Horace Cleveland’s House in Danvers
Filed under: Landscape Architects, Minneapolis parks | Tags: H. W. S. Cleveland, Horace Cleveland
Comments (3) For those who are curious about the house I referred to in my commentary in the StarTribune today in which I praised librarians, here is a photo.
Horace Cleveland lived in this house in Danvers, Mass. from 1857-1868 with his wife, two sons, two servants and his father. His father, Richard Cleveland, died in the house. He was a famous sea captain, one of the early merchant mariners who established a trading route between Salem and China. Sailing that treacherous route around Cape Horn, trading at ports along the way, took Richard Cleveland away from his family for years at a time.
The house did not appear to be occupied, although someone had mowed the grass. When Cleveland lived there, he also owned the five acres around the house. The lot is now 1.5 acres according to Zillow. A freeway passes within 100 yards of the house on the right side of the photo.
It was while living here that H.W.S. Cleveland, already in his 40s, began to look at “landscape gardening” as a profession and had his first commissions. Like his friend and colleague in later life, Frederick Law Olmsted, Cleveland was a farmer as a young man. In fact, they exhibited their produce at some of the same horticulture fairs years before either was associated with landscape architecture.
Danvers town archivist Richard Trask helped me piece together clues from Cleveland’s correspondence that led to us finding the house.
Cleveland’s home before he moved to Danvers is much more famous — but not because Cleveland lived there. The previous occupant of that house in Salem, Mass. wrote one of the most famous American novels while living there. The book was The Scarlet Letter, the author was Nathaniel Hawthorne. Hawthorne’s wife, Sofia Peabody, was a friend of Cleveland’s going back to their childhood.
The white plaque on the corner of the house tells the story.
The amount of information one can get by searching — and asking librarians or archivists for help — is truly astonishing.
David C. Smith
Dean Parkway History
I was asked yesterday about the history of Dean Parkway, the short parkway that connects the west side of Lake of the Isles to Bde Maka Ska from the southern shore of Kenilworth Lagoon to Lake Street. I’ve provided below a brief history of the parkway, which I originally wrote for the Minneapolis Park and Receation Board (MPRB) in 2008. MPRB’s website–minneapolisparks.org–provides histories of most parks in the system, but some of the parkway histories were dropped when the website was redesigned some time back. The Park Board’s website still provides historical information on most park properties and they continue to update my original drafts with recent developments.
I will review the historical information at the MPRB site to see if any other parkway histories could be posted here. I have already posted the original histories I wrote for East River Parkway and West River Parkway.
A historical note: the Dean Parkway history as well as others were written before the name of Lake Calhoun was changed to Bde Maka Ska. I have not gotten around to editing my old drafts to reflect that change. Someday!
Dean Parkway
Location: SW corner of Lake of the Isles to NW corner of Lake Calhoun
Size: 13.02 acres
Name: Named for Joseph Dean, an early settler in Minneapolis, whose children donated most of the land for the parkway.
Acquisition and Development
Park board records list the official date of the acquisition of Dean Parkway, which connects Lake of the Isles to Lake Calhoun, as July 6, 1892. But that date doesn’t tell the whole story.
Joseph Dean, his son, Alfred Dean, and others had offered to donate land to the park board for a lake-area parkway as early as October 1884. The original proposition was to donate land from Hennepin Avenue (which at that time was a parkway!) to Lake Calhoun—what is now Lake Street—and from Lake Calhoun to Lake of the Isles.
According to the 1892 annual report, the donation was accepted, in part, in 1887. (The annual report of 1886 already included Dean Parkway in the description of Lake of the Isles Boulevard and the 1887 annual report broke out the length of Dean Parkway—1.1 miles at the time—from the rest of the Lake of the Isles parkway.) The land connecting Calhoun and Isles and a 1200-foot strip of land along the north shore of Lake Calhoun was accepted from the Deans, but there were strings attached. The donors of the land asked that a road be opened along the entire length of the parkway by October 1, 1887. “That condition has never been complied with,” the board reported in the 1892 annual report, “because of more urgent calls for the expenditure of park funds in other directions.”
Attempts to resolve the issue were a bit messy from the start. In July 1889, Charles Loring, who had negotiated the original donation of the Dean’s land, as well as the donation of most of the shore of Lake of the Isles, perhaps a bit embarrassed that terms he had negotiated had not been complied with by the board, called the board’s attention to the matter of the delayed improvements. A month later park superintendent William Berry provided the board an estimate of the cost of building a 40-foot-wide parkway: $3,530. It was money the park board wouldn’t spend.
But there was another issue that complicated the affair: the track of the Chicago, Minneapolis and St. Paul Railroad crossed the land and a parkway would have to pass under those tracks, which had been built up over low-lying land. In late 1889, the park board began discussions with the railroad about building the drive under their track.
In 1890 and again in 1891, the heirs of Joseph Dean asked that the parkway be built as promised. The apparent patience of the Deans may have been rewarded along the way, however, by none other than Charles Loring. In November 1889, the park board had authorized Loring to negotiate with the owners of land lying between Lake Calhoun and Lake Harriet to acquire a parkway connecting those lakes. The owners of the largest piece of that land were the Deans. The park board’s instructions to Loring in those negotiations were to buy the land at the best price he could, but not to exceed $55,000 for the parcel owned by the Deans.
When Loring returned to the park board in January 1890 with an agreement to purchase the Dean’s land for what eventually became William Berry Park, he had agreed to pay them $77,000. The possibility that Loring had agreed to sweeten the deal for the Deans, perhaps as a reward for their patience over Dean Parkway, is suggested by the fact that the other parcel of land needed for William Berry Park was purchased for $36,000 from the Ueland family—exactly the “not to exceed” price specified by the board in Loring’s instructions.
The Dean’s may have received some additional compensation for their patience with the board when they sold to the board in 1891 the two blocks of land connecting east Calhoun and east Isles, which they had at one time donated. The park board had abandoned that donation, where the channel connecting the lakes was eventually built, so it could be replatted to straighten a proposed parkway there. The purchase price for that land was $22,565, payable without interest over ten years. But in a deal that was always perhaps too complicated, the Deans agreed to pay back up to half that amount through assessments on their remaining property in the vicinity.
The park board’s annual report in 1892 reported what seemed to be the happy conclusion of the acquisition of the Dean’s land connecting the lakes on the east when it reported that the “missing link” of the southwestern parkway system finally had been acquired. The report continued that the land “will certainly be of inestimable value should the discussed project of connecting these lakes by a canal be consummated.” This is the first mention in park board documents of the linking of Lake of the Isles and Lake Calhoun, which was eventually done in 1911.
The extent of Loring’s involvement in the resolution of the Dean Parkway issue was clear when, after the board and the Deans reached agreement on building the parkway in 1892, the Deans informed the board that they had executed a warranty deed for the property for the park board and left it in the possession of Charles Loring who would deliver it to the park board after a carriage drive was constructed over the property. What makes that action remarkable is that at the time Loring was no longer a park commissioner.
The railroad bridge over Dean Parkway, which had held up construction for some time, was not completed until 1896. Bridges over and under railroad tracks were a significant cost in the creation of the park system. For instance, the land for Dean Parkway was mostly donated and the initial parkway construction cost roughly $3,500, but the one railroad bridge cost more than $5,200.
Park superintendent Theodore Wirth submitted a plan in 1910 to improve the parkway and recommended in 1913 that the plan be executed, in part because the railroad had built a new concrete bridge over the parkway and the dredge working in Lake Calhoun had deposited on the northwest shore of the lake considerable fill needed for the parkway. The road work, which would cost nearly $8,000, was begun in 1914, at which time more than 55,000 cubic yards of fill were used from the Calhoun dredging. The road and walks were completed to subgrade and finished the next year.
At the time, park superintendent Theodore Wirth suggested that with the ground filled and leveled it could at some time become a playground. Wirth later referred to the improvements to Dean Parkway as an example of how swamps could be drained and how once-impassable roads could be made among the best in the park system.
In 1951 the City Engineering Department completed a new arrangement of the intersection of Dean Parkway with Lake Street, complete with traffic signals, intended to alleviate traffic problems.
Dean Parkway was not finally paved until 1972. The most recent improvements to Dean Parkway, including repaving and traffic calming measures were completed in 1996.
Trivia
The 750 feet of road from Dean Parkway to Cedar Lake over the tracks of the then Minneapolis and St. Louis Railroad did not become a part of the Grand Rounds until 1929. That year the city and the railroad paid for the park board to pave the short connecting strip and it was turned over to the park board as part of the parkway system. The connection had long been planned but never took place officially until then. Park superintendent Theodore Wirth had campaigned for the strip to be turned over to the park board as early as 1920. The park board had submitted a plan to the city planning commission in 1923 to make that connection as the park board was contemplating the acquisition of the east and north shores of Cedar Lake.
David Carpentier Smith
Rails, Trails, and Sorrow
Filed under: Minneapolis parks | Tags: Cedar Lake Trail, Harry Perry Robinson, John Helland, Joseph McAleer, Peter Harnik, Stone Arch Bridge
Comments (5) My park-related reading and the death of an important Minnesotan converged last week.
I was reading Peter Harnik’s From Rails to Trails: The Making of America’s Active Transportation Network due to my interest in the movement that led to the creation of the Cedar Lake Trail and the conversion of the Stone Arch Bridge into a pedestrian and bicycle trail. Reading about converting railroad tracks to trails took me back to one of my favorite books this year, Escape Artist: The Nine Lives of Harry Perry Robinson by Joseph McAleer. Harry Robinson, among several lifetimes (nine!) worth of accomplishments, was an advocate for creating all those railroads in the late 1800s.
As I was contemplating the efforts to create, then repurpose railroads, I saw the obituary for John Helland and an accompanying tribute to him by Dennis Anderson in the StarTribune . Helland was a retired research and policy analyst for the Minnesota Legislature. What McAleer, Harnik and Helland have in common — superficially, at least — is that I met them through these pages. Rich compensation for work that is otherwise not remunerated. They all wrote to me with questions or comments on my posts here, some of which were public and attributed, others exchanged privately in-person or by email.
I wrote a few months ago that I looked forward to reading McAleer’s biography of Harry Robinson, an Englishman who put his stamp on Minneapolis in the 1880s as a journalist, friend to the powerful, and son-in-law of one of Minneapolis’s most influential men, Thomas Lowry. The book lived up to my expectations as it unfolded the story of Robinson’s journey from itinerant Oxford grad to gold prospector to journalist who was knighted for reporting from the trenches of World War I to spokesman for the expedition that discovered and opened King Tut’s tomb. Robinson had more adventures than you or I and he also wrote brilliantly about those adventures, other pressing issues, and the sometimes unsettling prejudices of his time. McAleer chose wisely in sharing freely with his readers the power and wit of Robinson’s own writing through frequent quotations and excerpts from Robinson’s journalism, correspondence, and fiction. Robinson’s considerable influence was due to his writing skill and it is appropriate that his biographer gives us the flavor of that writing.
It was Robinson’s role of railroad advocate — he founded The Northwestern Railroader, a Minneapolis-based magazine in the 1880s and was later the editor of the Chicago-based Railway Age — that resonated as I read Harnik’s book. Harnik was the cofounder of Rails-to-Trails Conservancy, which advocates converting abandoned railroads to recreation trails. He tells the story of the movement to repurpose an asset at one stage of our history into a quite different asset in a quite different time. Among the projects he mentions are not only the Stone Arch Bridge and Cedar Lake Trail in Minneapolis but also the Cannon Valley Trail in southeastern Minnesota. Harry Robinson was a champion of clearing the land and laying the track, Harnik was a champion of acquiring those same ribbons of land when they no longer carried trains and resurfacing them for recreational use. Both saw value in those strips of land that crisscrossed nearly every county in the country.
Of particular note was that Robinson and Harnik both recognized the necessity of grass roots activism to achieve their objectives. Robinson helped organize “railroad men” into local clubs that largely supported railroad management and their preferred political candidates. Robinson claimed the clubs he helped organize were non-partisan but they generally served Republican interests. After McKinley defeated Bryant in the 1896 presidential election, the new President personally thanked Robinson for his support and organizing efforts on his behalf.
Harnik’s conservancy also recognized the necessity of local champions of rail trails and also asserted its non-partisan nature — more accurately so than Robinson. He cites many examples of cooperation from both sides of the political fence. As different as their objectives appear to have been, I think its fair to say that Robinson and Harnik believed they worked for a common good and both sought allies on carefully targeted issues rather than broader ideological causes.
I was also struck by Robinson’s observations of Americans from his privileged position in English society. McAleer writes, “The American character and can-do spirit had impressed him [Harry] deeply. Twenty years later, Harry reflected on ‘the notion that every American is, without any special training, by mere gift of birthright, competent to any task that may be set him.'”
While our history carries ample warnings of the dangers of an over-zealous belief in American exceptionalism, Harry Robinson’s observations seem corroborated by Peter Harnik’s accounts. He cites many examples of people without prior qualifications taking it upon themselves to organize, plan and execute efforts to secure old railroad beds, tunnels and bridges for public use. In many cases they stood against the formidable might of railroad corporations and at times intransigent public and private bureaucracies. Harnik’s heroes come from all corners of private and public life, from those who had profit and non-profit motives as well as those who really didn’t care much about motives but saw something they thought needed doing and, as Harry Robinson would have appreciated, thought they could do.
As I consumed this stew of railroads and trails, non-partisan commitment to service, and the constantly evolving notion of the public good — against a backdrop of great adventures — came the news that John Helland had died. Dennis Anderson laid out the details of Helland’s service to Minnesota as the legislative staff person responsible for writing many of the state’s environmental and conservation laws. Anderson noted that Helland “and others like him in government, are the dutiful — and smart — ones who write the laws and policies that legislators oftentimes can only imagine.” Anderson also applauded Helland’s professional non-partisanship.
I was especially pleased that Anderson included “smart” in his description of Helland and others like him in government. From my own service in the federal government and from working closely with people in local government service, from municipal to park to library employees, I have enormous respect for employees in the public sector. Their work is in many respects more difficult than work in the private sector because they work for so many bosses and must serve, or at least consider, so many competing agendas. Yet they accomplish so much with intelligence and grace. As did John Helland.
Sir Harry Perry Robinson’s life, apart from adventure and glamor, is at its core a worthwhile jumping off point for consideration of so many pertinent contemporary issues: economics, politics and government, heritage, journalism, relations among nations, and more. Whether we agree or not with his views today, they are threads in the tapestry we have become. McAleer’s book about a man and Harnik’s book about a movement compel us to think about how we define and balance private gain and public good. Helland’s legacy, perhaps even more than the natural resources he helped conserve, is his example of how to pursue that balance.
Hall’s Island Redux
Filed under: Minneapolis Parks: General | Tags: Graco Park, Hall's Island
Leave a Comment With the Park Board’s request yesterday for input on plans for the new Graco Park at Hall’s Island, I thought it might be a good time to pull out of mothballs my original post on the history of Hall’s Island. The following was originally published in 2012 as The Re-creation of Hall’s Island: Part I. I have restored the link to the original post here, if you’d prefer. I had removed the post from the website because I intended to write much more about changes to the river, but that project is on hold for now and I think this information may be useful as background to those considering the history and the future of the island and surroundings. I must admit that this is one of my favorite posts.
The Re-creation of Hall’s Island: Part I (originally published March 14, 2012)
Before he saved enough money to go to medical school, Pearl Hall’s job as a teenager in the mid-1870s was pitching wood onto a cart at a lumber yard near the Plymouth Avenue Bridge on the east bank of the Mississippi River. He remembered vividly from those days of hard labor what he called a little steeple of land sticking out of the Mississippi near the bridge. He could see the tiny patch of ground when he stood on top of his loaded wagon–and he saw the little steeple gradually grow.
What Pearl Hall saw from his perch of pine was the beginning of Hall’s Island, the island that as Dr. P. M. Hall he would eventually acquire and turn over to the city, the island that became the site of a popular municipal bath house, the island that eventually was dredged onto the east bank of the great river, and the island that the Minneapolis park board will soon begin to re-create as the first step in its RiverFIRST development plan.
Hall didn’t think about that little speck of land again until he was elected to be Minneapolis’s Health Officer in 1901. Then he wrestled with the problem all health officers everywhere wrestled with and usually lost to: how to dispose of garbage. Not just coffee grounds, melon rinds, and chicken bones, but real garbage — offal, dead horses, night soil — where death could take took root and grow.
Read more »Wirth Lake Mystery Structure
Filed under: Minneapolis parks | Tags: Loring Cascade, Theodore Wirth Lake, Theodore Wirth Park
Comments (2) Rod Miller asked if I knew what this was. I didn’t.
The concrete structure lies west of Wirth Lake between the lake and Theodore Wirth Parkway north of the remnants of the Loring Cascade.
Could it have been a storage facility or root cellar when the park board’s nursery was located in Wirth Park? The nursery was originally established there in the early 1900s on the suggestion of William Folwell to reduce the cost of acquiring the trees being planted throughout the city.
Or was it a structure related to the former farm on the site? The farm house served as a residence for the park board horticulturist unti the mid-1960s. Why was the structure built below grade? Do the concrete construction method or metal grates in the roof help to date the structure?
It is apparently not related to the artificial Loring Cascade which was built in the 1918 and relied on water pumped from the lake. Nor was it likely part of later efforts–beginning in the late 1950s–to pump water from Bassett’s Creek to the Chain of Lakes. There is no sign of the piping that would have been required in those efforts and the structure is probably too far north and west to have been part of those projects.
If you know what the concrete structure was used for and when it was built, please post a comment.
David Carpentier Smith
Broken Tackle: Fritz Pollard and Pudge Heffelfinger
Filed under: Minneapolis parks | Tags: Fritz Pollard, Heffelfinger Fountain, Minneapolis football, Pudge Heffelfinger
Comments (1) In the course of research that resulted in Joe Lillard Superstar in these pages a few days ago, I came across an anecdote that I thought was funny involving another athlete with Minnesota connections, Pudge Heffelfinger. The story recalled the time Heffelfinger met Fritz Pollard at a reunion of players who had been named to Walter Camp’s All-America football teams.
William Heffelfinger, known from childhood as “Pudge,” was the son of C.B. Heffelfinger whose men’s shoe store had been on Bridge Square in Minneapolis since the late 1860s. Pudge played football with crushing physicality and was a behemoth for his day at 6’3″ and 195 pounds. His day was late 19th Century. He was a three-time All-America tackle at Yale 1889-1891 and is often considered the first professional football player. He allegedly was already receiving “double expenses” when he played for the Chicago Athletic Association in 1892, but when the Allegheny Athletic Association team of Pittsburgh was preparing to play their Pittsburgh rivals they offered Heffelfinger $500 to take the train down from Chicago and help them win, which he did. He recovered a fumble and returned it for the game’s only score.
Frederick Douglas “Fritz” Pollard was a kid from the north side of Chicago who became an All-America halfback at Brown University in 1916. In 1920 Pollard was one of the first two Black players in what became the NFL along with Bobby Marshall from Minneapolis Central High School and the University of Minnesota. Pollard also became the first Black coach in the NFL with the Akron Pros in 1921. Pollard was 5’9″ and about 165 but had firefly — now-you-see-me-now-you-don’t — elusiveness.
The story goes that Heffelfinger was introduced to Pollard at the reunion dinner for many of the greatest players in the history of the game in the 1920s. Players of that stature often have, shall we say, an abundance of self-confidence as well as an ease with the playful banter of the locker room. Heffelfinger, then in his 50s was probably still his full youthful height but if he was like most men, he had augmented his playing weight by a belt notch or two. Pollard was in competitive shape, but still six inches shorter. The difference in size prompted Heffelfinger to comment as they shook hands, “Mr. Pollard, if you were playing in my day, I think I might have broken you in two.” Pollard responded with a smile, “Mr. Heffelfinger, I don’t think you could have broken my stride.”
Apocryphal? Maybe. But who cares, its a great story. It’s the kind of retort I wouldn’t have thought of until the next day!
Heffelfinger became a successful real estate developer in Minneapolis and infuential in Minnesota politics. The Heffelfinger name is preserved in Minneapolis parks by an Italian fountain in the Rose Garden which was donated to Minneapolis parks in 1947 by Frank Heffelfinger, Pudge’s brother.
David Carpentier Smith
Joe Lillard Superstar
Filed under: Minneapolis Parks: General | Tags: Joe Lillard, Minneapolis football, The Parade
Comments (6) Very few people in the crowd of 15,000 fans who watched the Sunday afternoon park league football game between the Foshays and the Christian Lindsays at Parade field in Minneapolis knew they were watching one of the greatest American athletes of their time. Newspaper coverage of the game, which the Foshays won 26-0, noted only that Joe Lillard played fullback, led the interference on a touchdown run by a teammate, and kicked two extra points. Two weeks earlier, however, the Minneapolis Tribune reported that in the Foshays’ 19-0 win Joe Lillard had played in “his customary brilliant manner” leading the Foshays offense with “a series of spectacular runs.”
The year was 1928. There were no bleachers at the Parade football field, everyone stood. The sponsor of Lillard’s team was W.B. Foshay, whose company was nearing completion of a new business tower in downtown Minneapolis — the tallest building between Chicago and San Francisco. And, although none of the Minneapolis newspapers mentioned it, Joe Lillard was Black. On the football field, he did it all. He blocked, ran, passed, caught, defended, punted and drop-kicked extra points.
Many sports fans then and later knew Lillard as different things, like the proverbial blind men coming to terms with an elephant. Iowans already knew Lillard as an all-state high school football, basketball and track star from Mason City, a small city about 150 miles south of Minneapolis.
Basketball fans in Chicago, and well beyond, already knew Lillard as one of the best basketball players in the country. He had been one of the stars of the newly formed Savoy Big Five playing at the Savoy ballroom in Chicago in the 1927-1928 season. After the Savoys had beaten the vaunted Pittsburgh Loendis twice that year, Cum Posey of the Loendis claimed Lillard was the best player on that superb Savoy team. In case the name isn’t familiar, Cumberland Posey has been enshrined in both the baseball and basketball halls of fame, so he knew something about players with skills. In his later years, Lillard played some for the Harlem Globe Trotters, but for several winters in his prime he headlined his own successful barnstorming basketball team.
Doc Spears, the corpulent head football coach of the universities of Minnesota, Oregon and Wisconsin in the 1930s, and a real doctor, once called Lillard the greatest all-around athlete he had ever seen. In slightly different language, Brooklyn Times-Union sports writer Irwin Rosee noted in 1934 that Lillard “has generally been recognized as the most versatile colored athlete.” Rosee was writing about Lillard not as a football or basketball player, but as a pitcher for the Chicago American Giants of the Negro League. Two years earlier a Madison, Wisconsin newspaper baseball writer asserted that Lillard “would be pitching in the major leagues if there were not a color ban.” By the way, Lillard could hit and field a little too; he played right field when he wasn’t on the mound for some of the best itinerant baseball teams of the 1930s.
Lillard did make the major leagues in his day in one sport: football. That might be the only reason we know of his athletic prowess. In 1932 the NFL’s Chicago Cardinals signed Lillard as a running back who also substituted as a quarterback thanks to his potent arm. Lillard followed in the footsteps of Fritz Pollard, Bobby Marshall, Duke Slater, Paul Robeson and only a handful of other African Americans who had integrated professional football in the 1920s and 1930s. But Lillard is known today as a football player primarily because he was the last Black man to play in the NFL for 13 years. After Lillard’s second season with the Cardinals, when he was among league leaders as a runner, passer and kicker, he wasn’t offered another contract. The league’s owners refused to hire another Black man from then until the new Los Angeles Rams were pressured into signing UCLA great Kenny Washington before they started playing in the Los Angeles Coliseum in 1946.
Joe Lillard and Kenny Washington, the two men who stood on either end of that 13-year gap of whiteness in the NFL, knew each other well. In April 1945, as World War II was winding down, the USO (United Service Organization) arranged a tour of prominent Black athletes to visit American troops around the world. It was one of many tours featuring entertainers and athletes intended to boost troop morale. Incidentally, both men were coming off their own tours in the military during the war.
Joining Lillard and Washington on the tour were boxer Henry Armstrong and baseball and basketball great Bill Yancey. Armstrong was the most famous of the group because he had held world championship boxing titles in three weight classes at the same time. This was when boxing got more ink in the nation’s newspapers year round than any other sport. Boxing trainer and commentator Teddy Atlas last year selected Armstrong as the greatest boxer — ever. Yancey isn’t as well known today, but as a basketball player for the great New York Rens and a shortstop in the Negro Leagues he would have been known to sports fans, especially young Black soldiers.
The highly successful USO tour lasted three months and circled the globe. Led by sportswriter Dan Burley, the athletes visited Pacific islands, the Phillipines, China, Burma, India, Pakistan, Iraq, Jerusalem, Egypt, and, after crossing North Africa, finally jumped back across the Atlantic from Casablanca to New York.
I wonder what the old NFLer and the future NFLer talked about on those long flights. The two men, both policemen at the time, Lillard in New York and Washington in LA, probably wondered when a Black man would get another chance in the NFL. Just six months after their tour, Washington was signed to fill Lillard’s long-empty shoes. That was still more than a year before Washington’s football teammate at UCLA, Jack Robinson, broke the color barrier in baseball.
We would know a whole lot more about Joe Lillard if he had been white or had lived a few decades later. As it is, Minneapolis can lay small claim to Lillard as a resident and standout athlete in city parks for a couple years. He moved to Minneapolis after leaving Mason City high school in 1927 to be with his girlfriend from Minneapolis, Jewel Bannarn. They were married that year. Lillard’s name doesn’t show up in Minneapolis directories of that time, but he said later that he worked at the Nicollet Hotel on Washington Avenue and Rogers Cafe on South Fourth St. He apparently only played football in the Minneapolis park league for the 1928 and 1929 seasons before heading for the University of Oregon and later the Chicago Cardinals. The only time he was listed in a Minneapolis directory was 1930 when he and Jewell were listed as residing on East Franklin Avenue with her parents and brothers. His occupation was listed then as “ball player” — a more talented one, pick your sport, than many people appreciated at the time.
There is much more to the Joe Lillard story, but that will be a part of a larger work now in progress. I’ll let you know when and where that will be available.
David Carpentier Smith
© 2021 David Carpentier Smith 2021
Harry Perry Robinson Gets a Biography
Filed under: Minneapolis Parks: General | Tags: Harry Perry Robinson, John S. Bradstreet, Joseph McAleer, Lake of the Isles, Makwa Club
Comments (1) One of the larger-than-life characters from Minneapolis history in the late 1800s has his own biography now and I just ordered my copy. I wrote about Englishman Perry Robinson in my story about the Makwa Club and in an earlier story about his best friend in Minneapolis, famous interior designer and park commissioner John Scott Bradstreet. (I have just reposted my article, one of my favorites, about Bradstreet and his proposed Japanese temple on an island in Lake of the Isles.)
Escape Artist: The Nine Lives of Harry Perry Robinson by Joseph McAleer is already out as an e-book and will be released in print October 1. You can order a copy from publisher Oxford University Press or Amazon or your favorite local book store (highly recommended).
I haven’t read it yet, but I know a good bit about Robinson and I had the opportunity to hear more stories about him from author Joe McAleer. Joe visited Minneapolis while researching the Robinson story and over a burger at Red Cow we had a chance to talk about the dynamic Englishman who adopted Minneapolis for awhile–and married the daughter of one of its leading citizens. And that’s barely a footnote in a story that includes American Presidents, English Kings (modern) and Egyptian Kings (ancient) and runs from the gold mines in the United States to the trenches of World War I to Robinson being knighted Sir Harry.
Initial reviews out of the United Kingdom are very positive. If this story doesn’t end up on Netflix, I’ll be astonished. But don’t wait for the movie.
David Carpentier Smith
Ironing Out Minnehaha Creek’s Wrinkles
Filed under: Minneapolis parks, Minnehaha Creek, Minnehaha Falls | Tags: Minnehaha Creek
Comments (4) A reader checked in a few weeks ago with a question: Did Minnehaha Creek ever cross West 54th Street in the southwest corner of Minneapolis?
I pulled out my 1903 Minneapolis Real Estate Atlas and was surprised to find that the creek did cross what is now West 54th St. for a few hundred feet. At that time, 54th St. was the southern city limit of Minneapolis.
The park board didn’t acquire this section of Minnehaha Creek — from Humboldt to Zenith — until 1930, and graded and straightened sections of the creek in 1932. The creek would have been straightened here as elsewhere to avoid the expense of building bridges. (Read more about the acquisition and development of this section of Minnehaha Creek. Go to the “History” tab at the bottom of the page.)
The section of Minnehaha Creek acquired in 1930 never had a parkway built along it as was done east of Humboldt. That was partly because some homes had already been built near the creek and also because the creek banks were much steeper here than to the east. But even if it had been perfectly flat and unoccupied, the Great Depression had set in so there was no money for new parkways.
According to Hennepin County property records the first house along this section of W. 54th St. was not built until 1942. That was a rarity because very few houses were built in Hennepin County during World War II due to a shortage of labor and materials. The rest of the houses along the street were built after the war, mostly from 1948 on.
What other changes were made to the course of Minnehaha Creek over the years? Here are three other sections of the creek from the 1903 atlas that you can compare to Google Maps to see what’s changed. Most of the changes were made in the 1920s partly to make it easier to improve the parkway to accommodate car traffic and partly to shorten the course of the creek to try to increase water flow over Minnehaha Falls in drought years — which was most years in the 1920s-1950s. No one seemed to like an empty creek and dry falls.
You can view many other early maps of Minneapolis — and spend hours and hours of COVID-avoidance free time — at the University of Minnesota’s John Borchert Map Library website. Countless maps — and aerial photography as well. You’ll be happier and smarter. Stay healthy.
David Carpentier Smith
How Long?
Filed under: Minneapolis Parks: General | Tags: Earl Wilkins, Johnny Baker, St. Paul Echo
Leave a Comment As one with the good fortune to spend much of my time consulting historical documents for various projects, I come across a great deal of writing that I would like to share with all of you interested in parks, history, and improving life for all of us. Most of it I tuck away for later use, but this morning, while scouring sources for information on the Johnny Baker American Legion Post baseball team started by Bobby Marshall in 1927, I found a piece that I thought needs sharing more expeditiously. I am reaching across our great river with this one for it was written by Earl Wilkins, brother of Roy, when Earl was the editor of The St. Paul Echo an “Independent Negro Weekly Newspaper.” Unfortunately the Echo was only published for two years 1925-1927.
Here is the editorial published in the Echo December 12, 1925.
THE PRESIDENT SPEAKS
Once more the president has delivered his annual message to congress, and once more a plea of tolerance for the Negro has been made. Outlining the facts that the Negro makes up nearly one tenth of the population of the United States, that he is one of the most loyal citizens of the country and that he has made almost incredible progress during 60 years in various arts, President Coolidge urges the necessity of securing to that large element in the population equal justice and protection from violence, and of punishing any persons who attempt violence upon that group.
In passing it may not be unwise to note that the effectiveness of the recommendations in this matter will depend largely upon the degree of earnestness which the president displays in that regard. If his later attitude shows an aggressive belief in the rights of his colored citizens, those rights will be more generally respected both as to individual treatment throughout the country, and to beneficial legislative enactment. Should he retreat, however to a lukewarm state now that the message has been broadcasted, the same evils of omitted action will be in evidence in the coming year as have often prevailed in the past.
The tragically humorous part of the message about the Negro is that the executive pleads in a way with certain elements in the country not to harm colored people. People who do commit violent acts upon Negroes should be punished, he says. That it should be necessary in this enlightened stage of civilization’s progress, in a country which is admittedly Christian and one of the most progressive nations on the globe, to plead with the body of citizens that they should not harm any of the groups which make up the whole, is downright funny. Funnier still is that fact that the caution is not based upon unfounded whim, but upon the revolting truth that within the confines of these United States brutal crime is committed almost unchecked by a portion of the nine-tenths upon the ever-progressing one-tenth. Grim humor, that! Humor of the sort that is daily making smiling-faced black men with seething hearts realize more and more that only in co-operation among themselves can an integration be developed which will result in greater protection from within. Humor that can look back proudly upon six decades of eventful achievement in the face of supreme difficulties. Humor that glances undaunted into whatever the future may bring.
I doubt Wilkins could have imagined “undaunted” this future. Nearly a century. If I were cynical I would ask, “Where is President Coolidge when we need him?” Words no one ever could have imagined hearing.
David Carpentier Smith
P.S. If anyone has information on the Johnny Baker baseball team in 1927 and 1928 please let me know.
Parks and Plagues
Filed under: Minneapolis parks | Tags: Cavell Park, Kenny Park, Parade Stadium, polio scare, Sister Elizabeth Kenny
Comments (5) The battle against COVID-19 brings to mind a couple episodes in Minneapolis park history.
Several people have asked if anything similar to the coronavirus-related closures of park buildings has happened in Minneapolis history. From my notes I can find no references to the impact on parks in 1918 of the Spanish flu, but polio did have a significant impact on parks in the years after WWII. The park board’s 1946 annual report notes that there was a sharp upward post-war trend in attendance at parks but it was “cut short” by the polio epidemic. Park superintendent Charles Doell in his segment of the report claimed that most summer recreation programs had to be shut down in July due to the polio scare. Parents wouldn’t allow their kids to go to parks, or beaches, because it was thought that the polio virus was transmitted through bathing water.
The final two weeks of the 1946 concert season at Lake Harriet were cancelled due to the epidemic and community sings were cancelled in July for the remainder of the season due to the polio scare. The sings were conducted for the rest of the summer over radio station WDGY.
The polio scare lasted much longer than we expect the coronavirus scare to last. Three years later, the park board reported that a new spike in polio cases and the associated “scare” had slashed beach attendance in 1949 by 68%. (The polio scare didn’t end until Jonas Salk developed a vaccine for the virus, which went into use in 1955.)
Sister Elizabeth Kenny, 1950. By New York World-Telegram and the Sun staff photographer – Library of Congress Prints and Photographs Division.
The most lasting reminder of the polio epidemic, however, is Kenny Park. The park was named in 1955 for Sister Elizabeth Kenny, an Australian nurse who promoted a successful treatment for many polio victims. There was no cure. (“Sister” was a courtesy title for a nurse in the British Commonwealth, not a religious title.)
Kenny established an institute in Minneapolis, her base in the U.S., for the treatment of polio patients. In 1951 she was named in a Gallup Poll as the most admired woman in the U.S., the only woman to be so named in the first 20 years of the award who wasn’t a First Lady.
One of the only other connections between Minneapolis parks and present pandemic discussions is reference to the Defense Production Authority. President Trump last week invoked this authority, created in 1950 during the Korean War, and later backed away from it, to assert the control of the federal government over producing and securing medical supplies. It is cited now in regard to protective equipment and ventilators, but its application was far broader in 1950.
When the authority was created one of its provisions was to prohibit the construction of recreation and amusement projects in order to conserve materials for defense purposes. The authority would have killed park board plans to build a 17,000-seat lighted football stadium at the Parade. The stadium had been the highest-priority project on the park board’s post-war (WWII) project list.
Parade Stadium, 1952. Loring Park in background, Walker Art Center top right. Minneapolis Park and Recreation Board.
Park superintendent Charles Doell and mayor Eric Hoyer went to Washington to argue for stadium construction and came home with approval to proceed because the project was initiated before creation of the Defense Production Authority. Another park project was also given a green light at that time because construction had already begun: Waite Park School and Park, a joint project of the park board and school board.
Can you think of other health-related restrictions on park usage, other than periodic e coli-related beach closures?
Two Minneapolis parks are named for nurses from the British Commonwealth. The other is…Cavell Park, named for Edith Cavell.
David Carpentier Smith
To Bee or Not to Bee: Are You Pollinator Friendly?
Filed under: Minneapolis parks | Tags: Bee habitat, Dr. Marla Spivak, Minneapolis Parks Foundation, Pollinators
Leave a Comment The Minneapolis Parks Foundation provided an enlightening evening Thursday with Dr. Marla Spivak, U of M professor of entomology, more commonly known as the “Bee Lady,” who spoke about the health of bees. Of particular interest was the promotion and maintenance of pollinator-friendly landscapes in our parks and yards.
The endangered rusty patched bumble bee from the University of Minnesota Bee Lab’s Bee ID website
My guess is that, like me, the couple hundred others in attendance at the Walker left the event calculating how to convert some or all of their yards into more pollinator-friendly habitat. Dr. Spivak is that convincing. She has the rare ability to explain problems and identify solutions without bombast, exaggeration or condescension. It is an ability that I associate with top-level scientists who seem more able than most of us to sift fact from emotion, opinion or belief. If you missed her on Thursday, please look for other opportunities to hear Dr. Spivak speak.
One of her comments stood out in a park-history context. She noted the value of cottonwood trees in maintaining healthy bee colonies. The resin that coats the leaf buds has beneficial properties for bees.
That led me to think of the creeks that flowed through the unbroken prairies of a couple centuries ago and the fact that one of the trees most commonly found along those creeks was cottonwood. To prove the point, the cottonwood is the state tree of Nebraska, Kansas and Wyoming! (A few huge cottonwoods can be found along Minnehaha Creek.) The tree was disappointing to many early settlers because it was not particularly useful for humans other than as a provider of shade. It didn’t burn well and wasn’t much good for lumber — much like the elm! — but it also outgrew and shaded-off trees considered more desirable. The disadvantage of the cottonwood compared to the elm, especially in an urban setting, is that it is messy. The “cotton” that carries the seeds can be annoying and, to use one of Theodore Wirth’s favorite words from a century ago, “unsightly.” I know because I have to sweep a pile of “cotton” out of my garage and dislodge it from my porch screens every summer. It can be a nuisance.
The specific connection to park history? In January 1905 the park board passed a new set of ordinances. Among them was one that prohibited the planting of cottonwood and box elder trees along Minneapolis streets!
I presume the cottonwood was banned for its profusion of clingy cotton seeds. The box elder was banned because of the black and red box elder bugs that lived in it. (There was a box elder tree across the alley from my boyhood home in St. Paul and I can confirm that the bugs were unpleasant.)
I have no idea when — or if — the 1905 ordinance was ever rescinded. The relevance of the ordinance to the discussion of bee health today is that of unintended consequences. I’m sure that no one in 1905 knew of the importance of cottonwood trees to the health of pollinators and our food supply. Did that ordinance contribute to the long-term decline in pollinators described by Dr. Spivak? Now we know to think of such contingencies.
My intent is not to disparage those who passed an ordinance 115 year ago, but to underscore our constant increase in knowledge and understanding of the world and the interconnectedness of things. I am grateful to people like Dr Spivak who expand our understanding and allow us to improve our world in ways that generations before us could not have done because they didn’t know what we know. We need to listen more to people who actually know stuff.
To learn more on the subject of bees and pollinator-friendly habitat visit the websites of the Bee Lab and the Minnesota Board of Water and Soil Resources.
A final word: the Minneapolis Park and Recreation Board has a professional staff that has long been committed to protecting the environment and improving management of our city’s natural resources. I think they do remarkable work and have for nearly 140 years — even as knowledge has increased, management techniques have evolved, and public perceptions and desires have shifted. That’s why we have the park system we have. To suggest otherwise is simply ignorant and I question the motives of those who do. (I’m not as tactful as Dr. Spivak; she’s a MacArthur Fellow and I’m not!) I applaud Tom Evers, Executive Director of the Minneapolis Parks Foundation, for praising park board staff in his introduction of Thursday night’s program.
David Carpentier Smith
Minneapolis Park History 