up to a longer distance and running in a new-to-me trail system next month.

And I'm still thinking about my D.C. friends as they wait for their baby. Soon!

Hope your week is starting out in a marvelous way!

Night at the museum

To the museum we go! It's date night!

I'd been eyeing a couple of Minnesota History Center exhibits for ages and noticed recently that admission is free after 5 p.m. on Tuesday evenings. (Tonight's visit - spoiler alert! - sealed the deal that I simply must just  buy a Minnesota Historical Society membership because I want to support the good work that they do and also visit the History Center anytime.)

The big exhibit right now is called Then Now Wow and pulls together the "wow" moments that define Minnesota's history.

I had been a little uncertain of what to expect because the exhibit is billed as kid-friendly, but it really is just appropriate for everybody. It was, at a minimum, a great overview of what shaped Minnesota for both visitors and longtime residents. There are eras and events in this state's history covered that are challenging to process for people of any age, so in a way, I actually appreciated seeing them presented in a narrative that a wide range of ages could take in.

Anyway, there aren't enough adjectives for how fascinating I found the exhibit, both in terms of the content and how it was assembled. The whole experience is about as far away from the stereotypical quiet museum as you can imagine. It's multisensory and multilayered and interactive and brilliantly creative in conveying an enormous range of Minnesota experiences, people and events in one project. The level of detail is incredible. I was so impressed.

We both learned a lot. Josh gives a thumbs up to Minnesota:

And then we stumbled across a nearby exhibit that was all about Minnesota weather, and the whole visit got even better. Weather!

WEATHER PERMITTING!

Friends, I highly recommend a trip over to the History Center. I'll be back soon, hopefully with a membership card in my hand, because I need to see two more exhibits: Minnesota's Greatest Generation and The U.S.-Dakota War of 1862. (And maybe go back for another peek at the weather one, too.)

This Side of Paradise: A Summit Hill tour

Another neighborhood tour! Can you believe it?!

Recently I read in the newspaper that the Minnesota Historical Society was hosting tours of the Summit Hill neighborhood where F. Scott Fitzgerald grew up in honor of the writer's Sept. 24 birthday. This is the same organization that coordinated the walking tour Nat and I attended back in July, which we both thoroughly enjoyed. I clipped the event listing enthusiastically, posted it on my fridge, begged Natty to come back to Minnesota for the tour (my plea didn't work) and called that week to reserve my place!

(Can you tell, Reader, that there's absolutely no neutrality here? In the last year or so, I've figured out that I simply adore tours - and really, it's no surprise, because the idea fits so nicely with what Miles and Laurel is all about. I love walking around a neighborhood with an expert who tell me all kinds of things about the layers of history behind each place. Some bloggers want to get sponsored by companies that sell running gear or beauty projects or food or whatever. Can I figure out a way to get sponsored by historical societies and then just go on every tour in Minnesota?)

The tour started at the Commodore, a building near the intersection of Western and Summit. There were four tour times available for the weekend, and about 20-25 people had signed up for the early afternoon time slot. We split into two groups and got started.

Scott and his wife, Zelda, lived in the Commodore after being evicted from their White Bear Lake residences because of their raucous parties. Our guide said that his income spiked to coincide with the Jazz Age - a term that Wikipedia says Scott actually coined himself - and Scott and Zelda really lived it up during that era, including a great year in New York. (If the tour had been longer, I would've loved some more elaboration on that year!)

What I didn't realize before the tour was how many places in St. Paul connect to Fitzgerald, his family and his friends. Why is that, you ask? Well, Scott's maternal grandmother invested in real estate and had property around the area, his parents moved frequently, and he also simply just had a fab social life. He was born in St. Paul and left several times for reasons like boarding school, but St. Paul was a nostalgic place for him: after all, he brought Zelda back to St. Paul so their baby could be born here.

The tour was full of stories about how he spent his years in St. Paul, from attending dancing school before he was a teenager in the space on Grand Avenue now occupied by Ramaley Liquors to hanging out with friends on a porch that I run by often.

Here's our guide elaborating on those topics in front of one of his old girlfriend's houses:

Even though the tour covered some of the same ground from the neighborhood walking tour I took with Natty, I was surprised how little content was duplicated. I don't think the other one, for example, mentioned author Sinclair Lewis's former house!

My favorite stop was a building a few steps away from Summit and Dale. He had been away - in New York, I think - and moved back to Minnesota to live with his parents after a bad period of rejection, both personally and professionally. He told everyone he was ready to write a novel, and it sounds like his friends and family essentially smiled and nodded gently in response. He buckled down and wrote all summer in the third floor of their home, posting chapters on the walls, and soon got a letter that This Side of Paradise had been accepted for publication. Take that!

We also walked past some of the schools in the neighborhood, including the early campus of St. Paul Academy - again, close to Summit and Dale. (Excuse the power lines in the photo. Oops.)

I loved this part of the tour, too, because even though Scott was several years older than Coco from Through No Fault of My Own (the book I just read about a girl growing up on Summit during the Jazz Age) the tour connected some of the places Coco references in her diary entries. It felt like puzzle pieces fitting together right in front of me.

It was also fascinating because of what happened to the Summit Hill neighborhood after the Jazz Age hey-day. The whole neighborhood fell into terrible disrepair for many years - in fact, as one person on our tour told our guide, his parents basically called the streets we were walking through off-limits to him growing up because of the crime rate.

It's hard to get my mind around that idea, because today's Summit Hill houses are by and large beautifully restored. Beginning in the 1970s, an era of urban renewal began, and people began investing in the neighborhood again and restoring its houses. Before that time, our guide told us, even some of the houses with Fitzgerald connections could be bought for next-to-nothing, including the place where he wrote This Side of Paradise. I need to learn more about this era in St. Paul's history.

And maybe that's the mark, Reader, of a really good tour: one that simultaneously gives a lot of answers and begs more questions to dig into down the road. Tell me: What's the best tour you've ever taken, and why was it so good?

Local history

On Sunday morning, after Natty and I woke up and helped Wish and her pup forge a friendship, we were talking about what we should do that day. We talked about going for a walk, maybe checking out a yoga class or heading over to the Chain of Lakes in Minneapolis. "There is one more thing," I told her hesitantly. "There are these neighborhood architectural tours on Summit Avenue...and I've never been on one but always read about them...and I don't know if you're interested, but..."

Well, I should have known. This is the girl who loved our hummingbird class in March as much as I did, after all. Peas in a pod. She was in for the tour!

After Highland Fest, we lugged our lemonades (cherry for me, lime for Nat) over to the James J. Hill House in St. Paul's Cathedral Hill neighborhood. Tickets for this walking tour are $10 for adults - and let me make a long story short, it's worth every penny. We waited outside for a couple of minutes with about 25 other people, a crowd that eventually split into two tours.

At 2:00, our guides came outside and started the introduction.

The Hill House belonged to James J. Hill, the founder of the Great Northern Railway. It was built in the late 1800s, and many of the homes in the area were built in the Gilded Age (around then or just afterward). This has always been a fascinating era to me.

We learned all about the architectural styles of the street's homes. For a lot of the structures, our guide passed around photos of what the houses used to look like. Apparently the Queen Anne look, which I loved and Natty didn't, went out of style in a major way a little farther into the 1900s, and a lot of owners scrubbed their homes free of Queen Anne style and totally remodeled their homes.

Summit Avenue is the longest stretch of restored Victorian homes in the country, and because of the wide sidewalks, picturesque views and neat measurements (the stoplights are almost all exactly one-half mile apart!), the street is very popular with local runners, walkers and cyclists.

You get the idea:

The last several miles of the Twin Cities Marathon course go up Summit, too. The funny thing, though, is how much I've missed in the hundreds or even thousands of times I've run, walked or biked on various sections of Summit. I'm talking about the layers and layers of history that line this street, of course, but I'm also just talking about the physical, tangible parts of the street.

I was practically dumbstruck, for example, by this door frame:

And this railing!

And these windows:

If you love learning new words, this is also a good tour. You know that category of words you've read and read but are surprised when you hear someone say them? (Think epitome or posthumous. Do you have a favorite example?) Anyway, I always pronounced cupola in my head as kuhp-OH-lah. Our guide pointed out a nice KEW-pew-luh and I whispered, "Wow." Cupola.

The second new word - well, besides all of the architectural styles I couldn't have told you one thing about before this tour - is quoin, an architectural term to describe mostly decorative cornerstone (kind of like trim) on brick structures. It's pronounced the same as coin, by the way. Our guide introduced this term by saying, "As soon as you identify this, you'll see it everywhere" and my ears perked up. I love stuff like that - and of course, she was totally right.

(I should stop here and note that our guide was just wonderful. She kept the tour moving along but dished just the right amount of facts and juicy tidbits and still had time to entertain our questions. The whole thing was absolutely fascinating, even with the heat and humidity that accompanied the 90-minute tour.)

Anyway, these houses are magnificent, in part because each house finds a balance between the big picture and the small details.  Like this...

...tucked into something like this:

But what, you ask, was my favorite, favorite building? That was easy. It's tucked away on another side street on which I've never stepped. It's one of several places in the neighborhood where F. Scott Fitzgerald lived  - here, I think, with his grandmother. I also heard on the tour that he and Zelda used to attend dances on the rooftop of the Commodore Hotel, not too far away. I would like to go on a 1920s tour next.

I love the red stone.

Whether you live in St. Paul or are visiting from anywhere else in the world, I highly, highly recommend this tour. I ran on Summit by myself yesterday, and my perspective felt completely different. I noticed so many new things - quoins and all - and now I know a little bit more about the people whose feet have touched these sidewalks before me.

This tour will be hard to top, but I'm going to track down some more around town. Any ideas?

Exploring the Mill City

Here at Miles and Laurel, Tuesday brings a recap of my family's field trip over the weekend to the Mill City Museum in Minneapolis.

First, it's important to outline how this field trip took shape. We had been throwing around the idea of the museum ever since my dad went there and recommended it highly for a family field trip.  Then, one day, I went into yoga class and came out an hour later to find, like, 600 texts on my cell phone.  The entire event had been settled via text.  Who are you, and what have you done with my family!?

What's even more extraordinary: this all happened, like, 72 hours before our field trip. It appeared that a free block of time had magically floated onto six adults' schedules on Sunday afternoon.

Josh and I hosted brunch at our place first, to celebrate my mom's upcoming birthday and kick off the festivities, and then we all went over to the museum.

Here it is!!
 

I'd like to host a caption contest for this next photo. My best guess is that my sister is blissfully dreaming about what the museum might have in store for us. (I also think, in the background, that Josh is pounding the parking meter, which was being difficult.)

The museum is in the city's warehouse district has loads of beautiful historic buildings that have been restored and renovated into condos and lofts. I love the big windows and the stone.  I would definitely love to have those windows, so I like to look at the buildings, and sometimes I like to take pictures of them. 

Until Josh reminds me that I am essentially taking photos into peoples' homes.

I have definitely posted pictures on M&L of the Washburn A Mill, which forms the back side of the museum, because I think it's one of the most striking views I see on a run along the Mississippi Riverfront.  But I never really knew anything about it!

You are used to seeing it from this vantage point, taken from the river road by the Stone Arch Bridge:

What do you think the view looks like from way up there, on the eighth floor?

I'll show you!  (Cue sighs of relief.)

That view is courtesy of one of my favorite parts of our trip to museum: the Flour Tower, a multimedia elevator tour to the eighth floor that took about 15 minutes. It was beautifully done snapshot of the mill's history. The elevator would stop intermittently at different floors, and the doors would open to show various scenes from around the mill. Sometimes footage or audio interviews about working in the mill would play. I learned a ton during the Flour Tower.

I should back up! Minneapolis, as I mentioned earlier this month, was known as the Flour Milling Capital of the World for about 50 years around the turn of the 20th century because of the milling industry, thanks to the water power generated by the nearby Mississippi River. The city's population grew exponentially during that time, but after World War I, the use of electricity became more widespread and applicable in mills and factories, and the river's proximity wasn't so special anymore. The Washburn A Mill, which is where the museum is today, closed in 1965 and nearly wrecked by fire in 1991. (I definitely didn't know that the mill's ruins were caused by such a recent fire.) Later, we went into another room and watched a 19-minute video about the history of Minneapolis, narrated by local playwright Kevin Kling. That was fabulous, too. Every Minnesotan should visit this place.

There are big, big views on the eighth floor (see my mom doing her best ape impression below) and it looks down on the skeleton of the mill, now part of the museum's event space. There are large windows and lots of brick above ground, and in the lower levels, there are loads of exhibits about the river, the history of the people who settled there, food, flour, baking, milling, and water power. There's also a wonderful gift shop.

Okay, here are some more pictures of the things I just described:

I definitely don't remember the last time my family and I went to a museum together, let alone one that none of us (except for my dad) had ever visited. And let alone one that focused on such an integral part of the history of the urban area I call my home. Like the Desert Museum in Tucson, this struck the jackpot of being appealing for all kinds of audiences: families, all ages, solo travelers, and so on.  That's the mark of a fantastic museum.

My family loves our birthday celebrations and dinners, but over the last year or so, we've started striving to go on more adventures together.  (Kayaking and bowling - check!) You may also recall (actually, you probably won't, unless you've memorized my list, which would be odd) that this field trip fell into two 101 in 1,001 list items:

• #65 Do a new activity with my family
•  #39 Go to three new-to-me museums

After we left the museum, my dad mentioned that I must have checked at least one item off my list that day, and I said I actually had covered two but had to decide which one to count it toward. (My family advocated for checking off both!  Non!  Guys, we have until Sept. 28, 2014!)

I decided that I enjoy my family's newfound adventurous spirit so much that I have faith we'll find another field trip before the 1,001 days are done (and hopefully more than one!). Thus, let the Google document show: I have visited a new-to-me museum!
Kudos to my dad for this great idea. You must check this place out!

P.S. Does your family have any adventures that we could try? Anything you'd love to do with your family but haven't had the chance yet?  Comment away!