Archive for December, 2010|Monthly archive page
The Case For Horace Cleveland’s Name on a River Gorge Park
Filed under: Landscape Architects, Minneapolis Park Names, Minneapolis Parks: General | Tags: H. W. S. Cleveland, Horace Cleveland, Minneapolis parks, Mississippi River
Comments (8) “A continuous park…of such picturesque character as no art could create and no other city can possess.”
That is how Horace Cleveland described the park he imagined along the boulevard he recommended for the west bank of the Mississippi River in Minneapolis. He went on to write in his Suggestions for a System of Parks and Parkways for the City of Minneapolis, which he presented to the first Minneapolis park board on June 2, 1883:
“The Mississippi River is not only the grand natural feature which gives character to your city and constitutes the main spring of prosperity, but it is the object of vital interest and center of attraction to intelligent visitors from every quarter of the globe, who associate such ideas of grandeur with its name as no human creation can excite. It is due therefore, to the sentiments of the civilized world, and equally in recognition of your own sense of the blessings it confers upon you, that it should be placed in a setting worthy of so priceless a jewel.”
Horace Cleveland had a special passion for the Mississippi River gorge. The banks of the river remain a beautiful and wild place thanks, in part, to his constant encouragement over nearly three decades for Minneapolis (St. Paul, too) to acquire the river banks downstream from St Anthony Falls to preserve them from ruin.
This photo of West River Parkway in about 1910 shows how wild the river banks were. The ruggged, wild banks of the river gorge, the only such place on the entire length of the Mississippi River, remain as beautiful today as during Horace Cleveland’s lifetime. (Hennepin County Public Library, Minneapolis Collection, M0129)
The park board finally acquired all the land along the west side of the gorge downriver from Riverside Park to Minnehaha Creek in 1902, more than a year after Cleveland’s death. Cleveland once said that he would feel that he “had not lived in vain” if the city would preserve the river bank in its natural state.
Cleveland wrote of the river banks:
“No artist who has any appreciation of natural beauty would presume to do more than touch with reverent hands the features whose charms suggest their own development. No plan for such work could be made.”
Cleveland not only appreciated the beauty of the river, but he foresaw that the cities of St. Paul and Minneapolis would one day grow together. In his mind that probability made it even more important that the cities preserve some wild, natural places along the river that ran between them.
We should name a river gorge park for Cleveland just as a tribute to his descriptive powers, even if he hadn’t suggested, recommended, planned, cajoled, informed and educated a generation or two of the city’s leaders on land preservation and city building.
I believe the only name ever given to the land along the river was Mississippi Park. A bit plain. Winchell Trail and West River Parkway run through it, and those names can remain. It would cause no one any discomfort to officially name the rest of the west gorge for Cleveland. It’s not like renaming a street, which causes people to have to change their addresses and the city to put up new road signs. It’s just putting a name on a space that essentially has none now.
A marker or two along Winchell Trail and the parkway would suffice to let people know Horace Cleveland’s name. That couldn’t cost much. I’ll put up the first hundred bucks.
Horace Cleveland River Gorge Park. He’s why we have it, so let’s put his name on it. I think we owe him that.
David C. Smith
© David C. Smith
William Watts Folwell: Show them in their best days
Filed under: Minneapolis Parks: General | Tags: William Watts Folwell
Leave a comment William Watts Folwell was an accomplished man: Union Army engineer, first president of the University of Minnesota, Minneapolis park commissioner for 18 years, author of a four-volume history of Minnesota. The list goes on and on. Not least, he is one of my heroes.
Many photographs of Folwell exist, including some posted on this site, but today I will follow Folwell’s advice. In 1911, when Folwell was 78, he wrote to Minnesota Historical Society President Warren Upham:
“Let me make a suggestion in regard to portraits of men in all your publications. Don’t print “old man pictures,” but show the men as they were in their best days if possible. The likeness of General Sibley in General Baker’s book is atrocious. Sibley was a splendid figure in his prime, and ought so to be remembered.”
(Wiliam Watts Folwell: Autobiography and Letters of a Pioneer of Culture, Ed. Solon J. Buck. Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press, 1933)
So here is William Watts Folwell dressed for his wedding to Sarah Heywood when he was 30 in 1863. At the time he was an enlisted engineer in the Union Army. While it appears from his shoulder patch here that he was a captain at the time, he attained the rank of lieutenant colonel, the highest possible for an enlisted man, and commanded an engineering company of 450 men in several important Civil War battles. Folwell was hired as the first president of the University of Minnesota six years after he was married.
William Watts Folwell photographed in his Union Army uniform for his wedding in 1863 to Sarah Heywood. (Powelson, Minnesota Historical Society)
David C. Smith
Horace Cleveland River Gorge Park: We need the man’s name on our map
Filed under: Landscape Architects, Minneapolis Park Names, Minneapolis Parks: General | Tags: H.W.S. Cleveland, Horace Cleveland
Comments (4) Folwell Junior High School is no longer, but we still have Folwell Park in north Minneapolis and Folwell Hall at the University of Minnesota. The building at the university won’t last forever, but the park should, so people will have reason to remember William Watts Folwell even if they never see scribblings such as this or City of Parks. Many other heroes of our park development are remembered in park names, too: Loring, Berry, Morrison, King, Beard, Wirth, Gross, Bossen, Armatage.
Not so for Horace William Shaler Cleveland who played such an important role in the creation of the Minneapolis park system. His name is nowhere in this city. While I’m quoting Folwell today, there’s this from the close of his President’s Address in the 1895 annual report of the Minneapois Board of Park Commissioners:
“Although still in the land of the living, no further service can be expected of Mr. H. W. S. Cleveland, disabled as he is by the infirmities incident to his advanced age. Our city may count itself fortunate to have had his assistance in the original development of plark plans, and in the later execution of them in part. In some proper way his name should be perpetuated in connection with our park system.”
That is as true today as it was 115 years ago. We need Horace Cleveland’s name on Minneapolis maps.
My recommendation: everything between West River Parkway and the Mississippi River, from the mouth of Minnehaha Creek to Riverside Park, should become “Horace Cleveland River Gorge Park.” He loved most of all the river gorge and never stopped fighting for its acquisition as parkland, something that wasn’t accomplished until after his death. The west river bank is really known only as that; it doesn’t have a real name anyway. So why not put Cleveland’s name on it? No one has to call it that, I don’t care, just print it on the map so people don’t forget. It seems a little thing to do for a man who did so much for you and me.
I’m looking at you, park commissioners.
Horace Cleveland proposed this system of parks and parkways in 1883. I think it merits his name on a bit of the park system he suggested. (Minneapolis Park and Recreation Board)
David C. Smith
Sibley Field
Filed under: Minneapolis Parks: General | Tags: Minneapolis parks, Sibley Field
Comments (23) One of the most heavily used playgrounds in Minneapolis for a few decades was Sibley Field at 39th and Longfellow in south Minneapolis. Now, thanks to the efforts of Annie Olson who worked at Sibley Field for several years, we have found some historic photos of activities at Sibley Field.
One of my favorites is this hockey team wearing Cloggy’s sweaters.
Cloggy’s 1952 hockey team at Sibley Field (Minneapolis Park and Recreation Board). ** Please see the comments by Ron Jelmo below on this photo.
In more recent times, Cloggy’s was a bar at 34th and 54th, but that’s quite a distance from Sibley Field. Not exactly a neighborhood bar. The photo provides no identification of the players or coaches. Does anyone know the story of this Cloggy’s team or Cloggy’s sponsorship of teams in general?
Sibley Field cub hockey team, 1961 (Minneapolis Park and Recreation Board)
Another group of unidentified players is this 1961 cub hockey team? Anybody know any of these kids?
Another picture that I found interesting is this one of unnamed staff or volunteers at Sibley Field. The year is also unknown, although I’m guessing early 1960s.
Sibley Park staff or volunteers, year unknown. (Minneapolis Park and Recreation Board)
I like this photo because of the “BPC” on the t-shirts. BPC was the acronym for Board of Park Commissioners, the official name of the Minneapolis park board until it was changed in 1969 to Minneapolis Park and Recreation Board. The new name was intended to emphasize the significant responsibilities of the park board for recreation programs — something that didn’t exist when the BPC was created in 1883. I presume they are standing in front of the recreation center that was built in 1924 and stood until the current rec center was built in 1971. Can anyone identify the people in this picture and whether they were BPC employees or Sibley Field volunteers? Interesting composition in front of the men’s room.
Sibley Field was one of the most active parks in Minneapolis from 1946 when it was one of only five city parks that offered year-round programming. The other four year-round parks were Folwell, Nicollet (King), Logan and Loring; North Commons was added to that group in 1956.
Women’s craft class at Sibley Park in 1961. (Minneapolis Park and Recreation Board)
This series of photos (stapled together) suggests the wide range of activities offered — and groups served — at the park. Two years after this photo was taken Sibley Field became one of nine recreation centers in Minneapolis to offer programs for senior citizens, too. The seniors met one morning a week at the park. The program was modeled after a similar program that had first been tried at Loring Park in 1960.
A search of old Minneapolis Morning Tribunes reveals that the Cedar Avenue Heights neighborhood (the park was originally Cedar Avenue Heights Field) began to be developed in 1909-1910. Newspapers also reveal that petitions for a park in Cedar Avenue Heights, which the park board received in September, 1921, followed the creation of a neighborhood improvement association in March of that year (Minneapolis Morning Tribune, March 28, 1921). The Tribune reported that the neighborhood improvement association was founded primarily to promote the creation of a double track on the street car line on Cedar Avenue from Lake Street to 42nd Street and an extension of the line south of 42nd. (Park commissioners also appeared at the City Council to advocate extending the Cedar Avenue car line to serve the new bath house at Lake Nokomis.) The paper also speculated that day that the association would also support the construction of a new Nokomis High School, which was eventually named Roosevelt High School.
The impetus for the formation of the Cedar Heights Improvement Association in March, 1921 was almost certainly the opening of the new Miles Standish school in January of that year. The school quickly became the center of the community. The Tribune reported that 900 people attended the first meeting of the neighborhood improvement association at the school.
The new Miles Standish School facing what is now Standish Avenue at 40th Street in 1922. The school was significantly enlarged in 1923, just two years after it was built. (Minneapolis Public Schools)
Cedar Avenue Heights Field was not the first playing field in the neighborhood. Tribune articles about amateur baseball in 1909 refer to a baseball field — the home field of the Prince Realty team — at Cedar and 42nd Street. I’ve never seen a picture of that field. If you have, let me know where I can find one.
David C. Smith
Minneapolis Park Memory: Meetings with Grandpa
Filed under: Minneapolis Park Memory | Tags: Francis A. Gross, Minnehaha Park, Theodore Wirth, William Lohff
Leave a comment I feel so fortunate having our parks in Minneapolis. My late husband, Bob, used to tell how his mother saved her coins until she could buy a toboggan for the family to use in Minnehaha Park. I have used the tennis courts at Nokomis.
My family has a personal interest in the park system, as my grandfather, William Lohff, was on the park board with Francis Gross and others. I remember Theodore Wirth and Gross meeting with Grandpa at his home in south Minneapolis. They had a hard time convincing people that the parks and lakes should be for all the people and not allow park land to be sold. We have all benefitted from those decisions.
Mary Thompson
Minneapolis Park Memory: The Park In My Back Yard
It’s the smell of wet wool socks against a hot stove that I remember. Skating at Pearl Park in the late 1950s. I grew up two blocks from Pearl Park — a lovely open space that the Park Board created out of a swamp. My dad, bless his heart, created a skating rink in our back yard, going out (in his business suit before heading off to work in the morning at General Mills) with a hose to flood the little rink banked with snow. But our little ice sheet was tiny — the rink at Pearl was big, and full of lively skaters from all over the neighborhood. Flood lights lit the place up in the dark of winter nights, and seeing sparks of snow drift through those lights while we skated around (and fell, whump, hard on the ice, jittering bones) was heavenly. And then, when you were cold to the core, ankles turned to clammy oatmeal, you clumped up the blade-scored stairs into the wooden warming house, a dark cave-like enclosure where the community center now stands on the south end of the park. And it was warm and it was close and I remember it as dark and kids were laughing and maybe there was a little counter where you could get candy bars and hot chocolate, but the real center of the place was the stove, with a railing of metal pipes around it so you didn’t get too close and burn your feet. Off came the skates — dark brown leather, yellow laces about a mile long, we got them at the skate exchange at Nicollet Hardware, run by a neighbor, Mr. Larson.
And when the skates came off — always a tough pull, because by that time everything was wet and sticky — you’d put your wet-sock feet up against the railing and I swear you could see the steam rise off the ice blocks formerly known as feet. I remember the smell of heat — don’t recall if the stove was wood- or coal-burning or something else — but the scent was warm and enveloping and as comforting as a mom-made hotdish.
Pearl, as any park, was a neighborhood center. In summer we’d go down there and play whiffle ball in the tennis courts, trying to whack homeruns over the fence as we imagined ourselves batting cleanup for the Twins. In those days in South Minneapolis, mothers weren’t concerned about their kids roaming in the evening several blocks from home, to go to the park, to pick up a friend at his house, to wander around and see what was up. Park Board baseball teams crowded the diamonds. I remember being sent in as a pinch hitter for my older brother’s team when one of their players had to go home early. I was three years younger than all the other players, skinny and weak. My brother said “Just go up there in a crouch, you’re short and the guy will walk you.” I did that — and the pitcher fired a ball so fast I never saw it but I felt it burn across the tops of both thighs. I got my base, and my baseball career started and ended right there. Fastballs — who knew? I played Park Board football at Pearl one year — something my wife can’t believe, as I’m so not a football type. But we had a wonderful coach nicknamed “Sparky” who was inspirational. He was a vitamin salesman and had a trunk full of Flintstone vitamins — we were doping before it was cool. Also in his trunk were little gilded dog bones that said “Hero” on them, some sort of sales reward, I’d guess, and he would hand those out after the game to almost everyone. I earned one by putting my arm out to try to block a kid twice my size in one game, also earning a greenstick fracture of my arm. And my football career was over. Back to whiffle ball.
Pearl Park also claimed the spleen of a friend of mine. We were sliding down the hill from Hampshire Drive toward the tennis courts one winter afternoon, our sleds whipping over the snow. And my friend Jay met an immovable pole at the bottom of the hill, smashing his body and requiring an operation. No Olympic luge in his, or our, futures.
But those skating nights, hundreds of them, were part of my growing up. I can hear the “slish slish” of skateblades still, as I type this in Florida, where I now live, seeing from afar yet another December snowfall drop on Minneapolis.
By the late 1960s I had pretty much left skating behind as I headed into high school. But the Minneapolis park system was part of my life, every day. We lived a couple of blocks off of Minnehaha Creek, and most of my friends’ houses were located up or down Minnehaha Parkway from my house. The bike paths along the creek were my highway. And Lake Harriet was where friends and I would get away from family and school, walking around the lake, sitting in trees, mooning about, a peaceful place to let the tempests of the Sixties and of crazy high-school years pass over. The parkway and the lakes were Minneapolis to me — my back yard, my retreat. For my first marriage, my wife and I had our invitation photo taken as we stood on stepping stones in the Creek by the Parkway at 50th Street.
The wisdom of the people — their stories told so well in Dave Smith’s book — who saw into the future and set aside park land for everyone to enjoy, and truly live in, is amazing. And the current stewards of the parks are just as dedicated and doing something just as crucial to life in Minneapolis as they try, with scant resources, to maintain and expand our parks to serve more future generations.
I don’t miss the snow as I see it on television from Florida, where we just moved months ago. But I cherish the memories of Pearl Park and all the Minneapolis parks — they are part of what formed my views of environmentalism and urban design and just being alive and open to the world.
Bruce Benidt, Port Richey, Florida
Editor: Thanks, Bruce. Distant, but still here — and forever eloquent.
Go Botts: Bottineau Athletic Club dominated Minneapolis park board sports for a decade
Filed under: Minneapolis parks | Tags: Bottineau Field, Marshall Terrace
Comments (2) The young men on the east side of the Mississippi River in northern Minneapolis didn’t need much incentive to become a powerhouse in Minneapolis sports. They just needed a field, and the name it gave them.
Bottineau Field in Northeast Minneapolis was purchased by the park board in 1915 to be a recreation park. Fields and a temporary shelter were laid out the next year. Although a more substantial recreation center or field house was recommended for the neighborhood, it wouldn’t get more than the wood frame warming house for 40 years. But that didn’t matter to a talented group of young athletes and their persistent manager, Charlie Cells. From the time the park was open for business in 1917 through 1926 a core group of athletes grew up together—and won a few trophies along the way. The Bottineau Athletic Club, popularly called the “Botts,” won eight park board football championships and ten more citywide titles in baseball, basketball, volleyball and diamondball. The same group of kids, then young men, played everything.
Bottineaus, Minneapolis diamondball champs, 1926, one of their last championships together. Front row (l-r): Carl Pearson, Tubby Burns, Haloran, George Besnah, Zig Bishop. Back row: Charlie Cells, Mgr., Pat Long, Boney Selinsky, Bloom Brothers, Swede Wilson. Manager Charlie Cells kept the scrapbook from which all of the “Bottineaus” pictures were copied. (Minneapolis Park and Recreation Board)
In addition to their Minneapolis championships, the Botts travelled the state to play the best basketball teams they could find and made it as far as the semi-finals of the Minnesota amateur baseball tournament in 1925.
This information is preserved in a scrapbook, “Bottineau ‘Cuts’ in Sports, Chas. A. Cells,” which comprises mostly newspaper clippings from 1925 and 1926. Most of the clippings are undated and appear to come from the Minneapolis Daily Star and Minneapolis Journal, although it is clear that some coverage of games played outside of Minneapolis, such as in Dawson and Ortonville, Minn., came from papers in those localities.
The highlight of the scrapbook and clippings is newspaper coverage of the battle for football supremacy in Minneapolis between the Botts and their nemesis from 1924-1926. Their rivals were also their neighbors, the Marshall Terrace team just up river. The Bottineaus and the Terraces, as newspapers called them, battled for the city title in all three of those years. The photo in City of Parks of a football game at Bottineau Field was of the city championship game between Bottineau and Marshall Terrace in 1926. The Minneapolis Journal estimated the crowd at 5,000.
In the biggest game of the 1926 park league season perennial powerhouses Bottineau and Marshall Terrace played at Bottineau Field in front of a crowd estimated by the Minneapolis Journal at 5,000. The Botts defeated the Terraces on a 55-yard punt return by Charles Samek. (City of Parks, Minneapolis Journal, Minnesota Historical Society)
A similar crowd had witnessed the championship at The Parade a year earlier when special bleachers had to be erected for the big crowd.
Bottineau football players, 1925. Mike Vanusek (guard), Chuck Samek (full), the hero of the 1926 game, and Walter Sienka (tackle). The building behind Samek is the Bottineau Field shelter that served the park 1916-1956. The original shelter did not have bathrooms. The park board moved two toilets from Loring Park to Bottineau in 1918. There is no record that indoor plumbing was added to this shelter before it was replaced in 1956. Does anyone remember toilets at the old Bottineau Field shelter? (Minneapolis Park and Recreation Board)
Bottineau football players, 1925. Winthrop Horan (tackle), Ade Johnson (end), Cowboy Bies (guard). I like the cars in the background. (Minneapolis Park and Recreation Board)
The Botts began in the junior division, but the players grew into the senior division winning consistently along the way. During the mid-1920s the Botts played a series of games against Gustavus Adolphus college from St. Peter. In 1924 the Botts prevailed 6-0 thanks to a blocked punt recovered for a touchdown. The scrap book contains one imposing image of a “giant” that played for Gustavus: Henry Goecken from South Dakota stood an amazing 6′ 4″ and weighed 198 pounds.
One reason for the Botts success over the years appears to be that they had at least one elite athlete: George Besnah.
George Besnah was apparently the superstar of the Botts. He was the captain of the football team and a superb basketball player who played for a Chicago team in an early professional league. (Minneapolis Park and Recreation Board)
Newspaper clippings tell of Botts’ games in Mora, Sauk Center, Howard Lake, Dawson, Ortonville, Madison and Benson, and include requests for teams from Duluth, Redwood Falls and other towns to call Charles Cells to schedule games. One of those road games, presumably in Ortonville, prompted a reporter to write that the Botts had put on a “great exhibition of the court game.” The reporter went on to write:
But there was one player—George Besnah—who was the “cream of the lot” and his playing of the floor and his ability to dribble was well worth the price of admission. His play was a revelation, even more because he was not “out there” trying to make all the points himself, but to the contrary made fine use of his ability to pass to a teammate when such a play put his mate at better advantage.
Toward the back of Charlie Cells scrapbook, were a couple undated clips about George Besnah. The first one reported that Besnah, who had been playing for the Hopkins Independents, was in Chicago for a tryout with the Chicago Bruins in the American Professional League. The report continued that Besnah would be replaced on the Hopkins team by Joe Hutton and Fat Nordly, former Carleton College stars. (If you know Minnesota basketball, you know where this is going.)
Another clip delivered the news that Besnah had signed a contract to play with the Chicago Maroons of the National professional league. He was reported to have signed for $50 a game, a handsome sum, and would get into a Maroon uniform immediately. (There were two teams named the Chicago Maroons that I can find: one, was the University of Chicago, of Jay Berwanger and Amos Alonzo Stagg fame in football and the university team didn’t likely pay players (at least not that much!) ; and two, a team named the Chicago Maroons did play professionally, but it was a team of black players from Chicago. So I’m not sure exactly who Besnah signed with.)
Back to Besnah’s replacements on the Hopkins Independents. Joe Hutton went on to become the most successful basketball coach in Minnesota history in 35 years coaching at Hamline University. He won three national championships in the smaller college division, but Hamline played a high-level national schedule including games against NCAA champion City College of New York in Madison Square Garden and George Mikan’s DePaul team at Chicago Stadium. At one time seven of Hutton’s Hamline players were in the NBA, including Vern Mikkelsen, an NBA Hall of Fame player. Hutton was offered the job of coaching the Minneapolis Lakers, but chose to remain at Hamline.
(As a sophomore at Hamline I was looking for part-time work and was sent by the financial aid office to a house across Snelling Avenue from the university that needed painting. I was surprised to find that it was the home of Joe Hutton, who had retired as Hamline’s coach six years earlier. He wanted to hire a student to do his painting. While I painted, he told me basketball stories. He had recognized me from my freshman season playing basketball for Hamline; he still attended all the home games. I wish I had written down those stories.)
The other former Carleton star who was reported to replace Besnah on the Hopkins team was Carl Nordly who later became a professor and basketball coach at the University of Minnesota.
When the Botts finally decided to disband after the 1926 football season, Cells put a clip in the scrapbook that must have given him great pleasure. “Charles Cells, manager of the Bottineau Athletic Club,” the newspaper reported, “has been with the aggregation for many years and much of the credit for the splendid record of this group can be laid to Mr. Cells active interest and unselfish effort in bringing the organization to the highest point of perfection.”
Cells’ management of the club must have included fundraising, because in a clip about an appreciation dinner after one championship season, Cells thanked the businessmen of the East side for their support. Among the businesses he acknowledged were R. F. Bertch Furniture, Kozlak Bros. furniture dealers, Northeast Bakery, Bottineau Billiard Parlor, Hygienic Artificial Ice Co., Joe Schmidt Meat Co., Super Bros. drugs, Mergen’s Department store, East Side Bakery and Webster McDonald of McDonald Bros. (Another clip mentioned that one of the Botts trophies was on display at Mergen’s.)
Cells’ contribution to the Botts has now extended well beyond managing their varied teams: he left behind a scrapbook which gives us a glimpse of the exceptional group of athletes that grew up together on the east side of the river and dominated Minneapolis amateur sports for a decade.
David C. Smith
© David C. Smith
Minneapolis Park Memory: My Park
When I was a child, my family lived at 42nd Street and 33rd Avenue. My parents and brother often walked to Minnehaha Park on a sunny Sunday afternoon. We usually made one stop, at 46th Street, so my brother and I could ride the ponies. They had three pairs of ponies that went around and around and around. Mother packed a small lunch; we never took liquids because there were several water fountains in the park. The lower part of the park was fenced in for deer; it was called the “deer pen.” I have a picture of me standing on thh bridge in front of the falls dressed in my Sunday best. Mother had curled my hair to look my best for a trip to the park.
In teen years we ice skated on the lagoon above the falls. We had a warming house, as well as an iced toboggan run. A park employee monitored the run. In the summertime, my family would walk the trails on either side of the creek all the way down to the river, where we would wave to the people across the water. Every year we had our fall church picnic at the park. We used the wonderful pavilion with its restrooms, stoves and lots of picnic tables. This is most of my life. What would I have done without my park?
Gladys Wangstad
Minneapolis Park Memory: A Wonderful Gift
Filed under: Minneapolis Park Memory | Tags: Columbia Park, Lake Calhoun, Lake Harriet, Lake Nokomis, Minneapolis parks, Minnehaha Creek, Powderhorn Park
Leave a comment About two years ago, when our son-in-law was in the North St. Paul Library, he saw David Smith’s book about Minneapolis parks. He bought one and gave it to me for Christmas. We have enjoyed reading it and looking at the pictures.
Jim became acquainted with Minnehaha Park and Parkway when he came to freshman orientation at Hamline in 1948. He particularly remembers the beauty of the lilac trees. When we lived in Rosemount, we came to Nokomis Park to picnic, swim and sail with friends. When we moved to Columbia Heights, Jim started to bike daily, and a few times each summer, he biked the Grand Rounds. We biked it with a church group a time or two. We continued to do that when we lived in Champlin and in north Minneapolis.
The house we owned since 1985 was near Lake Harriet and we biked around that lake and also Lake Calhoun and Lake of the Isles. We slid in the snow and watched our grandson’s rugby games at Columbia Park. We enjoyed many picnics near each of those lakes and the Rose Garden, Hiawatha, Nokomis, Farwell, Powderhorn and Wirth. Sometimes there were only two of us; other times it was a family gathering. We celebrated many birthdays and events by having picnics at a park. Following Thanksgiving dinner at our house, most of the guests enjoyed a walk around all or part of Lake Harriet. A recent memory is walking with our five-year-old granddaughter to a bridge over Minnehaha Creek and dropping sticks into the water and watching them float away. We are glad that our new home is near the Parkway, Minnehaha Park and Lake Nokomis, so we can continue to enjoy our wonderful gift of parks.
Phyllis Minehart
Public-private collaborations that work: Sea Salt, Tin Fish and…Bread and Pickle?
Filed under: Lake Calhoun, Lake Harriet, Minneapolis Parks: General, Minnehaha Falls | Tags: Horace Cleveland, Lake Calhoun, Lake Harriet, Minnehaha Falls, Theodore Wirth
Comments (1) The mention of Sea Salt restaurant in Alice Streed’s Minneapolis Park Memory: Treasure (below) is noteworthy. A relatively new development in our parks is mentioned in the same sentences as long-celebrated spaces and activities. The popular restaurant in the Minnehaha Park refectory — run as a private, for-profit business — is a marvelous example of the best of public-private collaboration. It proves that private enterprise can do some things, such as serving delicious sea food, better than a public agency. I believe it also demonstrates the silliness of claims that the sky is falling whenever an agency like the park board considers change.
Lest private enterprise advocates get carried away here, however, let me state quite emphatically that there would be no park system in which to place these wonderful little restaurants if we would have relied on private interests to create parks. Our parks prove that public agencies can do some things, such as creating a park system, that private enterprise will not do.
The debate over allowing businesses to operate in Minneapolis parks is old — and sometimes entertaining. The park board began granting concessions for boat rentals, then food sales, to private businesses at Lake Calhoun and Lake Harriet very early in the history of Minneapolis parks. The park board assumed control of the boat rentals at Lake Harriet in the late 1880s when Charles Loring noted that the business could be easily managed by the park board. On other issues, however, the presence of private enterprise on park property was vigorously opposed.
Permit me to quote myself — and Horace Cleveland — from City of Parks:
(Cleveland) had also written (to William Folwell) of his disgust that the park board was considering permitting a structure next to Minnehaha Falls where people could have their photos taken beside the cataract. “If erected,” Cleveland complained, “it will be simply pandering to the tastes of the army of boobies who think to boost themselves into notoriety by connecting their own stupid features with the representation of one of the most beautiful of God’s works.”
You didn’t mess with Cleveland’s favorite natural landscapes — one of the things that made him one of the first great landscape architects. Fortunately, William Folwell, who was president of the park board at the time, agreed with his friend.
Another early private business on park property was a service to pump up deflated bicycle tires on the new bicycle paths created by the park board during the bicycle craze of the 1880s-1890s. The park board did exercise some control over the business, however, by stipulating that the business could not charge more than a penny for filling a tire.
The park board began to take over food service in park buildings after Theodore Wirth became park superintendent in 1906. Wirth, like many park executives of the day, believed that no private concessions should be operated in parks — although he seemed to make an exception for pony rides and probably would have for the polo fields and barns he proposed for Bryn Mawr Meadows. (And, of course, the sheep he brought in to graze at Glenwood Park in 1921 were not owned by the park board. Wirth wrote that he thought sheep grazing in a park was a cool visual effect and that the sheep would earn their keep by cutting grass, keeping weeds down, which reduced fire risk, and fertilizing. Unfortunately they didn’t mow evenly and ate other plants too, so the borrowed sheep were evicted in 1922. ) One of the few other historical examples of a private venture operating on park property was the Minneapolis Tennis Club, which operated first at The Parade and then moved to Nicollet (Martin Luther King) Park in the early 1950s when Parade Stadium was built.
Do you remember concession stands in parks? What about treats at the Calhoun, Nokomis or Wirth beach houses? As good as fish tacos?
I have high hopes for Bread & Pickle, the new food service contracted for Lake Harriet next summer. I hope the Citizens Advisory Council that worked so hard on the recommendations wasn’t too conservative in forcing a new service into old space.
David C. Smith
The “Brownie” in Brownie Lake
Filed under: Minneapolis parks | Tags: Agnes "Brownie" McNair Hull, Brownie Lake, Cedar Lake Parkway, Charles M. Loring, Minneapolis parks, William McNair, Wilson Park
Comments (2) In the historical profile I wrote about Brownie Lake for the Minneapolis Park and Recreation Board, I reported that I had found a handwritten note on an old park board document that attributed the lake’s name to the nickname of William McNair’s daughter. Now, I’ve also found a newspaper reference to that.
The Minneapolis Tribune of November 13, 1910 reported on the origin of the names of Minneapolis lakes. The article said Brownie Lake was taken from the nickname of Mrs. Louis K. Hull. Louis Hull, a prominent young attorney in Minneapolis, married Agnes McNair, one of two daughters of William McNair, on December 12, 1892.
Agnes “Brownie” McNair Hull, namesake of Brownie Lake, about 1890 (Jordan, Minnesota Historical Society)
William McNair was an influential attorney and businessman in Minneapolis who had died in 1885. Among his many real estate holdings in the city was a 1,000-acre farm that stretched across much of near north Minneapolis to include Brownie Lake. At the time of his death he was said to be in negotiation with the park board to donate a 100-foot-wide strip of land for a parkway that would have extended from Lake of the Isles, around Cedar Lake, to Farview Park in north Minneapolis. It was said he already owned nearly all the land that would be required for that four-mile parkway. His obituary (September 16, 1885, Minneapolis Tribune) claimed that he was building a mansion at 13th and Linden (facing Hawthorne Park) that would rival W. D. Washburn’s “Fair Oaks” in south Minneapolis. Louise McNair, his widow, apparently finished it, judging by this photo. Whatever happened to it? Did it outlive Fair Oaks?
McNair home, about 1890, Hawthorne Park, Minneapolis. “Brownie” McNair was married here. (Minnesota Historical Society)
A curiosity about Brownie Lake: about half of the lake was platted into streets and “blocks.” The map of Cedar Lake and environs in the 1909 annual report of the park board shows Drew, Chowen and Beard avenues platted through Brownie Lake. Much of the land for Cedar Lake Parkway, and park board control of Cedar Lake, came from donations by McNair’s widow, Louise. She was the sister of McNair’s first law partner, Eugene Wilson, who was an important park commissioner and the attorney for the first park board. Hawthorne Park, where the McNair’s were building their mansion, was later renamed Wilson Park after Eugene Wilson. Wilson Park was condemned in the 1960s to become part of the I-94 interchange.
Wilson Park, once known as Hawthorne Park, in about 1942, looking southwest with Basilica in background (Jack Delano, Minnesota Historical Society)
The park and playground west of Cedar Lake, which has always been known as Reserve Block 40, but never formally named, is in a neighborhood known as McNair Park. As residents of the Bryn Mawr neighborhood consider renaming Reserve Block 40, they could do worse than to keep the McNair Park name.
A final bit of Brownie Lake-related trivia: One of the pall bearers at William McNair’s funeral was Charles M. Loring. What makes that noteworthy in these days of political and philosophical rancor is that Loring and McNair were local leaders among Republicans and Democrats respectively. Clearly they were able to see past their political differences.
David C. Smith
© David C. Smith
The Good Old Days
The men and women of today who recall with lively joy the days when they played unwatched through the long summer days in meadow or woods or the old swimmin’ hole are likely to pity the youngsters of the present whose recreation is supervised and scheduled by grownups. For young dreamers with vigorous personalities there was something not to be duplicated in the lazy happiness of those days. But “other times, other customs.” City life of today is immeasurably more complicated: it has manifold possibilities for evil, numerous forces which make the child sophisticated before his time and which make a carefully planned constructive work necessary.
Overheard that discussion lately? Had it yourself?
The quote was taken verbatim from an article about park playgrounds in the Minneapolis Tribune, June 20 — 1920.
Do you have a story about playgrounds in the summer when you were a kid? Send it to me.
David C. Smith
Minneapolis Park History 