An Early 8-hour Day?
Filed under: Minneapolis Parks: General, Victory Memorial Drive | Tags: Victory Memorial Drive
Comments (2) Teamsters who worked for the Minneapolis Park Board began working 8-hour days in 1913. With only a quick look into the history of the eight-hour workday, that strikes me as a fairly early concession by the park board. Many industries still worked longer days. The park board Proceedings for 1913 reported that park commissioners adopted this proposal on May 6, 1913.
To the Honorable Board of Park Commissioners:
Your Standing Committee on Employment, to whom was referred the communication of the International Brotherhood of Team Owners asking that eight hours constitute a day’s work for teams employed by the Board, respectfully reports that the matter has been given careful consideration and your committee now recommends that all teams and men now employed by the Board working nine hours per day be placed upon a basis of an eight-hour day at the same wage per day now being paid.
Respectfully submitted,
J. W. Allan, W. F. Decker, P. D. Boutell, P. C. Deming
Nothing in park board proceedings indicates why employees were given what amounted to a 12.5% raise that year. Pay rates published in the February 18 proceedings list teamster pay at $2.50 per day and pay for teams at $5.00 per day. In other words, a driver was worth the same as a horse.
You have to keep in mind that a teamster in those days was usually someone who drove a “team” of horses—thus “teamster”—not a truck, in case you’ve ever wondered.
Work crews building what became Victory Memorial Drive in north Minneapolis in about 1920. (Minneapolis Park and Recreation Board)
The photo above, taken a few years after the reduction in work day was approved, shows that horses and automotive vehicles worked side-by-side on road construction.
Theodore Wirth wrote in 1911 that some projects had been delayed in Minneapolis parks because there were no teams to be hired. Perhaps the shorter workday was necessary to compete for teams in 1913.
I know that a widespread 40-hour work week didn’t come for many years in some places and some industries. Perhaps someone with a better knowledge of labor history than I can provide some context for the decision of the park board to reduce the work day from 9 to 8 hours, but maintain the same pay. Also is there any significance in the request for shorter work day coming from the brotherhood of “Team Owners,” which I gather was not the same as the International Brotherhood of Teamsters. Any thoughts?
David C. Smith
© David C. Smith
The Beginnings of a Garden
Filed under: Minneapolis parks | Tags: Armory Garden, Kenwood Garden, Louis Boeglin, Minneapolis Sculpture Garden, The Parade, Theodore Wirth
Comments (1) One hundred years ago next week, Theodore Wirth made a request of the Minneapolis park board that made possible one of Minneapolis’s most cherry-ished landmarks—and parks. The park superintendent who was known for his passion for gardens—and also for hiring a talented full-time park florist, Louis Boeglin—asked the park board to approve preparing a square of ground next to the Minnesota National Guard Armory for a garden. At least for a summer.
The Society of American Florists and Ornamental Horticulturists (SAFOH) were holding their national convention at the Armory in August 1913. The Armory had been built in 1906 between Kenwood Parkway and Vineland Place adjacent to a park known as The Parade. To the east of the Armory, bordering on Lyndale Avenue, was an empty plot of ground that Thomas Lowry had donated to the park board in 1906. It was that square that Wirth asked for. The park board approved Wirth’s request the day he made it — March 4, 1913 — for the “free use” of the space by SAFOH for “an extensive display of outdoor plants consisting of the best adapted hardy and tender plants that can be used for the decoration of public and private grounds and of plant novelties that are not yet known to many florists.”
The green space to the right of the Armory was the site of the SAFOH Garden. Lyndale Avenue is at right. Kenwood Parkway, which no longer goes through, is at top. Thomas Lowry’s residence is where the Walker Art Center is now. (Atlas of Minneapolis 1914, reflections.mndigital.org)
To prepare for this test garden, the board authorized Wirth to provide the property with “the necessary dressing of good loam,” which the board would pay for from funds allocated for The Parade.
As recently as 1911 Wirth had proposed to use the space for tennis courts, in keeping with the active recreation focus of the park, but those courts were not built. (See plan in 1911 Annual Report.)
The Minneapolis Tribune enthused that the garden would be one of the “most beautiful and extraordinary displays that the city has ever enjoyed.” The Tribune estimated (April 20) that some bulbs to be planted, which began arriving from florists around the country in April, were valued at up to $100 each and, therefore, a guard would be posted at the garden site.
As the dates of the convention approached much was written in local newspapers about the floral display that would inform and entertain 1,500 guests from around the country who would make Minneapolis the “floral capital of the country” for a week (Tribune, August 10, 1913). Private railroad cars were to bring florists from the major eastern cities and so many florists were coming from, or through, Chicago that both the Milwaukee Road and Great Northern had dedicated trains from there solely for convention goers. 
The Tribune observed that membership in the Society was “coveted” because there was an “exchange of courtesies” among members, such as the “invaluable service” of a “telegraph order system between cities.” Many of us have used the FTD—originally Florists’ Telegraph Delivery—system, which was created in 1910, only a few years before the Minneapolis convention. The image of Mercury, at left, was first used in 1914.
The garden was such a huge hit—with florists and Minneapolis citizens—that one park commissioner recommended keeping the garden and naming it the Wirth Botanical Garden. Wirth, who was vice president of the national society before the convention, was unanimously elected president of the national organization while it was in session in Minneapolis.
The 1913 garden adjacent to the Armory, looking southwest from the intersection of Lyndale Avenue, coming in from left, and Kenwood Parkway, at right. The photo was taken from the Plaza Hotel between The Parade and Loring Park. The garden is now part of the Minneapolis Sculpture Garden. (MPRB)
The park board did support the continuation of the garden the following year and it became a popular attraction for decades, in part because of the labels that identified the plants. But the garden was never named for Wirth. It was referred to as the “Armory Garden” until the Armory was demolished in 1934. At that time the land where the Armory stood was donated to the park board. After that the garden became known as “Kenwood Garden.” Those floral gardens, introduced as a concept 100 years ago next week, unquestionably facilitated the current use of the grounds as quite a different type of garden.
For the rest of the garden’s story, look for a documentary being produced by tpt and the Walker Art Center this spring in celebration of the 25th birthday of the Minneapolis Sculpture Garden. It is scheduled to premier in late May.
David C. Smith
NOTE May 30,2013: The tpt documentary can now be viewed here.
© David C. Smith 2013
H.W.S. Cleveland and Lake Harriet
Filed under: Lake Harriet, Landscape Architects, Minneapolis parks | Tags: H.W.S. Cleveland, Horace Cleveland, Lake Harriet
Leave a Comment While looking for other things I keep encountering bits of information that deepen my understanding of and appreciation for Horace W. S. Cleveland’s profound contribution to Minneapolis parks.
More than a year before the creation of the Minneapolis park board and Cleveland’s “Suggestions for a System of Parks for the City of Minneapolis” a Minneapolis Tribune editorial, published January 22, 1882, announced “A Prospective Park.” The editorial noted that Philo Remington and Col. Innes, who ran the Minneapolis Lyndale Motor Line, were planning to lay out a park on the shores of Lake Harriet and “may eventually” donate it to the city. The newspaper had high praise for the property.
“It is a natural forest, with hill and dale, and comprises without exception one of the most beautiful bits of woodland scenery that can be found anywhere.”
But it was the following sentence that caught my attention and provided more insight into Cleveland’s influence in the city before the park board.
“Col. Innes has made arrangements with Mr. Cleveland, the celebrated landscape gardener, who laid out Union Park, Chicago, whereby that gentleman will take immediate charge of the work of superintending the laying out of a park that will not only be a credit to the city but an inestimable benefit to our citizens.”
I have found no evidence in Cleveland’s correspondence that he was actually hired for any work at Lake Harriet; he never mentions it. And who knows, Remington and Innes may have been blowing smoke. They had other grand plans that didn’t materialize. But whether they were serious or not about a park at Lake Harriet, the editorial indicates the high regard in which Cleveland was held in the city and the likelihood that, at the very least, he was already being consulted on park matters, especially around the lakes, before the park board existed.
A bit prematurely the Tribune enthused, “Minneapolitans may now congratulate themselves on the fact that a public park, the need of which has so long been felt, will soon be completed for their pleasure and benefit.”
Only a year later, at the next session of the legislature, a bill was passed that created the Minneapolis Board of Park Commissioners. Although Cleveland was never credited with designing any of the parks at Lake Harriet, he likely had considerable influence on how the lake shore was perceived and, later, developed.
Just another small piece of evidence of Cleveland’s immense influence on the Minneapolis park system. And yet his name does not appear on a Minneapolis park property.
David C. Smith
For more on Col. Innes’s plans for Lake Calhoun and Lake Harriet see this entry.
For more on why Cleveland’s name should be connected to the vast park that is the Mississippi River Gorge see this entry and this one, too.
For more on Cleveland in general, search above for his name or click on his name in the tag cloud at right. I’ve written quite a bit about him. Take a closer look at the map from his “Suggestions…” at right, too.
Minnehaha Falls Photos
Filed under: Minneapolis parks, Minnehaha Falls | Tags: Minnehaha Falls, Minnehaha Park
Comments (2) Karen Cooper tells me she has photos of more 19th- and early 20th-Century bridges over Minnehaha Creek at Minnehaha Falls than the ones I’ve already posted. You can see those photos and more next Sunday, Feb. 10, at 2 pm at Hennepin History Museum. (Get more info here.)
I’m told that Karen has the most amazing Minnehaha Falls collection. I’m looking forward to seeing part of it myself for the first time. Hope to see you there.
The 1910 stone arch bridge was actually made of reinforced concrete and given a facade of boulders found in the vicinity. (Minnesota Historical Society)
David C. Smith
Fear in the Hearts of Children: More from the Autobiography of Francis A. Gross
Filed under: Minneapolis parks, Mississippi River | Tags: 1862 US-Dakota War, Francis A. Gross, North Minneapolis
Leave a Comment Last weekend I read Mni Sota Makoce: The Land of the Dakota and Our Way or the Highway: Inside the Minnehaha Free State. That followed a recent rereading of Folwell’s History of Minnesota, Volume I, and I also had read Spirit Car recently. They were part of my continuing research into the history of Minnehaha Falls. (More on that project soon.)
With the sad story of the disintegration of relations long ago between American Indians and whites fresh in mind, I recalled a passage in the unpublished autobiography of former park commissioner Francis Gross. (Background on Gross and his autobiography.) Gross was born in Minnesota in 1870 and lived near the intersection of Plymouth (13th) Avenue and Washington Avenue North in north Minneapolis from 1875 into his teen years. Among his memories of childhood on the north side was this:
“Until shortly after 1880, the shore lands of the Mississippi river were grandly beautiful. Other than a small sawmill at the bridge on Plymouth Avenue, there stood virgin timber of many varieties. For a few years after our coming to the northside, each spring many Indians, their squaws and papooses, would travel from the north on the river in canoes and locate their camp at about 14th Avenue North on the river flat there. The many Indians, young and old, their tepees, boiling pots, the furs and beaded leather goods and trinkets they had brought to trade or sell was an interesting sight. Each evening they would entertain their white visitors with war dances. Made their drums taut by the heat of the campfire, painted their faces in most hideous designs and wore their best and most beautifully patterned and beaded dress. As this time was not long after the most serious of the wars with Indians in this territory, fear of the Indian was in the heart of every child. It can therefore be easily guessed that the sight of these hideously painted, tomahawk-swinging savages, performing at night in the sinister-appearing light given by a few torches, was a scene as exciting as any small boy could wish for.” (Emphasis added.)
I wonder if that fear may have been heightened for Gross as a child because he grew up in a community of predominantly German immigrants. In another section of his hand-written autobiography he recalled:
“On the north side until after 1885, it was common to hear German spoken whenever people congregated. The early settlers of the north side were mostly of German birth…When German immigrants came to Minneapolis, very few spoke English, hence it was necessary that they were met on their arrival by an American. Often, my father would meet those immigrant German families with his grocery delivery wagon.”
The connection between the fear and the immigrants is that many of the settlers in the Minnesota River Valley—the violent epicenter of the 1862 U.S.-Dakota War—were also German immigrants. I suspect the violence of that war was painfully felt by many in the German community in Minneapolis, too. While that war was 13 years in the past by the time Gross’s family moved to north Minneapolis, local newspapers carried many stories in the later 1870s of continuing battles between American Indians and U.S. forces not far to the west, including lurid accounts of battles featuring such famous names as Custer, Sheridan, Sitting Bull and Crazy Horse.
I hadn’t planned to write here about this passage in Gross’s autobiography when I first read it, because it did not relate to parks or early land use in Minneapolis, nor do I believe it reflects on Gross whom I have always admired as a fair, just, and humane man. But I was drawn back to it in the convergence of my research. Gross’s description had power and it had nothing to do with some anachronistic terms. Rather, the power comes from the poignant phrase: “fear of the Indian was in the heart of every child.”
It is not the object of the fear that impressed me—I can imagine as well fear of the White Man in the hearts of Indian children—but the sad realization that fear in the hearts of children can take lifetimes to conquer.
The greatest injustices, the greatest atrocities grow from fear of some monolithic, broadly-defined “Other” instilled young—a conviction reinforced last night as my daughter described watching the film Hotel Rwanda in her geography class.
The dangers of implanting fear in the hearts of children are as great today as ever. Let’s keep that seed from being planted and nourished in our children’s hearts.
David C. Smith
If you know of accounts or pictures of American Indian encampments along the Mississippi River in North Minneapolis in the 1870s-1880s, such as Gross described, I’d like to learn more.
© David C. Smith
Park Progress: 100 Years of Engines, Wheels, Automobiles and Metropolitan Parks
Filed under: Grand Rounds, Minneapolis parks | Tags: bicycle paths, Edmund J. Phelps, Grand Rounds, Minneapolis parkways
Comments (1) Writing one hundred years ago this week, then Minneapolis park board president Edmund Phelps, made several observations in the park board’s annual report for 1912 that attracted my attention.
“I notice in the Board’s report, especially between 1894 and 1900, frequent references to our bicycle paths and the very general use of the bicycle itself. It will be remembered that at one time there was great agitation for fine bicycle paths upon all main thoroughfares. During the last few years there has been nothing said in the reports and there has been no attention paid to keeping up bicycle paths for the reason that the use of the wheel, unfortunately, was very largely diminished.”
This is one of my favorite park photos. It first appeared in the Minneapolis park board’s 1896 annual report. It shows bicycle paths around Lake Harriet created that year. The layout of walking path, bicycle path and carriage way, there were no cars yet, is almost identical to today. (Minneapolis Park and Recreation Board)
The “wheel,” as Phelps called the bicycle, has made quite a comeback. Bicycle riders were generally called “wheel men” then although as this picture demonstrates riding bicycles was not strictly a male pursuit. Perhaps most remarkable however, despite the fact that today you could spend more on a bicycle than the park board paid for Lake Calhoun, the basic concept of the bicycle has not changed at all: two wheels on a connecting frame, pedals, seat, handlebars—and a dog out for exercise.
Another thematically related passage from Phelps’s 1912 report is worth noting.
“We ought not to mow forty acres of lawn at Lake of the Isles by handpower, but the best power lawn mowers, such as are used by parks and country clubs, should be provided, as they facilitate the work and reduce greatly the expense per acre.”
I have no idea if Phelps was a stockholder in The Toro Company.
Greater Grand Rounds
Finally, Phelps recommended an idea that was not new, but was placed in an automotive context I haven’t seen before. Writing thirty years after the creation of the park board, Phelps looked thirty years into the future and foresaw,
“Two or three trunk lines of excellent highway will connect the eastern and western extremities of our great country. Good roads of high class construction will prevail throughout every state of the Union. While these state roads should and will radiate from the large cities of the commonwealths, yet all will connect in a nearly direct line with the nearest transcontinental highway.”
Combining the development of good roads for automobiles with his prediction that there would be more than a million people in the Twin Cities in thirty years (1943), Phelps wrote,
“Long before that time the boulevard system of the two cities should be extended so as to make one ‘Greater Grand Rounds’ of one hundred miles or more.”
Phelps then described a parkway system that followed Minnehaha Creek to Lake Minnetonka, around that lake, then south from Excelsior to Shakopee, down the Minnesota River valley and its “enchanting scenery” to Fort Snelling, through St. Paul to and around White Bear Lake, then to Anoka and the Mississippi River, passing many beautiful lakes on the way,” then back to Minneapolis along the river. Phelps concluded,
“I am sure that a boulevard similar to the one suggested eventually will be built. An enabling act should be prepared and presented to the Legislature at the present session, and passed, so that the work may be prosecuted later.”
The parkway Phelps recommended was never authorized or built, but parks have been acquired along much of the route he suggested.
The First Automobile Ordinance
Phelps vision of automobiles, transcontinental highways and “Greater Grand Rounds” is not surprising given his early adoption of the automobile himself.
Phelps first appearance before the park board, more than a year before he was elected to be a park commissioner, was on behalf of the Automobile Club of Minneapolis. On May 7, 1903 Phelps requested permission for the club to have an automobile hill-climbing contest on the steep hill on Kenwood Parkway near Spring Lake. Hill-climbing contests were an early form of car racing, seeing whose car could climb a steep hill in the shortest time. As an inducement for approval of the club’s request perhaps, Phelps invited park commissioners and friends to attend the contest and afterwards be given a ride by automobile around the parkways.
1903 Model A Ford. It also came in a two-seat version. It was manufactured only in red. It had a top speed of 28 mph. (americanfords.com)
Phelps’s request for use of the parkway was approved, but he may have gotten more than he bargained for. Immediately following approval of his request, the board directed the Privileges and Entertainments Committee to meet with the City Council Committee on Ordinances to develop an ordinance governing the use of automobiles in parks.
The park board subsequently passed an automobile ordinance on June 20, 1903. The ordinance restricted automobile speeds to 15 miles per hour, required that each car powered by gasoline have a muffler, that each car have a bell or horn, and a have at least one lighted lamp if operated after dark. In addition,
“Every person operating an automobile shall stop upon request or signal from any person in charge of a horse or horses, and shall also stop whenever a horse or horses show signs of fright at the automobile.”
Anyone convicted of violating the ordinance was subject to a fine of $2-$100 and, if in default of payment of a fine, imprisonment in the City Work House for a period of up to 90 days.
To give you some idea of how new cars were at the time, the Ford Motor Company was incorporated only four days before the park board’s automobile ordinance was passed in June 1903 and Ford’s first three Model A’s were manufactured the next month. The success of those vehicles is still evident in Minneapolis where we refer to the Ford Dam and Ford Bridge, named for their proximity to and relationship with the Ford assembly plant in St Paul. The construction of the Ford Bridge made Minnehaha Park easily accessible to St. Paulites.
David C. Smith
© David C. Smith
Cleveland’s Van Cleve: A Playground or a Pond
Filed under: Landscape Architects, Minneapolis parks | Tags: H.W.S. Cleveland, Horace Cleveland, Jackson Square, Theodore Wirth, Van Cleve Park
Comments (6) A tantalizing paragraph.
“Professor Cleveland submitted a plan of the improvement of the 2nd Ward Park, whereupon Commissioner Folwell moved that that part of the park designated as a play ground be changed to a pond and that so changed the plan be approved.”
“2nd Ward Park” was later named Van Cleve Park. It was the first park in southeast Minneapolis, not far from the University of Minnesota. I find it odd that the park board would create a pond in a city full of lakes, streams and rivers, but more significant, and unexpected, is what the pond replaced in the plan. A playground. Huh! Horace William Shaler Cleveland, often referred to in Minneapolis by the honorific “Professor,” never seemed a playground sort of guy.
The paragraph appeared in the proceedings of the Minneapolis Board of Park Commissioners from its meeting of May 19, 1890. That date is important because at that time few playgrounds existed. Anywhere.
Before Van Cleve Park was named, it was referred to as 2nd Ward Park as seen here in the 1892 Plat Book for Minneapolis. The man-made pond took the place of what would have been the first “playground” in a Minneapolis park. (C.M. Foote & Co., John R. Borchert Map Library, University of Minnesota)
Unfortunately Cleveland’s drawings for Van Cleve Park didn’t survive. Six of his other park designs—large-scale drawings—are owned by Hennepin History Museum, but the Van Cleve plan is not among them. Neither was it ever published in an annual report, as several other of his plans were. No documents explaining Cleveland’s intent with his plan have been found either, so we really don’t know what type of playground he imagined for the center of the new park. We can only guess.
The Infancy of Playgrounds
The idea of public space devoted to play was still quite new at the time—to Cleveland and to everyone else. In his most famous book, Landscape Architecture as Applied to the Wants of the West, published in 1873, Cleveland mentioned “play ground” only as something that might be desired in the back yard of a home. In his famous 1883 blueprint for Minneapolis’s park system, Suggestions for a System of Parks and Parkways for the City of Minneapolis, he doesn’t mention play or playgrounds at all. Even in the notes that accompanied his first six individual park designs in Minneapolis (unpublished) in 1883 and 1885, he never mentioned play spaces. Yet, in 1890, when he was 76 years old, Cleveland proposed to put a playground in a new park.
The idea was just being explored elsewhere then. In 1886 Boston had placed sand piles for kids play in some parks. The next year San Francisco created a formal children’s play area in Golden Gate Park. In New York, reform mayor Abram Hewitt supported a movement in 1887 to create small, city-sponsored combination parks and playgrounds, but that effort bore little fruit until a decade later. In 1889, Boston created a playstead at Franklin Park and an outdoor gymnasium on the bank of the Charles River, a collaboration of a Harvard professor and Cleveland’s friend Frederick Law Olmsted. Historian Steven A. Riess calls it the “first American effort to provide active play space for slum residents.” (See Riess’s City Games for a fascinating account of the growth of sports in American cities.)
The social reform movement, which later helped create playgrounds in many cities, was gaining steam with the publication in 1890 of Jacob Riis’s, How the Other Half Lives, a glimpse of grinding poverty in the slums of New York. That movement would have an enormous impact on cities in the early 1900s, especially Chicago, which became the playground capital of the United States, led in part by Jane Addams of Hull House settlement fame.
Even though Cleveland addressed many of his efforts in civic improvement to providing fresh air, green spaces and access to nature’s beauty for the urban poor, especially children, he seems an unlikely proponent of playgrounds in parks. Based on the bitter complaint in a letter to William Folwell, July 29, 1884, I had taken Cleveland to be opposed to any manufactured entertainments at the cost of natural beauty. He wrote from Chicago,
“There’s no controlling the objects of men’s worship or the means by which they attain them. A beautiful oak grove was sacrificed just before I left Minneapolis to make room for a baseball club.” (Folwell Papers, Minnesota Historical Society)
Yet, we have proof that Cleveland had a much more positive view of play areas for children in parks than he had of ball fields. A playground at Van Cleve Park, would have been a first in Minneapolis parks.
The Pond Instead
With the revised plan of the park approved, construction of the pond began immediately in the summer of 1890. A pond of 1.5 acres was created in the southern half of the park. The earth removed to create the pond was used to grade the rest of the park. That winter the park board had the pond cleared of snow so it could serve as a skating rink, too.
The artificial pond at Van Cleve was a popular skating rink. (Minneapolis Park and Recreation Board)
There must have been problems keeping water in the pond, because the next summer it was drained and the pond basin was lined with puddled clay. An artist’s rendering of the park in the 1891 annual report shows a fountain spraying a geyser of water in the middle of the pond. I’ve never seen a photo of such a fountain at Van Cleve, or read an account of it, but a similar fountain was built into the pond at Elliot Park, the only other pond created in a Minneapolis park, so it is possible a fountain existed. The park board erected a temporary warming house and toilet rooms for skaters on the pond beginning in the winter of 1905.
When Theodore Wirth arrived in Minneapolis as park superintendent in 1906, he placed a priority on improving Van Cleve Park as “half playground, half show park.” He recommended creating a sand bottom for the pond so it could be used as a wading pool and building a small shelter beside it that could double as a warming house for skaters.
Van Cleve pond, 1905. (Sweet, Minnesota Historical Society)
The first playground equipment was installed in Van Cleve Park in 1907, following the huge popularity of the first playground equipment installed at Riverside and Logan parks in 1906.
The shelter was finally built in 1910, along with shelters at North Commons and Jackson Square. The Van Cleve shelter was designed by Minneapolis architect Cecil Bayless Chapman and was built at a total cost of just over $6,000. It included a boiler room, toilets and a large central room. The Van Cleve shelter was considerably more modest than the shelters at Jackson Square and North Commons, which cost approximately $12,000 and $16,000 respectively. On the other hand, neither of those parks had a pond. (Jackson Square actually had been a pond at one time, however, called Long John Pond. The cost of the Jackson Square shelter rose due to the need to drive pilings down 26 feet to get through the peat on which the park was built.)
The original recreation shelter at Van Cleve Park was built in 1910 facing the man-made pond. (Minneapolis Park and Recreation Board)
Wirth published a new plan for Van Cleve Park in the 1911 annual report. Although he claimed that Van Cleve demonstrated that a playground and show park could exist without “interfering” with each other, the playground occupied only a narrow strip of land between the pond and 14th Ave. SE. There were still no playing fields of any kind in the park then.
In 1917, Wirth recommended pouring a concrete bottom for the pond, really converting it into a shallow pool. Two years later the park board did pave the pond basin, but with tar macadam.
The Van Cleve shelter well after 1940 renovations, date unknown. (Minneapolis Park and Recreation Board)
Very few improvements were made at Van Cleve, or any other park in the city, for many years from the late-1920s to the late- 1940s. In 1935, in his last year as park superintendent, Wirth recommended that a swimming pool be built at Van Cleve in place of the pond, but the park board didn’t have the money for such a project during the Great Depression.
The park did get its share of WPA attention in 1940 when the federal work relief agency completed several renovations on the Van Cleve shelter to improve its capacity to host indoor recreation activities. Also included in those repairs were such basics as a concrete floor in the shelter’s boiler room. Comparing the two photos above, it’s obvious that the veranda was enclosed and the ground around the shelter was paved as well.
The man-made pond was finally filled in 1948. A modern, much smaller concrete wading pool was built to replace it the next year. The little rec shelter stood until a new community center was built at Van Cleve in 1970. By then Van Cleve, like most other neighborhood parks in the city, had been given over almost completely to active playgrounds and athletic fields.
Despite Cleveland’s aborted provision for a playground of some kind in his plan for Van Cleve Park in 1890, I imagine him astonished and a bit saddened to see neighborhood parks change so completely from the pastoral reserves and quiet gardens he had once preserved or coaxed from the urban landscapes of his time.
David C. Smith
© David C. Smith
Ski Jump Update
Filed under: Minneapolis parks, Winter Sports | Tags: Minneapolis Ski Club, Ski Jumping, Skiing, Theodore Wirth Park
Comments (2) So many people have commented on my article posted nearly two years ago about the history of ski jumping in Minneapolis that I thought I should provide an update. I was prompted by an exchange of emails this week with Greg Fangel who is the owner of woodenskis.com, where he buys and sells wooden cross-country skis and provides a great deal of ski information and links to other skiing sites. I’ve edited together some of Greg’s emailed comments below, with thanks.
I’ve been an avid cross-country skier since 1974 and currently live in White Bear Lake. I’ve been researching ski history for the past 5 years or so, mostly from a Mpls/St. Paul/Minnesota point of view. In my research, ski jumping comes into play, since it’s Nordic and one of the early forms of competition. I personally know Norm Oakvik, who is mentioned in your blog. He organized many events and coached USSA teams in Minneapolis. Norm is a legend in the cross-country ski community in the Minneapolis/St. Paul area. I interviewed Norm in November of 1995 for a story in the Løype, a newsletter of the North Star Ski Touring Club.
Norm’s parents were from Norway and Norm started skiing in Minneapolis in the 1930-40s. He competed with the Minneapolis Ski Club in 1940-70s, specializing in Nordic combined in the early years. Nordic combined is ski jumping and cross-country skiing combined into one event. He was a driving force behind the National Nordic ski competition, which was held in Bloomington in 1976. Bill Koch came to ski that event.
In May of 2005 a few of the ‘movers and shakers’ in the Minneapolis ski community wanted to name a trail or system after Norm Oakvik at Theodore Wirth Park. We held a special meeting at Wirth with supporters and Norm present. Norm was so humble, that he didn’t want his name on the trails, even though he spent countless hours trail clearing, grooming, and coaching at Wirth. I don’t know how Norm is doing now, but he was recently in the hospital.
I’ve interviewed ski jumper Adrian Watt from Duluth who participated in the 1968 Winter Olympics and competed at the Glenwood jump in Minneapolis. He has some fascinating stories.
Minneapolis has a rich ski history and that should not be overlooked. We need to preserve that history for generations to come.
Greg Fangel
The ski jump at Glenwood (Wirth) Park in 1923. (Charles J. Hibbard, Minnesota Historical Society)
Greg mentioned that he’s interested in putting together an exhibit on local skiing history for a possible new project at Wirth Park.
Over the past couple years, several veterans of the Minneapolis skiing scene have commented on my original post on Minneapolis ski history. If you haven’t looked at those comments in a while, check them out. Add your own stories either here or on the original post. Thanks!
If you haven’t kept track of what’s going on with cross-country skiing in Minneapolis parks you might be surprised to find out about current trails, especially at Wirth Park. Get more skiing info at minneapolisparks.org.
David C. Smith
Francis A. Gross Autobiography I: North Minneapolis and the Origin of North Commons
Filed under: Minneapolis Park Hero, Minneapolis parks | Tags: Francis A. Gross, North Commons, North Minneapolis
Comments (3) My wish was granted.
Last April, in an article about the original Longfellow Field and its sale to a munitions maker during WWI, I wrote,
“Of all the park commissioners in Minneapolis history, Frank Gross is one of the most intriguing to me. If I could find some cache of lost journals of any of the city’s park commissioners since Charles Loring and William Folwell, I would most want to find those of Frank Gross. He’d be a great interview subject.”
Francis Gross was first elected to the park board in 1910 by other commissioners to fill out the term of a commisioner who had resigned. From then until 1948 Gross served 32 years as a park commissioner, also serving as president of the board 1917-1919 and again 1936-1948.
A couple months after I wrote about my interest in Gross, I received a comment on that post from Francis A. Gross III, the great-grandson of the man once known as “Mr. Park Board.”
Francis Gross was the starter for the Pushmobile Derby in 1936, two years before he wrote his autobiography. (Minneapolis Park and Recreation Board)
The great-grandson, who goes by “Tony” and is not from Minneapolis, informed me that he had many documents from his great-grandfather, including a handwritten autobiography.
Thanks to Tony and his wife, Joy, who scanned the documents, I have now had the good fortune to read the autobiography of Francis A. Gross, Glimpses into Happy Lives, which he wrote in 1938.
With Tony Gross’s permission, I will write about a couple topics of particular interest to me that Francis Gross addressed in his autobiography, especially his work on Minneapolis parks and anti-German sentiment during World War I. But I’d like to begin with Gross’s description of North Minneapolis during his childhood.
Gross was born in Medina Township in 1870, but his parents opened a hotel and boarding house just off Bridge Square a year later. He lived at the center of city life only until he was five, when the family moved—for the benefit of an impressionable child — to a quieter part of the city on Plymouth Avenue (then still called 13th Avenue North). According to city directories, the address, 210 13th Avenue North, was between Washington and 2nd Street North, or very near the busy commercial intersection at Plymouth and Washington.
Francis Gross, 1919 (Lee Brothers, Minnesota Historical Society)
His family ran a grocery store there for most of his childhood. Gross writes about his family’s grocery business, but city directories of the time also list his father, Mathias Gross, as the owner of both a hotel and a saloon at the same address at various times. (The hotel was listed in the directory as “Minneapolis House,” then “North Minneapolis House” in the early 1880s before reverting to a listing as only grocery store and saloon. The business was listed separately under both “Grocery” and “Saloon” in the business sections of the directories — think yellow pages before there were telephones. The family lived at the same address as the business until 1886, when the residence of Mathias Gross was listed as 1517 N. 5th St. In looking back on his own life, it appears that Gross preferred to think of his father’s business as grocery store, rather than saloon.
Gross provides these descriptions of the north side when he was a child:
“South of Plymouth Avenue and west of Washington Avenue was largely occupied by homes extending to Lyndale Ave. and thence southward. North of Plymouth Avenue and west of Washington Avenue, other than some business at what is now called lower W. Broadway, the north side was sparsely settled and was covered by fine oak trees…”
“On both sides of Plymouth Avenue between 5th and 6th streets there were ponds. My father shot ducks there the first years we resided on Plymouth Avenue and the pond on the north side of Plymouth Avenue was a favorite skating place…”
“Bassett’s Creek, now covered by a concrete tunnel part of the way to the river, was a beautiful winding stream and the land adjoining was covered with fine trees and shrubs. From Lyndale avenue to the river, to a width of five or more hundred feet, the land laid low, making a shallow valley. Viewing this beautiful stream valley and the vegetation in it made a landscape a delight to see. It was one of nature’s beauties within the confines of Minneapolis that its park board was not able to preserve. Bassett’s Creek was also a favorite fishing and skating place. At near the point of 7th Street and Lyndale Avenue was the “7th Street swimming hole” patronized by the boys residing in center town, north side and some from the north-east side of the river. Many Minneapolitans have fond recollections of this fun-giving place during their childhood.”
This image of north Minneapolis is from the 1892 plat book. Plymouth Avenue is at the top, Lyndale is at far left and Washington angles in from lower right. The Mississippi River is in the top right corner. As a child, Gross lived at 210 Plymouth, between Washington and 2nd at the top of this map. As an adult he worked at the German-American Bank near the corner of Plymouth and Washington. So he spent a lot of his life near that street corner. (Click, then click again to enlarge. For the full map go to the John R. Borchert Map Library, University of Minnesota)
Gross’s autobiography also provides a nugget of park history apart from his writing about the park board. He made this remark when remembering his role in the creation of an influential neighborhood business group in 1904:
“The northside’s leading citizens came together and organized the North Side Commercial Club and I became its first president…It induced the Board of Park Commissioners to establish a park which is now North Commons; I was the first to propose this.”
Park board documents reveal very little background information on the creation of North Commons in 1907, so Gross’s comment is informative.
North Commons about 1910. Have you ever seen a taller slide? And are you impressed by the little girl in the dress climbing the pole? (Minnesota Historical Society)
Gross may have proposed to the commercial club the site of a second north side park — the first was Farview—but the possibility of such a park had been kicked around for many years.
As early as 1889 the park board had designated the land around Todd’s Pond for a park. But residents near the pond, which was just south of 20th, now Broadway, at about Emerson, near where North High School was later built, were divided on the need for a park there. Opposition came from those who didn’t want to be assessed for the cost of acquiring the land. They argued that Farview Park was not far away and provided enough of a park for north Minneapolis. The Minneapolis Tribune reported February 9, 1890 that the park board was likely to abandon efforts to acquire Todd’s Pond, “for one reason—because there are no funds.” This was after reports in the Tribune two days earlier that the asking price for the nine acres that contained Todd’s Pond—referred to as a “mud hole”—was $120,000. One person who opposed the transaction called that figure “extravagant.”
The major park issue on the north side in those early years of the park board was not how to acquire another neighborhood park, but how to create a parkway from North Minneapolis to the lakes in the southwestern part of the city and to Loring Park. Lyndale Avenue North was not considered an adequate parkway connection from Loring Park to Farview Park—although that was attempted.
The St. Paul Daily Globe captured the issue in its June 6, 1885 edition:
Hon. W. W. McNair, who has just returned from the East, where he spent the winter recuperating his health, brings up the subject of the land he wished to donate for a boulevard from Central [Loring] to Prospect [Farview] parks. He proposed to donate a 100-foot boulevard through his ground by way of Cedar lake, which would make about four miles in length the whole route, with the exception of a few pieces, being on his land. He made this proposition some time ago, but the park commission halted on it because a portion was beyond the city limits, but this disability was removed by act of the last legislature. There was a difference of opinion as to whether such a boulevard should not be 200-feet wide; the difference would be about forty acres of land, but there is no doubt Mr. McNair would donate that amount if altogether desirable. It is probable this matter will be brought before the park commission today.
Unfortunately, the unspecified illness to which the article refers took McNair’s life three months later, before the park board and McNair could work out his donation of land in North Minneapolis. He owned part of the shore of Cedar Lake and a large swath of land across North Minneapolis. (See more on the McNair estate in a post about the naming of Brownie Lake.)
The park board did maintain a skating rink and warming house at Todd’s Pond as early as 1890, and continued operating it every winter (except 1897) through 1900, apparently with permission from the landowners. The park board paid for the rink at Todd’s Pond, the first year at least, by transferring funds that had been earmarked for a toboggan slide at Farview Park. The Tribune reported that spring (5/9/1890) that a drain installed near Todd’s Pond was lowering the water level in the pond and that plans for a new three-story brick building at 20th and Emerson would cover a portion of the “mud puddle.”
Although the park board reports maintaining a skating rink at the pond until 1900, there is no mention of the pond again in park board reports or the press until the Minneapolis Journal reported on December 3, 1905 that the North Side Commercial Club wanted skating rinks in the community and recommended Todd’s Pond as a good location. I can find no evidence on maps that a pond still existed in that vicinity.
The reference in the Journal, however, does establish that the North Side Commercial Club was advocating more park services—even if not more parks—early in its history.
The catalyst for establishing another park in north Minneapolis appears to have been the push by residents farther south for a neighborhood park. On March 4, 1907 the park board designated for purchase the land that became Kenwood Park at the northern tip of Lake of the Isles. The same day the board noted receipt of petitions from the North Side Commercial Club and other organizations requesting a parkway connection from North Minneapolis to the lakes via Cedar Lake and for the establishment of another park in the “Third Ward.” Immediately after voting to acquire the land for Kenwood Park, the board directed Theodore Wirth to make preliminary surveys of lands for a parkway around Cedar Lake to Glenwood (Wirth) Park and an expansion of Glenwood Park to encompass Keegan’s (Wirth) Lake.
At its meeting on June 3, 1907—without additional discussion, explanation, negotiation, or appraisal—the board voted to pay $48,750 for the land known as McNair Field that would become North Commons. The acquisition was most unusual in that the deal came to the park board with a price and payment terms already agreed upon. Clearly negotiations had been conducted behind the scenes. Perhaps the price — only 40 percent of what had been asked for a smaller parcel of land around Todd’s Pond 17 years earlier — was too good to let slip away.
The rapid progress on the deal for a major new park on the north side reflected the growing influence of the North Side Commercial Club, Frank Gross and associates. The Tribune had already noted the significant clout of the club when it wrote on November 25, 1906, “It is getting to be a well-known fact that when the commercial interests of the North side speak up and say “We want so and so,” that they generally are heard, and very often they get what they want.”
Shortly after the acquisition, the club announced a contest for naming the new park — with a $5 prize for the best suggestion. On August 19, 1907 the park board noted that it had received a letter from the North Side Commercial Club suggesting a name: North Commons, which was promptly approved. There is no record of who claimed the five bucks.
I’ll write more about the remarkable public service of Francis A. Gross in the near future. Until then, thanks to Tony Gross for sharing some of his great-grandfather’s papers with us. And he tells me there may be more to come.
Not many people have a lifetime membership in a golf club named for them. This card was among the memorabilia of Francis A. Gross in the possession of his great-grandson, Tony Gross. The former Armour Golf Course was renamed to honor Gross in 1947, an action by the park board that came as a complete surprise to Gross, who was then president of the board. (Francis A. Gross III)
David C. Smith
The Five Bears
Filed under: Minneapolis parks, Minnehaha Falls | Tags: Minnehaha Zoo, Robert "Fish" Jones, Theodore Wirth, Warren Manning, William Watts Folwell
Comments (13) 
This bear cage was built in Minnehaha Park in 1899 to house four black bears and one “cinnamon” bear. The 1899 report of the Minneapolis park board describes this bear “pit” built for the bears acquired by the park board over the previous few years. The cost of the construction was about $1200. It was built years before the private Longfellow Zoo was operated by Robert “Fish” Jones upstream from Minnehaha Falls. Many people believe, mistakenly, that the zoo in Minnehaha Park was Jones’s zoo. The park board began exhibiting animals in Minnehaha Park in 1894. Jones didn’t open his Longfellow Zoo until 1907, after the park board decided to get rid of most of the animals in its zoo. Jones spotted a lucrative opportunity to expand and profit from his own menagerie in the vacuum created by the park board’s decision.
“Psyche.” That was the brief caption under this photo in the 1899 annual report of the Minneapolis Board of Park Commissioners. I assume it was the bear’s name. Later, the cages held bears named “Mutt,” “Dewey,” and “Chet,” a cub that was a crowd favorite in 1915. Dewey was badly hurt in a fall while trying to catch peanuts thrown from the crowd that year and had to be put down. (Minneapolis Park and Recreation Board)
The park board’s 1894 annual report contains the first inkling of what would become a sizable zoo. Superintendent William Berry reported,
“A deer paddock was enclosed, 50 feet square, and shelters built for deer. Two deer were added making a herd of three. Five eagles were presented to the park for which were made a cage covered with heavy wire netting.”
The financial portion of the report noted among maintenance expenditures at Minnehaha Park: Meat for eagles, $15. The next year the park board purchased three elk and accepted gifts of three more deer and three red foxes. For the deer and elk, “a portion of the glen was enclosed with a strong woven wire fence eight feet high, the length of the circuit being 2,950 feet.”
The gifts of animals kept coming and several animals were purchased, too, requiring new accommodations in Minnehaha Park. The 1897 annual report included this information from Berry, “A tank was made and enclosed for the retention of an alligator presented to the Board by the Grand Lodge B. P. O. E.” The alligator had been brought to a national convention of Elks in Minneapolis by the New Orleans delegation and left behind as a gift.
The unusual gift, matched by another free alligator the next year, lead to one of the oddest entries in the financial records of the board over the next few years. Each year the Mendenhall Greenhouse submitted its bill, increasing from $10.50 in 1898 to $14 in 1903, for “Keeping alligators in winter.” A tank in a greenhouse was the only place a warm weather creature could be housed for a Minneapolis winter. Native animals were left outside at Minnehaha, while non-native animals and exotic birds spent the winter in the park board barns at Lyndale Farmstead. Berry noted in 1899 that, “the collection of animals at the barns have proved quite an attraction and a large number of people visit them.”
By then the “collection” had become sizable and the costs had become significant, too. In the 1898 annual report William Folwell wrote,
“A list of animals now owned and kept in the parks is appended. They have been acquired by gift or at slight cost and form an attraction of no small account in the Minnehaha park. The expense of feeding and care has become considerable. A zoological garden is a great ornament to a city and is a most admirable adjunct to school education. The child who can see and study a moose, an eagle, an alligator, or any other strange beast of the field gets what no book can ever teach. It may be proper to continue the present policy, silently developed, of occasional additions to the collections as can be made at slight expense, but the matter ought not to go much further without a definite plan and counting of the cost.”
The list of animals Folwell mentioned shows that it was more than the “petting zoo” that some people think it was:
1 Moose
9 Elk
27 Deer
1 Antelope
4 Black Bears
1 Cinnamon Bear
38 Rabbits
1 Alligator
1 Ape
1 Dwarf Monkey
1 Gray Squirrel
1 Black Squirrel
10 Swans
16 Wild Geese
45 Ducks
1 Mountain Lion
2 Sea Lions
2 Timber Wolves
3 Red Foxes
1 Silver Gray Fox
4 Raccoons
2 Badgers
1 Wild Cat
5 Guinea Pigs
1 Eagle
4 Owls
5 Peacocks
6 Guinea Hens
1 Blue Macaw
1 Red Macaw
2 Cockatoos
It should be noted that not all of the birds lived at Minnehaha park. The swans and some other birds spent their summers at Loring Park. The sea lions and alligator were given new outdoor digs, which included a concrete swimming pool four feet deep, at Minnehaha in the summer of 1899. By then the park board was spending more than $2,000 a year on the care and feeding of its menagerie.
This was all a little too much for landscape architect Warren Manning who was asked to review the entire park system and make his recommendations in 1899. His sensible advice was to get rid of the exotic animals and keep only animals that could live outdoors in “accommodations that will be as nearly like those they find in their native habitat as it is practicable to secure.” Manning was ahead of his time in more than landscape architecture.
It was difficult, however, for the park board to divest a popular attraction. The park board did begin selling excess animals — including several deer to New York’s zoo — but Folwell wrote in the 1901 annual report,
“It is possible that as many people go to Minnehaha park to see the interesting animal collection as to view the historic falls.”
It took the coming of a new park superintendent in 1906 to resolve the issue. Theodore Wirth did not like the animals at Minnehaha, or in his warehouse all winter, and he felt the cramped conditions of some animals was cruel. As was his custom, he minced no words on the subject when he addressed the issue with the park board for the first time on February 5, 1906, barely a month after he took the job as park superintendent. The Minneapolis Tribune quoted Wirth in its February 6, edition:
“The present status of the menagerie is a discredit to the department and the city of Minneapolis…(it is) not only out of place and inharmonious with the surroundings, but to my mind even offensive to the highest degree. I am confident that H. W. S. Cleveland, who through his true artistic love, knowledge and appreciation of nature’s charms and teachings gave such valuable advice and suggestions for the acquirement and preservation of those grounds, would second my opinion in this matter and advise the removal of the menagerie from this spot.”
I’m sure Wirth was right about Cleveland; he would have detested the zoo. Wirth got his wish a little more than a year later when the park board reached agreement with R. F. Jones on his use of land above Minnehaha Falls for his private zoo. Ultimately the park board nearly followed the advice of Warren Manning: it kept the deer and elk in an outdoor enclosure similar to their natural habitat, but it also kept the bears in their pit and cages that didn’t resemble anything natural.
Evicting many of the animals from the zoo did not mean, however, that the park board quit acquiring animals altogether. The next year, 1908, the park board acquired a buffalo, on Wirth’s recommendation, and also acquired more bears. Of course, both animals could survive Minnesota winters outdoors. The hoofed animals remained in the park until 1923. I don’t know when the bear cages were closed or removed. The last information I have on bears in the park comes from the newspaper article in 1915 that reported Dewey’s demise. Theodore Wirth’s plan for the improvement of Minnehaha Glen, published in the park board’s 1918 annual report, still shows the bear pit beside the road to the Falls overlook.
Although the park board sent its exotic animals to R. F. Jones’s zoo in 1907, that was not the last time exotic animals were tenants on park board property. For the winter of 1911 Jones decided not to ship his “oriental and ornamental” animals and birds south for the winter. Instead he kept them in Minneapolis, where he could continue charging admission to see them, I’m sure. He found the perfect spot for such a winter display in the very heart of the city.
Jones rented the Center block at 202 Nicollet on Bridge Square from the park board. The park board had acquired the property for the new Gateway park in 1909-1910, but couldn’t develop the property until tenants leases expired in the buildings it had purchased. As those leases expired, the park board certainly had ample empty space for which a temporary tenant would have been welcome. Jones needed short-term space in a heavily travelled location, and likely got it cheap. The Minneapolis Tribune reported October 22, 1911 that “Mr. Jones thinks that trouble and money can be saved by keeping (the animals) here throughout the entire year.”
A final thought. Minneapolis Tribune columnist Ralph W. Wheelock was more than a little suspicious of R. F. Jones famous story about a sea lion escaping from his zoo down Minnehaha Creek, over the Falls and out to the Mississippi River. This is what he wrote on July 10, 1907, shortly after Jones established his zoo:
“Prof. R. F. Jones, of the New Longfellow Zoo at Minnehaha Falls, announces through the press in a loud tone of voice that he has lost a sea lion. While we would not doubt the word of so eminent a scientific authority, when we recall the clever devices of the up-to-date press agent we think we sea lion elsewhere than in the river.”
This is probably the first story written about Jones in 100 years that did not mention that he wore a top hat and went everywhere with two wolfhounds. He was a colorful character, eccentric entrepreneur and shrewd showman, but he was not the first or only one to run a zoo near Minnehaha Park. The park board beat him to it by 13 years.
David C. Smith
© David C. Smith
Is that a lake?
Filed under: Diamond Lake, Minneapolis Airport, Minneapolis parks | Tags: Diamond Lake, Pearl Park, Todd Park
Comments (7) This photo illustrates the difficult history of Diamond Lake. It doesn’t look like a lake at all — and it might not have been. The 1938 annual report of the park board refers to “the dry lake bed at present.”
Diamond Lake, center, looking northwest. Pearl Park is upper right and the future Todd Park at center right. Lake Harriet and Lake Calhoun are near horizon. (Minneapolis Park and Recreation Board)
I recently received an email from a reader who lives near Diamond Lake who commented on the differences in how Diamond Lake is treated from other Minneapolis lakes in that there is no hiking or bicycle trail all the way around it. Many perceive the west shore to be private property. In fact, the entire lakeshore is park property. The photo above is undated, but I think it was shot in the 1940s. According to Hennepin County property records, the houses on the east side of Pearl Park were built in 1938.
At this time Todd Park — the dark area north of 57th Street at Portland — was referred to simply as the “east swamp.” It was dedicated as a “park” on the plat of the neighborhood, but it was, on average, 12 feet below the grades of surrounding streets.
Filling and grading Pearl Lake. View looking west from near 54th St. and Portland Avenue, likely taken about 1936. (Minneapolis Park and Recreation Board)
Pearl Lake was filled in 1936-37, with dirt from extensive runway excavation and construction at Minneapolis Municipal Airport, which the park board owned and operated at the time. The runway construction and lake filling were both WPA projects. About 200 men and 75 trucks were assigned to the project in 1936. About one foot of peat was peeled off the old lake bed, a couple feet of airport fill smoothed over the skinned landscape, and the peat reinstalled as a top coat.
In the 1938 annual report of the park board, superintendent Christian Bossen wrote that Diamond Lake had almost dried up in the 1920s due to development and low rainfall, but, “With the separation of the storm water drainage from the sanitary sewers, the City Engineer is now using and expects to use to a greater extent Diamond Lake as a storm water reservoir.”
The 1938 annual report contains a detailed description of what the park board hoped to accomplish around Diamond Lake. It provides the details of an important chapter in the history of the lake and the neighborhood.
David C. Smith
Horace Bushnell’s Ghost
Filed under: Landscape Architects, Minneapolis parks | Tags: Charles M. Loring, H.W.S. Cleveland, Horace Bushnell, Jacob Weidenmann, Lyndale Farmstead, Nicollet Island, Theodore Wirth
Comments (3) Horace Bushnell, one of America’s most influential theologians in the 19th Century, was among the first people to promote parks in Minneapolis. His ghost may still haunt us.
I don’t know if this is really a six-degrees-of-separation story—Bushnell and Kevin Bacon couldn’t have met—but there are quite a number of coincidences involved. They center on the famous Congregational minister from Hartford, Conn. who was also known for his early advocacy of city planning. And I mean really early. 1860s.
I’ll let you do your own research on Horace Bushnell’s sermons and books on theology, but here’s a sample of what he had to say on cities in his book Work and Play; or Literary Varieties in 1864:
The peoples of the old world have their cities built for times gone by, when railroads and gunpowder were unknown. We can have cities for the new age that has come, adapted to its better conditions of use and ornament. So great an advantage ought not to be thrown away. We want therefore a city-planning profession, as truly as an architectural, house-planning profession. Every new village, town, city, ought to be contrived as a work of art, and prepared for the new age of ornament to come.
Horace Bushnell, famous preacher and theologian, encouraged Minneapolis to acquire parkland in 1859-60.
Bushnell expressed an idea well ahead of his time and also coined a phrase: this was one of the first uses of the term “city-planning.”
Of more parochial interest here is Bushnell’s advocacy for creating a park in Minneapolis. More specifically, he was the first to recommend that the towns of St. Anthony and Minneapolis acquire Nicollet Island to be a park. Only Edward Murphy, with his donation to Minneapolis of Murphy Square in 1857, can claim an earlier promotion of parks for the young city.
I only came across the story of Bushnell in Minnesota recently while investigating another subject. Sifting through old newspaper files, I found this comment from “Mr. Chute” (likely Richard, instead of Samuel) at a Minneapolis Board of Trade meeting as reported in the Minneapolis Tribune, February 3, 1874:
“Many of you remember Dr. Horace Bushnell, of Hartford, Conn., who spent a year with us in 1858-59 (sic). He was a gentleman of large heart, if not large means, who, seeing the necessity for a park in Hartford to accommodate the laboring man, whose firm friend he always was, procured and donated the ground to the city for a park, which is now the pride of that wealthy place. When Dr. Bushnell was here his constant burden was, you must secure Nicollet Island; it is a shame and a disgrace to neglect your opportunities; buy it at any price.”
I sought corroboration of Chute’s claim and found it in Isaac Atwater’s History of Minneapolis, Vol. 2. In a profile of Andrew Talcott Hale, the author was explaining that Hale came to Minneapolis from Hartford, Connecticut for his pulmonary health, inspired by the experience of Dr. Bushnell, when he provided this digression:
“While yet Minneapolis was a rural settlement, Dr. Horace Bushnell, of Hartford, Conn., visited it for the benefit of his health, impaired by serious inroads of pulmonary disease. After summering and wintering here, with excursions through out the unsettled prairies of the Dakota, during which he freely contributed by his pulpit ministrations, as well as enthusiastic advocacy of park improvements to the improvement of the morals and culture of the community, he returned to his work in Hartford apparently restored to health and vigor.” (Emphasis added.)
In the mid-1800s, Minneapolis was a destination for many people with pulmonary problems. It was thought that the dry air was a tonic for the lungs. Bushnell’s experience seems to substantiate that belief. He wrote of the Minneapolis climate,
“One who is properly dressed finds the climate much more enjoyable than the amphibious, half-fluid, half-solid, sloppy, grave-like chill of the East.”
Bushnell’s letters to his family, published in The Life and Letters of Horace Bushnell, provide some further descriptions of his life in Minnesota from July 1859 to May 1860. Among my favorite passages is this one on Lake Minnetonka:
“Well, I have talked a long yarn, telling you nothing about the Lake, the strangest compound of bays, promontories, islands and straits ever put together—a perfect maze, in which a stranger would be utterly lost.”
The advantages of Minnesota weather aside, two prominent Minneapolitans—Chute and Atwater—remembered Bushnell’s sojourn in Minnesota and they both recalled his commitment to the idea of parks in cities, Minneapolis included. He had already helped Hartford get one.
Hell without the Fire
The Hartford park referred to by Mr. Chute above was created in 1854 when Bushnell helped convince the residents of that city to approve spending more than $100,000 to purchase forty acres in the center of the city for a public park. That must have taken some doing because it was an abused, polluted tract—”tenements, tanneries and garbage dumps,” according to the Bushnell Park Foundation—that Bushnell himself called, “Hell without the fire.” It is considered the first publicly funded park in the United States.
When Bushnell returned to Hartford from Minneapolis after regaining his health in 1860, little had been done to convert the land into a useful park. So he turned to a friend and former parishioner, who at that time was considered to know something about parks. But Frederick Law Olmsted was occupied with his own park project; he was still working on his most famous creation, Central Park in New York. Pressed for a recommendation, Olmsted suggested landscape architect Jacob Weidenmann for the job.
Weidenmann was an immigrant from Winterthur, Switzerland. (Remember that.) Olmsted later wrote that the only two landscape architects in the U.S. he knew of who were qualified to advise park commissions, other than himself and his partner Calvert Vaux, were Weidenmann and H. W. S. Cleveland. Weidenmann was hired and spent eight years as superintendent of Hartford’s City Park, creating a much less formal park there than was typical in Europe. After Weidenmann’s work was done, Connecticut began building its state capitol adjacent to the park in 1872. It wasn’t until Horace Bushnell was dying in 1876 that Hartford renamed the park in his honor: Bushnell Park. He died two days later.
Meanwhile Samuel Clemens had taken up residence in Hartford in 1871 and had turned to writing fiction. His first novel, The Gilded Age, was co-written with Charles Dudley Warner, who was a Hartford park commissioner.
The Minneapolis Connection
Theodore Wirth in about 1900 (Picturesque Parks of Hartford, 1900)
How does this all tie back to Minneapolis? Through Theodore Wirth. As many other cities, including Minneapolis, had caught up to and passed Hartford on the park-o-meter in the 1890s, several of Hartford’s winners in the Gilded Age sweepstakes gave land to the city for parks. Albert Pope left 73 acres to the city for a park in 1894. The same year, Charles Pond left 90 acres of his estate for Elizabeth Park — his wife’s name — and threw in his house and half his fortune to maintain them. Henry Keney went Pope and Pond several hundred acres better that year and donated 533 acres for Keney Park. In 1895 the city purchased another 70 acres for Riverside Park and another 200 acres in the southern part of the city for what became Goodwin Park.
That was a lot of new real estate to whip into park shape. Hartford needed a park superintendent to manage its sudden riches. Hartford’s leaders must have had fond recollections of working with Weidenmann thirty years earlier because when they looked through applicants for the job, they picked someone from the same small town in Switzerland—Winterthur—that Weidenmann had called home. That man was Theodore Wirth.
When Wirth began the job in Hartford, his experience was mostly in horticulture, so Hartford hired Olmsted’s sons—Olmsted Sr. had already retired—as landscape architects for some of the first projects. But after a few years on the job working with the Olmsted firm, Wirth himself designed new park layouts for Elizabeth Park and Colt Park, another 100-plus acre park gift, this from the family famous for revolvers. With those park plans, Wirth established himself as a landscape architect as well as a gardener.
The only Hartford park Wirth did not manage was the enormous Keney Park, which was administered by its own Board of Trustees, separate from the Hartford park commission, and had its own park superintendent, George A. Parker. Wirth and Parker knew each other well. I believe that George Parker was likely responsible for Charles Loring meeting Theodore Wirth in 1905 when he was a committee of one of the Minneapolis park board looking for a replacement for retiring Minneapolis park superintendent William Berry. Parker was the likeliest link between Wirth and Loring because Parker was very active in the new national park organization, American Park and Outdoor Art Association, of which Loring was president 1898-1900. When Loring hired Wirth to become park superintendent in Minneapolis, Parker became the superintendent of all Hartford parks.
Theodore Wirth lived in the upper level of the former Pond house in Elizabeth Park in Hartford, Conn. The ground floor was open to the public. (Picturesque Parks of Hartford, 1900)
The home, at right, in Hartford’s Elizabeth Park also features prominently in an important decision in Minneapolis park history. The reason the Minneapolis park board built a residence for Theodore Wirth at Lyndale Farmstead in 1910 was to fulfill a promise made to Wirth by Charles Loring, when Loring was negotiating terms for Wirth to take the superintendent’s job in Minneapolis. Wirth had been provided housing in Elizabeth Park in Hartford and wanted a similar deal in Minneapolis. Wirth and family had lived in the upper level of the former home of Charles Pond on the estate Pond had bequeathed to the city. The ground floor and verandas of the Pond home were open to the public as shelters in the summer. The Hartford Public Library operated a small library in the building as well.
Elizabeth Park was also the site of Wirth’s earliest claim to fame: the first public rose garden in the United States, a feature he replicated at Lyndale Park near Lake Harriet in 1907.
This turn-of-the-century postcard features one portion of the extensive greenhouses of A. N. Pierson, the “Rose King,” of Cromwell, Conn. about ten miles from Hartford. In 1895 Pierson won the gold medal at the New York Flower Show for a new rose, Killarney, that was beautiful and hardy. He also won 17 firsts and two seconds. “Roses became a profit-making flower, Pierson became the Rose King and Cromwell became Rosetown,” wrote Robert Owen Decker in Cromwell, Connecticut, 1650-1990. A profile of Pierson in American Florist in 1903 speculated, “There are so many rose houses in this establishment that it is doubtful the proprietor knows the exact number.” Pierson started a dairy with 65 cows just to supply sufficient manure for his growing houses. Pierson and Wirth were both vice-presidents of the Connecticut Horticultural Society 1899-1904. I would think it quite likely that Wirth’s very successful public rose garden, established in Elizabeth Park in 1903-4, drew on the cultivating research and expertise of Pierson, too. (Postcard photo: connecticuthistory.com)
Another peculiar connection between Horace Bushnell and Minneapolis parks might be appreciated only by people who have searched for information on the “Father of Minneapolis Parks,” Charles Loring. To begin with, Loring came to Minneapolis the same winter Bushnell was here and for the same reason. Loring had an unspecified health condition—likely a pulmonary malady—that caused him to come west from his Maine home. He tried Chicago first, then Milwaukee, and finally arrived in Minneapolis in the winter of 1860. Although he often spent winters in Riverside, California, he remained a resident of Minneapolis until he died here in 1922.
But an odd link to Bushnell goes further. A young Congregational minister from Hartford, a protege of Bushnell’s, became the founder of the Children’s Aid Society of New York. He publicized widely the plight of children in New York’s slums and, finally, in an attempt to improve the lives of those children he organized what came to be known as “Orphan Trains” that sent New York orphans to better lives, supposedly, with settlers in the west. His name was Charles Loring Brace. Perhaps it is only coincidence that Loring’s rationale for creating parks and playgrounds in Minneapolis was often that children needed places to play and grow.
A final link between Minneapolis and Horace Bushnell’s long visit here. For many years, local historians have turned to a number of late 1800s-early 1900s profiles of Minneapolis that included “vanity” or “subscription” biographies of prominent citizens. One of those, A Half-Century of Minneapolis, was compiled by influential Minneapolis journalist Horace B. Hudson. You’ve probably already guessed the middle name of Mr. Hudson, who was born in 1861, shortly after Dr. Bushnell’s visit here. Yes, his full name is Horace Bushnell Hudson.
More than 150 years have passed since Horace Bushnell implored the people of the little towns on either side of St. Anthony Falls to acquire Nicollet Island as a park. Many attempts have been made, several surveys completed, many speeches delivered in favor and opposed, and part of it acquired, but it’s never become the park Bushnell imagined. Horace Bushnell’s ghost might haunt us until we get it right.
David C Smith
© David C. Smith
Minneapolis Park History 