Theodore Wirth Gets a New Home…and Office
Filed under: Minneapolis Parks: General | Tags: Lyndale Farmstead, Minneapolis parks, Superintendent's House, Theodore Wirth, Theodore Wirth House
Comments (6) I think I’ve finally got it: the last chapter in the saga of building a house for celebrated Minneapolis parks superintendent Theodore Wirth at Lyndale Farmstead. The ending is much more intriguing than I had previously known. I discovered it just a little more than 100 years after the construction of the house! The story told in the Lyndale Farmstead pages at minneapolisparks.org is true—as far as it goes.
The comptroller of Minneapolis, Dan Brown, did refuse to countersign the contract between the Minneapolis Board of Park Commissioners and C. P. Johnson and Son to build a house for Theodore Wirth at Lyndale Farmstead, a Minneapolis park. I had previously assumed that because the house was built in 1910 anyway, that the park board had found a way around getting Mr. Brown’s John Hancock on a contract. That was my mistake. The park board finally did get Dan Brown to countersign the contract, but it took a bit of legal work—and a divided opinion by the Minnesota Supreme Court.
Documentaries on Minneapolis Parks
A TPT documentary on Twin Cities parks, “Parks for the People,” has been nominated for a regional Emmy award. The awards program is Saturday night in Minneapolis. Good luck to producers Diane Steinbach and Dan Bergin and their crew. The program premiered on TPT last October.
While on the subject, congratulations to Joey Keiski, a seventh grader last year at Lake Harriet Community School, who took second place at Minnesota History Day last spring in the Junior Individual Documentary category for “Minneapolis Parks.”
David C. Smith
Was landscape architect Warren Manning the first to propose a public golf course in a Minneapolis park?
Filed under: Landscape Architects, Minneapolis Golf Courses, Minneapolis Parks: General | Tags: Horace Cleveland, Minneapolis golf, Minneapolis parks, Sculpture Garden, The Parade, Thomas Lowry, Warren Manning
Comments (2) Under the headline “Fine Park Is Assured”, the Minneapolis Tribune ran a story on November 15, 1903 that contained details I had never seen on plans for a golf course and baseball field in a Minneapolis park. The basic facts of the article are well-known: Thomas Lowry, along with William Dunwoody and Seurity Bank, offered to donate land at the foot of Lowry Hill for what eventually became The Parade.
What was new (to me) in the story was that when Lowry submitted his proposal to donate land down the hill from his mansion he also submitted designs for the park. The plans were prepared by well-known landscape architect Warren Manning at Lowry’s request. Lowry also offered to foot the cost of implementing Manning’s plan. Lowry eventually did donate thousands of dollars to help the park board convert the land to a park, but Manning’s plans were never mentioned in park board records.
Read more »Frederick Law Olmsted and Minneapolis Parks
Filed under: Landscape Architects, Minneapolis parks | Tags: Frederick Law Olmsted, H.W.S. Cleveland, Horace Cleveland, Minneapolis parks, Washburn Fair Oaks, William D. Washburn
Comments (3) How many Minneapolis parks did Frederick Law Olmsted design? How about his sons, Junior and JC? I believe the grand total is zero.
Some people have a mistaken notion that Olmsted, the godfather of American parks, played a role in the creation of Minneapolis parks. The impression was created in part by a letter Olmsted wrote to the Minneapolis park board in 1886 and by claims that Olmsted designed the grounds around William Washburn’s mansion Fair Oaks, which later became Washburn Fair Oaks Park.
A city claiming that Olmsted designed a park is akin to an inn in the East declaring “George Washington slept here.” A quick way to impress. The difference is that exhaustive records and correspondence document what Olmsted actually did, while there is little proof of where George laid his wooden teeth on any given night.
Read more »Connecting Lake Harriet and Lake Calhoun
Filed under: Lake Calhoun, Lake Harriet | Tags: Lake Calhoun, Lake Harriet, Lyndale Railway Company, Minneapolis parks
Comments (6) Imagine a canal between Lake Harriet and Lake Calhoun. It nearly happened long before Minneapolis had a park board. If that canal had been built when it was first authorized, in 1879, Lake Harriet and Lake Calhoun may never have become parks. All we would know of those lakes today might be from a public access landing for boats. Imagine Lake Harriet and Lake Calhoun like Lake Minnetonka with mansions, Mc and real, within a spit of the water, a private lake instead of a public one. But let’s back up.
Read more »The first environmental legislation in Minneapolis?
Filed under: Lake Calhoun | Tags: Clean Water Legislation, Lake Calhoun, Lake Minnetonka
Leave a Comment Minneapolis has acquired parks in less time than it’s taken me to start this blog. No joke. I was planning to get this blog going well before the park board considered acquiring the Scherer Brothers site along the Mississippi River in Northeast. Now that acquisition is completed. Brilliant, by the way. A no-brainer. Above the Falls will someday be as spectacular as Below the Falls. Different, but spectacular — nearly 100 years after the first suggestions that the park board acquire the banks of the Mississippi above St. Anthony Falls. It’s happening bit by bit. As in the early days. It took the park board several attempts and nearly twenty years after its creation to acquire the river banks below the falls. The goal then was to preserve land for public use, to prevent it from being destroyed. Now it is to reclaim it.
Which brings me to an interesting bit of information on early preservation and environmental protection efforts in Minneapolis. On February 26, 1879, four years and one day before the Minnesota legislature created a Board of Park Commissioners for Minneapolis it passed Chapter 339 of the Special Laws of Minnesota, entitled “An Act To Preserve The Purity Of Certain Lakes In Hennepin Country By Prohibiting The Discharge Or Deposit Of Impure Or Deleterious Matter Into The Waters Thereof.”
The law declared it unlawful for any person to “deposit, place or empty” into the waters of Lake Calhoun or Lake Minnetonka any “putrid or decayed animal or vegetable matter, or impure liquid, or to erect any building, stable or outhouse on the bank or shore of either of said lakes, from which any deleterious deposit or matter may fall into or reach the waters of either of said lakes, or to discharge or drain into either of said lakes any impure liquid or substance whatever which shall defile the waters thereof and render the same impure for drinking or household use or in any wise deleterious to health.”
Was this the first “clean water” legislation in Minnesota?
In a later post I’ll provide one good reason why Lake Calhoun was singled out in Minneapolis. And, yes, it does have something to do with railroads.
David C. Smith
Did the Princess Depot burn down?
Filed under: Minnehaha Falls | Tags: Minnehaha Falls, Princess Depot
Comments (5) Most visitors to Minnehaha Falls have seen the little railroad depot, the “Princess” depot, that sits along the railroad tracks southwest of the falls. It was once owned by the Milwaukee Road but is now owned by the Minnesota Historical Society and operated by the Minnesota Transportation Museum. The little information available about the depot says that it was built in 1875. However last year while helping my daughter research a school paper we came across an article in the Minneapolis Tribune of March 7, 1891 that read in its entirety:
The Minnehaha Depot Burned
Shortly after 10 o’clock last night the Milwaukee depot at Minnehaha Falls took fire. Before the apparatus of the fire department could reach the place the flames had obtained too much of a start to be put out and the building, which was built of wood, was totally destroyed. It was a small structure, probably worth less than $1,000.
Subsequent searches of the newspaper revealed no more information on the fire or when the depot was rebuilt. Was the Princess Depot the one that burned or was there another Milwaukee depot at Minnehaha?
Not exactly a Minneapolis parks issue, but many visitors to the falls likely passed through that station.
David C. Smith
