Barnes Place

Minneapolis Park Histories

Street Tot Lot ................................................................ 7

Adams Triangle .................................................................... 8

Alcott Triangle ..................................................................... 9

Architect Triangle ................................................................ 10

Armatage Park ..................................................................... 11

Audubon Park ...................................................................... 14

B. F. Nelson Park ................................................................. 16

Barnes Place ......................................................................... 18

Barton Triangle .................................................................... 19

Bassett’s Creek Park ............................................................ 20

Beard’s Plaisance ................................................................. 22

Beltrami Park ....................................................................... 24

Bethune Park ........................................................................ 26

Bluff Street Park ...................................................................... 28

Bohanon Park ....................................................................... 30

Bohemian Flats Park ............................................................... 31

Boom Island Park ................................................................. 32

Bossen Field ......................................................................... 34

Bottineau Park ...................................................................... 36

Brackett Field ....................................................................... 38

Brownie Lake ....................................................................... 40

Bryant Square ......................................................................... 42

Bryn Mawr Meadows Park .................................................. 44

Caleb Dorr Circle ................................................................. 46

Cavell Park ........................................................................... 47

Cedar Avenue Field ............................................................. 48

Cedar Lake ........................................................................... 50

Central Gym Park ................................................................ 55

Chergosky Park .................................................................... 56

Chowen Triangle .................................................................. 57

Chute Square ........................................................................ 58

Clarence Triangle ................................................................. 59

Cleveland Park ..................................................................... 60

Clifton Triangle .................................................................... 62

Clinton Park ......................................................................... 63

Columbia Park (includes Columbia Golf Course) ............... 65

Columbia Golf Course (see Columbia Park) ....................... 68

Corcoran Park ...................................................................... 70

Cottage Park ......................................................................... 71

Creekview Park (see Shingle Creek Park) ........................... 72

Currie Park ........................................................................... 75

Dean Parkway ...................................................................... 78

Dell Park .............................................................................. 81

Deming Heights Park ........................................................... 82

Diamond Lake ...................................................................... 84

Dickman Park ....................................................................... 87

Dorilus Morrison Park ......................................................... 88

East Phillips Park ................................................................. 90

East River Flats Park (see East River Parkway) .................. 91

Edgewater Park .................................................................... 96

Elliot Park ............................................................................ 97

Elmwood Triangle ............................................................... 99

Eloise Butler Wildflower Garden (see Theodore Wirth Park)

.............................................................................................. 384

Farview Park ........................................................................ 100

Farwell Park ......................................................................... 104

Father Hennepin Bluff Park ................................................. 105

First Bridge Park .................................................................. 107

Folwell Park ......................................................................... 108

Fort Snelling State Park/Neiman Sports Center ................... 111

Franklin Steele Square ......................................................... 113

Fremont Triangle ................................................................. 115

Fuller Park ............................................................................ 116

Gateway, The ....................................................................... 118

Gladstone Triangle ............................................................... 122

Glen Gale Park ..................................................................... 123

Gluek Park ........................................................................... 124

Gross Golf Course................................................................ 125

Hall Park .............................................................................. 131

Harrison Park ....................................................................... 132

Hiawatha Golf Course (see Lake Hiawatha) ...................... 179

Hiawatha School Playground Park ...................................... 134

Hi-view Park ........................................................................ 135

Holmes Park ......................................................................... 136

Humboldt Triangle ............................................................... 140

Irving Triangle ..................................................................... 142

Jackson Square ..................................................................... 143

James I. Rice Parkway ......................................................... 145

Jordan Park........................................................................... 148

Keewaydin Park ................................................................... 149

Kenny Park........................................................................... 151

Kenwood Park ...................................................................... 153

Kenwood Parkway .......................................................... 156

King Park (Rev. Dr Martin Luther, Jr.) ............................... 158

King’s Highway ................................................................... 162

Lake Calhoun ....................................................................... 163

Lake Harriet ......................................................................... 174

Lake Hiawatha ..................................................................... 179

Lake Nokomis ...................................................................... 183

Lake of the Isles ................................................................... 190

Laurel Triangle ..................................................................... 195

Levin Triangle ...................................................................... 196

Linden Hills Park ................................................................. 197

Linden Hills Parkway ...................................................... 200

Logan Park ........................................................................... 201

Longfellow Park ................................................................... 205

Longfellow Gardens ............................................................. 208

Loring Park .......................................................................... 211

Lovell Square ....................................................................... 217

Lowry Park (Thomas) .......................................................... 218

Luxton Park .......................................................................... 220

Lyndale Park ........................................................................ 222

Lyndale Farmstead Park ...................................................... 223

Lynnhurst Field Park............................................................ 231

Historic Main Street ............................................................. 234

Mall, The .............................................................................. 235

Marcy Park ........................................................................... 238

Marshall Terrace Park .......................................................... 239

Matthews Park ..................................................................... 241

McRae Park .......................................................................... 244

Meadowbrook Golf Course.................................................. 246

Memorial Parkway ............................................................... 249

Mill Ruins Park .................................................................... 253

Minnehaha Creek West ........................................................ 254

Minnehaha Park ................................................................... 256

Minnehaha Parkway ............................................................ 263

Monroe Place Triangle ......................................................... 267

Morris Park .......................................................................... 268

MPRB Headquarters ............................................................ 270

Mueller Park ......................................................................... 271

Murphy Square..................................................................... 272

Neiman Sports Center (see Fort Snelling State Park) .......... 111

Newton Triangle .................................................................. 274

Nicollet Island Park .............................................................. 275

Normanna Triangle .............................................................. 278

North Commons Park .......................................................... 279

North Mississippi Park ......................................................... 283

Northeast Athletic Field Park............................................... 287

Northeast Ice Arena ............................................................. 290

Northwestern Bell Property/Elwell Park ............................. 291

Oak Crest Triangle ............................................................... 292

Oliver Triangle ..................................................................... 293

Orvin “Ole” Olson Park ....................................................... 294

Orlin Triangle ....................................................................... 295

Painter Park .......................................................................... 296

Parade Park .......................................................................... 297

Park Avenue Triangle .......................................................... 306

Park Siding Park .................................................................. 307

Pearl Park ............................................................................. 309

Peavey Field ......................................................................... 312

Penn Model Village Triangle ............................................... 315

Perkins Hill Park .................................................................. 316

Pershing Park ....................................................................... 317

Phelps Field Park ................................................................. 319

Phillips Pool and Gym ......................................................... 322

Pioneer Triangle ................................................................... 323

Powderhorn Park .................................................................. 325

Quaking Bog (see Theodore Wirth Park) ............................ 381

Reserve Block 40 ................................................................. 331

Riverside Park ...................................................................... 332

Ridgway Parkway ................................................................ 334

Rollins Triangle ................................................................... 336

Roberts Bird Sanctuary (see Lyndale Park) ......................... 222

Rose Garden (see Lyndale Park) .......................................... 222

Russell Triangle ................................................................... 337

Rustic Lodge Triangle .......................................................... 338

Sculpture Garden ................................................................. 339

Seven Oaks Oval .................................................................. 342

Sheridan Memorial Park ...................................................... 343

Shingle Creek Park .............................................................. 346

Shoreview Triangles ............................................................ 349

Sibley Field .......................................................................... 350

Sibley Triangle ..................................................................... 352

Smith Triangle ..................................................................... 353

Solomon Park ....................................................................... 354

St. Anthony Park .................................................................. 355

St. Anthony Parkway ........................................................... 356

St. Louis Triangle ................................................................. 360

Spring Lake (see Parade) ..................................................... 297

Stevens Square ........................................................................ 361

Stewart Field Park ................................................................ 365

Stinson Parkway .................................................................. 369

Stone Arch Bridge ................................................................ 374

Sumner Park ......................................................................... 376

Svea Triangle ....................................................................... 380

Theodore Wirth Park (includes Birch Pond, Eloise Butler Wildflower Garden, Quaking

Bog, Theodore Wirth Lake and Theodore Wirth Golf Courses)

.............................................................................................. 381

Todd Park ............................................................................. 392

Tower Hill Park .................................................................... 394

Valley View Park ................................................................. 396

Van Cleve Park .................................................................... 397

Victory Park ......................................................................... 400

Waite Park ............................................................................ 401

Washburn Fair Oaks Park .................................................... 403

Washburn Avenue Tot Lot .................................................. 405

Washington Triangle ............................................................ 406

Water Power Park ................................................................ 407

Waveland Triangle ............................................................... 408

Webber Park ......................................................................... 409

West End Triangle ............................................................... 414

West River Parkway ............................................................ 415

Whittier Park ........................................................................ 420

Willard Park ......................................................................... 421

William Berry Park .............................................................. 422

Winchell Trail (see West River Parkway) ........................... 415

Windom Park ....................................................................... 425

Windom South Park ............................................................. 427

Xcel Field Park .................................................................... 428

28th Street Tot Lot

Location: 175 28

St. E

Size: 1.14 acres

Name: The property is named for the street on which it is located.

Acquisition and Development

This small playground – destined to be an empty lot where I-35W angled eastward – was

leased from the Minnesota Department of Highways in 1968 at the time the freeway was

built. The lease has been renewed periodically ever since. Why did the otherwise straight

I-35W veer eastward for northbound travelers at that point? If it hadn’t, the Minneapolis

Institute of Arts would have had to be demolished – and that wasn’t going to happen.

The land was first mentioned in park board proceedings on the same date, June 13, 1968,

that the park board voted to fight condemnation by the highway department of Wilson

Park, just west of downtown, and North Mississippi Park. Wilson Park was eventually

taken by the state for I-94 and North Mississippi Park was subject of negotiations that

eventually led to a trade of some lands with the state and the protection of the riverfront

park adjacent to Webber Park.

Adams Triangle

Location: East 41

Street and Minnehaha Avenue

Size: 0.32 acres

Name: Adams Triangle was named in 1921 for Abraham S. Adams a park commissioner

1893-1905 and president of the park board 1903-1905.

Acquisition and Development

Adams Triangle was designated for purchase May 21, 1919. The purchase was completed

in 1920 for $2,400. Another $1,800 was spent that year on improvements to the property,

including grading and the installation of curbs and gutters—considerably less than the

$2,600 the board had allocated for improvements in September 1919. All costs were

assessed against property in the surrounding neighborhood.

Alcott Triangle

Location: St. Louis Avenue and West 29

Street.

Size: 0.26 acre

Name: The park was presumably named for the Alcott School next to the park. The two-

room schoolhouse, built in 1921, was named for American author Louisa May Alcott.

Acquisition and Development

The triangle was platted as a park in the West End Addition in 1887 along with West End

Triangle nearby.

On June 10, 1927, the city council voted to turn over the triangle to the park board. The

park board received notification of the action at its meeting of June 27. Two months later,

however, the park board decided that the property “is apparently of no use as a park.” The

park board suggested to the city council that the school board might have some use for

the land in conjunction with Alcott School and recommended that the council vest title in

the property with the school board. A year later the school board asked the park board for

title to the land, but the park board still didn’t officially own the land.

Park board records do not indicate when the park board officially accepted title to the

land from the city. The school closed in 1940.

Architect Triangle

Location: Architect Avenue and 36

Avenue NE, north of Columbia Park

Size: 0.54 acres

Name: The property was named for its location on Architect Avenue.

Acquisition and Development

Architect Triangle was donated to the city when the land was platted February 15, 1906.

The triangle was not officially designated as a park by the park board, however, until

March 15, 1933. The action followed petitions the previous year by residents of the

neighborhood to have the park board assume responsibility and maintenance of the

property. A similar petition had been rejected in 1927. Improvements in 1933 were

financed by $900 in city bonds.

Armatage Park

Location: Penn Avenue South and West 56

Street

Size: 17.21 acres

Name: Armatage Park and Armatage School are named for Maude Armatage, who was a

park commissioner from 1921 to 1951.

Maude D. Armatage

Armatage was the first woman elected to the park board—and was the only woman on

the board for her entire length of service. Armatage was elected to the park board in 1921

in the first general election in which women had the right to vote. She was vice president

of the board from 1924 to 1927. She chaired the Privileges and Entertainment Committee

in her early years on the park board and when a combined Playground and Entertainment

Committee was created in 1928 she chaired that committee until her retirement from the

board in 1951.

One of Armatage’s first special assignments as a park commissioner, perhaps reflecting

stereotypes of women at the time, was to be responsible for the “artistic selection and

arrangement of furnishings at The Chalet,” as noted in the park board’s 1923 annual

report. The Chalet was the new golf clubhouse and shelter built at Glenwood (Wirth)

Park. Armatage and her uncle, F. A. Dunsmoor, both contributed to the furnishings of the

clubhouse.

Armatage was especially active in promoting cooperation between the school board and

park board to avoid duplication of facilities and get the most out of spending by both

boards. When the park boards and school boards were first considering cooperative

development of facilities in the southernmost portion of the city after its annexation from

Richfield in 1926, Armatage visited Detroit on behalf of the park board to view the

results of cooperative efforts there. When the possibility of developing joint facilities was

renewed after nearly two decades of depression and war, Armatage sponsored a joint

resolution between the park board and school board in 1948 that led directly to

cooperative development of Waite, Armatage, Kenny and Cleveland parks and schools.

Armatage lived near Lake Harriet in a nine-family community called the “Colony.”

According to research by Tom Balcom, nine families built homes on land given to them

in 1893 by Charles Loring in the 4600 block of Fremont Avenue in the hopes that initial

development would lead to more families wanting to build homes in the area.

In addition to her work on the park board, Armatage was a local leader of Campfire Girls

and was on the national board of directors of that organization.

Upon her retirement in 1951 at the age of 81, the park board passed a resolution honoring

Armatage’s service on the board, noting that “it is to her, more than to any other person,

that the people of the City of Minneapolis owe a debt of gratitude for the promotion of

the integrated school and park idea.” The 1951 annual report also noted that she had

“championed many activities and diversions for the recreation of youth which are

commonplace in the recreation program of today.”

Acquisition and Development

The nearly nineteen acres for Armatage Park were purchased September 1, 1948 for

$7,500. The land was planned from the outset as a combined development of a park and

school following a joint resolution by the park board and school board to develop new

park and school complexes together. The primary objective of those joint developments

was to provide a park that would double as a playground for the school and a school gym

that could be used by the park board when school was not in session. It was the second

park and school—Waite Park was the first—developed together by the two boards.

Joint development of the property had been considered as early as 1926, when that

section of Minneapolis was annexed from Richfield. With the annexation, both the park

board and school board faced the challenge of providing facilities for the newest section

of the city. In 1927, land in the neighborhood had been proposed for development as a

park, but property owners in the area opposed the additional tax assessments that would

have been needed to pay for the development. With the advent of the Great Depression,

followed by World War II, the project was delayed until the late 1940s. When the park

and school were finally built in 1952, they were paid for by assessments on property in

the neighborhood.

The purchase price of the property paled in comparison to the cost of developing the land

for a park and athletic fields. Leveling and grading the property and preparing playing

fields cost about $400,000. Because the western border of the park was significantly

lower in elevation than Penn Avenue on the east, a lot of earth had to be moved to create

level fields.

The original park improvements, completed in 1954, included regional athletic fields, a

wading pool, a battery of tennis courts and a warming house and shelter. In 1955 the final

touches were put on the park with the blacktopping of a parking lot and the installation of

five sections of ten-tier bleachers for the regional athletic fields.

Armatage Park’s shelter was enlarged in 1962-63 and replaced with a new recreation

center in 1977. The baseball and softball fields at the park were rebuilt in 1979.

Significant renovations to the park property began in 1997 with the addition of a new

parking lot and a new gym attached to the school and recreation center. The new gym

opened in 1999.

In 2000 Neighborhood Revitalization Program (NRP) funds were used to commission an

eighteen foot-high bronze sculpture by artist Scott Wallace, called “Garden Party,” which

was placed in the park. Additional improvements to the playing fields and tennis courts

were made in 2004 and a skate park was added. The skate park was one of four created

Minneapolis parks that year.

An irrigation system was added to the baseball/soccer fields at Armatage as part of

playing field upgrade in 20

0-11. The hard courts at the park were also resurfaced in

2011.

Audubon Park

Location: Fillmore Street and 29

Avenue N.E.

Size: 5.71 acres

Name: The park was named in honor of John James Audubon, the American naturalist

and ornithologist, at the time it was purchased in 1910.

Acquisition and Development

The first five acres for Audubon Park were purchased in 1910 for $5,400 and Pierce

Street through the park was closed. The park was expanded slightly in 1912 with the

addition of four-tenths of an acre at a cost of just over $1,000. In addition to the

enlargement of the park, the park board drained a “small, shallow, stagnant pool” in the

park, according to the 1912 annual report. In 1914, the park board closed Buchanan

Street between the park and Thomas Lowry School as part of park superintendent

Theodore Wirth’s plans, presented in 1915 and again in 1918 to create a playground from

the school extending into the park. It was the flattest section of one of the city’s hilliest

parks. In 1918, the park board also considered enlarging the park southward to 28

Avenue NE between Pierce and Buchanan, with the purchase of several adjoining lots.

The plan was abandoned after neighborhood protests over the assessments on local

property, during war time, that would have been needed to pay for it. Audubon was

included among the parks that were provided with a skating rink in 1918, some

playground apparatus was provided to the park in 1921, and a playground instructor was

assigned to the park in 1926.

In 1927 Wirth again proposed cooperation with Thomas Lowry School to expand park

facilities, noting that the neighborhood badly needed a playground and there was space

for a “standard-sized” playground between the park and school. Wirth also noted in his

report of that year that the park had lost 75 percent of its oak trees to an oak borer

infestation.

In the last annual report he wrote before he retired, Theodore Wirth again presented a

plan for the improvement of Audubon Park in 1935. He included Audubon in a list of

“Some Well-patronized but Insufficiently-equipped Playgrounds,” noting especially the

lack of proper shelter buildings and sanitary facilities. He also admitted that the only

prospect for executing the plan he presented was with Works Progress Administration

(WPA) funds. It did not happen.

For the next twenty years, park board annual reports made no mention of any plans for

Audubon Park. Finally in 1955 and 1956 the board’s annual reports again cited plans for

developing Audubon and in 1957 improvements in the park were begun by filling low

areas with 20,000 cubic yards of fill excavated from the construction site of nearby

Northeast Junior High School. In 1958 additional filling and grading were done at

Audubon to provide more gradual grades in the park, including a resurfacing of topsoil

obtained from the construction site of the new Shingle Creek playground in north

Minneapolis.

In 1959, Audubon got new playground equipment, a wading pool and ball fields financed

by city bonds amounting to $107,000 and property assessments for the same amount.

Construction was also begun on a shelter building that was completed in 1960, resulting

in “a new modern playground” where the “formerly hilly terrain made its value as a

playground somewhat limited,” according to the 1960 annual report. When looking at the

steep grades in the park today, it’s hard to imagine the park when those slopes were

steeper. The terrain of the park makes it one of the most interesting neighborhood parks

in the city—and provides a great sledding hill.

The park that had waited so long for a shelter building was upgraded near the end of the

1970s recreation-center building boom in Minneapolis parks. The current recreation

center was dedicated in 1979.

New playground equipment was added to the park in 1997 in part through neighborhood

commitment of Neighborhood Revitalization Program funds.

Native plants and shrubs were planted on the hillside in the park in 2011.

B. F. Nelson Park

Location: Between Marshall Avenue and the Mississippi River from Nicollet Island to

Boom Island Park.

Size: 11.99 acres

Name: The park site has always been referred to by the name of the man whose

eponymous business operated on the site from the late 1800s. Benjamin Franklin Nelson

built a thriving paper mill and roofing materials business on the site in the 1880s. Prior to

that it had been the site of sawmills. Nelson was active in city affairs at the time. As a

city alderman, he was an ex-officio park commissioner on the first park board in 1883.

He was subsequently chosen by the park board to fill the term of Andrew Haugan, one of

the original twelve appointed commissioners who had resigned from the board. Nelson

was one of three commissioners who selected Logan Park as the site of the first park in

what was then called the East Division of the city. Nelson also served for many years on

the school board.

Acquisition and Development

The site was acquired in a purchase and trade with the Minnesota Department of

Transportation in 1987.

The land had originally been included in the St. Anthony Historic District, but was

excluded in 1973 when the land was acquired by the state for a planned I-335 freeway

across northeast Minneapolis to connect I-35W to I-94 west of the river. The site would

have held the east end of a bridge across the river for that freeway. The manufacturing

buildings on the site were demolished at that time.

In 1987, however, as Boom Island Park to the north of the site and the West River

Parkway across the river were being developed by the park board, the state contacted the

park board with an offer to sell the B. F. Nelson land.

Plans for I-335 had been abandoned, so the state no longer needed the land. It had also

learned that a proposed change in federal policy made it wise to sell the land quickly.

When the land was acquired for a freeway, the federal government paid ninety percent of

the $5 million cost, with the state paying the rest. Until 1987, the federal government had

permitted states to sell land that was no longer needed for freeways without reimbursing

the federal government for its share of the purchase price. But the state’s transportation

department said it had learned that the federal government was about to change its policy

and require reimbursement for its investment. Before that change would take effect,

MnDOT said it would sell the park board the B. F. Nelson site for the state’s investment,

which was only ten percent of the original cost.

But the state had other motives, too. It needed a bit more park land from The Parade for

the construction of I-394 west from downtown. Moreover, it had not been successful in

the remediation of some polluted industrial land it had promised to turn over to the park

board as part of an agreement for taking a portion of North Mississippi Park for freeway

I-94 in 1974.

The state ultimately sold the B. F. Nelson site to the park board for a little more than

$200,000, plus land at The Parade land and the polluted land near North Mississippi Park.

A path, river overlook and fishing dock were built in 1996, in part with funds from the

city’s Neighborhood Revitalization Program through the St. Anthony West

Neighborhood Organization.

Environmental testing of the land as a “brownfield” took place in 2001. In part because of

buried industrial waste from years as a manufacturing site, the master plan for the area is

to leave it primarily as a greenspace connecting Boom Island Park and Nicollet Island.

In 2006, the park board received a grant of $775,000 from the Mississippi Watershed

Management Organization for initial design and development of the site.

The St. Anthony West Neighborhood Organization raised funds to refurbish and relocate

the Pioneer Statue to the park from its location at Pioneer Triangle across Marshall

Avenue from the park. The statue was moved to its new home in 2010 at the beginning of

development of the park. The area around the statue was landscaped and a parking lot

was built nearby in 2011. In addition new trails were created through the park in

conjunction with improvements to the adjacent Boom Island Park.

The park is a part of Central Mississippi Riverfront Regional Park.

Barnes Place

Location: Elwood and 8th Avenue North

Size: 0.60 acres

Name: Barnes Place was likely named for William A. Barnes, who along with Elwood S.

Corser and C. P. Lovell, donated the property to the park board when they were platting

the area for housing. The park board made a minor change in the name from Barnes Park

to Barnes Place in 1890.

Acquisition and Development

Barnes Place was tendered to the park board as a donation by Elwood S. Corser, William

A. Barnes and C. P. Lovell in June 1887 on the condition that it be graded and fenced

during 1887. In July of that year the park board designated the land for acquisition and

instructed park superintendent William Berry to improve the grounds once title was

secured. At the same time the same group of men donated Lovell Square nearby. Corser

had earlier donated property on the shore of Lake of the Isles for parks. Corser and

Barnes were often hired by the park board as appraisers for land the board acquired by

condemnation.

The 1889 annual report notes that Barnes Place was deeded to the park board in April of

that year. It was listed in the inventory at that time as 1.33 acres, but in 1893, the size of

Barnes Place was changed to 0.57 acres without any mention of disposition of land.

Barnes Place was originally designed by Horace Cleveland, the landscape architect who

provided a blueprint for the entire park system in 1883 and designed most early

individual parks. Barnes Place was the smallest park Cleveland designed in Minneapolis.

Initial improvements to the small park were made in 1889, including the closing of

Thomas Place which ran through the park.

Barton Triangle

Location: Barton Avenue SE and Malcolm Avenue SE

Size: 0.02 acres

Name: The triangle is named for the street on which it is located.

Acquisition and Development

The city council requested on September 24, 1915 that the park board take over four

triangles in the Prospect Park neighborhood of southeast Minneapolis, including Barton

Triangle. The park board agreed to take control of the triangles October 11, 1915 and

officially named them on November 17, 1915. The other three triangles accepted were

Bedford, Clarence and Orlin.

The triangle was improved—graded, seeded, planted and curbed—in 1916.

Bassett's Creek Park

Location: The valley of Bassett's Creek from Theodore Wirth Park to Morgan Avenue

North.

Size: 70.26 acres

Name: The park is named for the creek that meanders from Medicine Lake in Plymouth

through Golden Valley, Theodore Wirth Park and Minneapolis to the Mississippi River.

The creek was named for Joel Bassett, the first settler on the creek’s banks, a member of

the city council in 1872, and the first judge of probate in Hennepin County.

Acquisition and Development

The first land for the park along Bassett’s Creek between Bryn Mawr Park and Theodore

Wirth Park was acquired in 1930 when Arthur Fruen and the Glenwood-Inglewood

Company donated 13.4 acres for a park along the creek. Fruen was a city council member

and ex-officio park commissioner at the time. In 1934 the park board purchased 43 acres

to expand the park.

The land was almost acquired, however, many years earlier. When Bryn Mawr Meadow,

part of the estate of John Oswald, one of the original park commissioners, was purchased

from his heirs in 1911 the park board had considered acquiring the valley of Bassett’s

Creek all the way to Glenwood (Wirth) Park. At that time it was considered a possible

parkway route from Loring Park through The Parade and Bryn Mawr to Glenwood Park.

In the end the board acquired Bryn Mawr Meadow only as far west as Cedar Lake Road.

Interest in Bassett’s Creek surfaced again in 1924 when park superintendent Theodore

Wirth made a survey of the area. He wrote in the 1924 annual report that he believed the

land should be owned by the park board and suggested that the “unsightly and

unsanitary” land could be made attractive at “comparatively small expense.” Opposition

to the plan by residents of the area however dissuaded the park board from pursuing the

issue.

Wirth noted in 1929 that the idea of acquiring the creek had been revived and he

submitted a plan for the development of the potential park in the 1929 annual report. In

June 1930 the Fruen family and the Glenwood-Inglewood Company offered to donate

more than 13 acres along the creek for the park and delivered deeds to the land in

December 1930. Over the next three years, the park board and residents of the area

debated how much land should be purchased to add to the donated land and how the cost

would be assessed to property owners. Assessing property owners for anything during the

Great Depression met with opposition. In February 1934 the park board designated 43

acres of land for purchase. The price was less than $14,000, which was assessed on

property in the district. It was one of the park board’s few land acquisitions from the

beginning of the depression until after World War II.

Improvements to the land began almost immediately using labor from federal work relief

programs. The land at an old dump at Russell and 2

Avenue North was raised about five

feet and converted into a five-acre ball field. The creek bed was cleaned between Penn

and 6

Avenues North and, where the banks of the creek were steep, stone walls were

constructed. In addition a concrete dam was built near the Fruen Mill. The land north of

Glenwood Avenue and east of the creek, which had previously been a dump, was graded.

Similar work continued in 1935, still with federal assistance, included the deepening of

the creek. In 1936, four clay tennis courts were added to the park, two near Glenwood

Avenue and two near Chestnut Avenue. Federally funded improvements continued in

1937, most notably the creation of two lagoons.

The park was enlarged in 1944 by more than three acres when the park board agreed to

swap two acres of park for more than five acres of railroad land beside the park.

Following the initial improvements to the park with federal funding, very few

improvements were made to the park for many years. The next time that Bassett’s Creek

featured in park plans was in the 1950s when the water flow in the creek was coveted to

raise the water levels in the Chain of Lakes to the south. Unlike Minnehaha Creek,

Bassett’s Creek never seemed to run out of water, so it was considered the best source for

more water in the lakes. In 1958 a pipeline and pump were constructed from Bassett’s

Creek to Brownie Lake. Water pumped into Brownie Lake flowed into Cedar Lake, Lake

of Isles, and Lake Calhoun, and eventually reached Lake Harriet.

The new pumping station succeeded in raising the levels of those lakes more than four

inches in 1958, but that wasn’t enough. After examining several alternatives, including

capturing water from air conditioners in downtown office buildings for pumping into the

lakes, the park board built a pipeline to the Mississippi River to pump river water to the

Bassett’s Creek pumping station and from there to the lakes. That pump began operation

in 1966 and continued periodically through the 1970s and 1980s.

Another ball field was constructed in the park near Thomas Avenue in 1968 when a

swampy section of land was filled. An offer of free fill from a local contractor proved too

attractive to pass up. Additional improvements to the park, including the addition of a

“totlot,” were completed in 1990.

The Bassett Creek Trail running through the park was created in 1996 to connect to Bryn

Mawr Park and the Cedar Lake Trail to downtown. The last connection of bike trails

occurred in 2002 when the Luce Line Trail was connected through Wirth Park to the

Bassett Creek Trail.

In 2015 the park board traded an 11,420-square-foot parcel of land adjacent to the

abandoned Fruen Mill property to a developer for an identically-sized parcel of land

nearby. The land swap will help develop a long-vacant nuisance property and added

better park land to Bassett’s Creek Park.

Beard’s Plaisance

Location: Between Lake Harriet and Upton Avenue South from West 45

to West 46

Streets.

Size: The park is included in the 126.2 acres of land the park board owns around Lake

Harriet.

Name: The park was named “The Beard Plaisance” for Henry Beard, one of three men

who offered to donate their land on the shores of Lake Harriet for a park in 1884. The

park board also acquired the land for Linden Hills Boulevard from Beard. The picnic area

was named in 1893 to honor Beard. “Plaisance” is a French term meaning “pleasure

ground.”

Acquisition and Development

Henry Beard was one of three men—the others were James Merritt and Charles Reeve—

who approached the park board with an offer to donate land around Lake Harriet for a

park in 1884. After a complicated legal battle, some of the land around Lake Harriet that

Beard and the others had donated was declared to be the legal property of William King,

whose farm had once encircled the lake. After he had reacquired rights to the land, King,

who had been one of the staunchest advocates for parks in Minneapolis, stood by the

commitment of Beard and the others to donate the land. Beard was never implicated in

the misappropriation of land from King.

In 1888 the park board reported that it had paid Beard about $8,000, including interest,

for land acquired from him at Lake Harriet. It is unclear if that payment applied to Beard

Plaisance or Linden Hills Boulevard, which was also acquired from Beard, or both.

The park board first approved improvements to the “Beard land” in 1889. The first picnic

shelter at Beard Plaisance was built in 1904 and a stone walk was constructed along

Upton Avenue west of the park. In 1907, superintendent of parks Theodore Wirth

proposed building a peninsula into Lake Harriet at Beard Plaisance to improve the

“regular and monotonous” shoreline of the lake. It was an ambitious plan that was never

acted upon.

In 1912 Wirth recommended a plan to rebuild and rearrange the eight-year-old picnic

shelter. In the meantime, a tennis court was apparently built at Beard Plaisance. Tennis

courts were built and removed at many parks without reference in park board

proceedings, especially in the early 1900s. Park board proceedings reveal that

“additional” tennis courts were requested for Beard Plaisance in 1912 and again in 1915,

at which time the board recommended more courts be added there as it was the only place

around the lake where they could be added without considerable grading expense. Finally

in 1916, the board ordered the construction of two new courts to complement the one

already there. As with most tennis courts built at the time they were probably built

without backstops and nets.

Toilets were also built at Beard Plaisance in that era. Although it is unclear when they

were first built, the board considered a request in 1915 to remove them from the vicinity

of the picnic shelter or build them into the hill beneath the shelter. Instead the park board

voted to plant shrubbery around the toilets to make them less conspicuous. New toilets

were approved for the park in 1921. A year later the park board responded favorably to a

request by the Robert Fulton Community Club to provide a supervised playground for

small children in the park.

The only recorded improvement to the park over the next few decades was the renovation

of the shelter in the late 1930s by federal work relief crews.

Several improvements were made to the park in the 1970s. In 1974 new playground

equipment for little children was installed and in 1979 the tennis courts were renovated

and a parking lot was added next to the courts. At the same time the picnic shelter was re-

roofed. The picnic shelter was refurbished in 2002.

Reconstruction of the playground, with the complete replacement of playground

apparatus was completed in 2012.

Beltrami Park

Location: Polk Avenue NE and Broadway NE

Size: 8.11 acres

Name: The park was called Maple Hill from 1908 to 1948. It was the known as Maple

Hill Cemetery prior to that and when the park board acquired the land it kept the name. In

1947, the park was renamed for Giacomo Constantino Beltrami an Italian explorer who is

credited with being the first European to identify the source of the Mississippi River in

Minnesota in 1823. The park was renamed at the request of the predominantly Italian-

American residents in the neighborhood that surrounded the park. A bronze plaque

honoring Beltrami, which still stands, was placed in the park in 1948. It was paid for by

contributions from Minneapolis residents of Italian descent.

Acquisition and Development

The park was purchased for $8,000 in 1908. Under the financing terms, the city council

had to approve the purchase, which it did. The city council contributed $5,000 for the

initial improvement of the land as well.

Initial improvements consisted primarily of constructing a seven-foot high wire mesh

fence around the cemetery to protect the Civil War-era stone monuments from vandalism.

Some of the monuments and interred remains were moved to other cemeteries. The fence

remained until 1922 when area residents complained of the “unsightly” fence. The park

board determined that it was too expensive to repair, so tore it down.

The conversion of a cemetery to a park did not meet with universal approval. A

monument still stands in Beltrami Park that honors the 46 soldiers of the “Grand Army of

the Republic” who were buried there during and after the Civil War. The inscription on

the undated tablet reads in part, “Although men’s thoughtless actions have deprived them

of their right to individually marked and cherished graves, the children of future ages will

gather here to honor them.” The date of the monument is not noted. (The quartermaster at

Fort Snelling requested permission in 1939 to remove from the park the remains of Civil

War veterans for re-interment at Fort Snelling.)

In the first plans for Maple Hill Park, presented in the 1908 superintendent’s report,

Theodore Wirth proposed a picnic ground for most of the park, with a small section—

where no bodies had been buried—reserved for a school garden for the children of Pierce

School across the street from the park. (Before cities began building urban parks in the

mid-1800s, cemeteries were used as picnic grounds throughout the country.) Wirth also

proposed a small shelter building that the 1909 annual report says was used as a warming

house, indicating that Maple Hill was provided a skating rink. However, park board

proceedings note that area residents petitioned for a skating rink in both 1911 and 1912

and that the park board finally granted those requests in 1913. The shelter was also for

“lectures” and a tool room. Wirth noted in his 1909 report that the park was not much

frequented and probably wouldn’t be as long as it “retains the appearance of a cemetery.”

After the construction of a fieldhouse with indoor plumbing at nearby Logan Park in

1912, two toilets were moved from Logan to Beltrami in 1914. A couple years later a

small set of playground equipment was also installed in the park. To satisfy a petition

from area residents, in 1918 Beltrami got more than toilets from nearby Logan Park: two

of the free summer outdoor concerts scheduled for Logan were transferred to Beltrami.

Wirth presented a more detailed plan for the improvement of the park in 1921—including

a more permanent shelter building—noting that “the growing activities of this field can

hardly be denied the needed extension of facilities.” In fact the neighborhood was denied,

because Wirth presented the same plan again in 1935, indicating there had been little

improvement of the park in intervening years. The 1935 plan was not acted upon either.

One of Beltrami’s claims to fame was that the skating club at the park produced

Minneapolis’s first qualifier for a U. S. Winter Olympic team. Charles Leighton of the

Maple Hill Club qualified to represent the U.S. in speed skating, but never got the chance

at a medal. The 1940 winter games scheduled for Sapporo, Japan were cancelled because

of World War II. By the mid-1940s Beltrami Park’s skating rink was maintained without

a warming house.

Although residents had petitioned for a tennis court as early as 1915 and were still doing

so twenty years later, there is no record of when the tennis court that currently exists at

Beltrami was installed. The enormous oak tree branch that stretches over the court,

removing the lob from the arsenal of shots Beltrami tennis players could use, suggests it

has existed at least since the first concrete wading pool was built in the park in 1953.

Beltrami finally got a more modern recreation center during the expansion of park

recreation facilities in the 1970s. The current small shelter was dedicated in 1973.

Beltrami is one of the only places in Minneapolis for a game of bocce ball on specially

constructed courts. Six bocce courts in the park, the most recent of which were added in

1990, continue to be used for games every Tuesday night in summer.

The basketball court received new hoops and was resurfaced in 2015.

In 2016, a new timber frame picnic pavilion was built near the basketball court.

Trivia

In 1911 the park board joined residents of the Maple Hill area in opposing construction of

a gas manufacturing plant across from the park.

Bethune Park

Location: Humboldt Avenue North and 8

Avenue North.

Size: 12.32 acres

Name: The park was originally referred to as Grant Park after Grant School nearby,

which was named for President Ulysses S. Grant. The park was officially renamed on

June 7, 1972 to honor Mary McLeod Bethune, a teacher and civil rights activist. The

name of the elementary school next to the park had already been changed from Grant to

Bethune. Bethune was the founder and long-time president of Bethune-Cookman

University in Daytona Beach, Florida. She was a special advisor to President Franklin D.

Roosevelt on minority affairs in the 1930s and vice president of the NAACP in 1940. At

the time the park was named for Bethune, the park board also designated the name

“Phyllis Wheatley Community Center” for the recreation building in the park.

The original Grant School, which opened in 1889, was actually located at 12

and Girard

a few blocks north of the present Bethune Park and school.

Acquisition and Development

The first mention of the park site is found in the 1962 annual report of the park board,

which noted that $200,000 was earmarked for a park in the park board’s 1966 capitol

improvement plan if the Minneapolis housing authority had land available for park

development at the site. Another $350,000 in capitol improvement funds was targeted for

development of the site as a park in 1967 and 1968.

In 1965, the site for the park and a new elementary school was selected and preliminary

plans for the site were developed in conjunction with the housing authority as part of a

major urban renewal project in the area. The next year, the park board received approval

from the Department of Housing and Urban Development (HUD) for a grant for federal

funds to help develop the site as a park-school-social agency complex. As part of

planning for the joint use of the property by the park and school boards and a social

service agency, the park board contracted with Phyllis Wheatley Neighborhood Services

to operate programs at the planned facility.

In 1968 the deal to acquire the land from the housing authority was finalized and a joint-

use agreement was signed with the school board for the recreation center attached to the

school. The intent of the park board and the housing authority at the time was to trade

land, with the park board acquiring land for Bethune Park and the housing authority

getting the land that was then Sumner Field Park for housing development. The second

step of that agreement was never completed, however, and the park board retained

Sumner Park, too.

Development of the park and construction of the Grant Neighborhood Center, which was

later named the Phyllis Wheatley Community Center, began in 1969.

In 1989 the park board spent more than $200,000 renovating the center and the park,

including a new totlot for small children, which was dedicated in 1990.

The playground and wading pool were replaced in

2015.

Bluff Street Park

Location: 1 20

Ave. S

Size: 5.3 acres

Name: Bluff Street Park was named after the abandoned Bluff Street, which ran from the

end of 20th Avenue South under the 10th Avenue Bridge. Portions of this old roadbed can

still be seen. The park was officially named in 2009, after being referred to unofficially for

many years as “Tank Holder #5 site”. The park is currently a part of Mississippi Gorge

Regional Park and the National Park Service’s Mississippi National River and Recreation

Area. The Central Mississippi Riverfront Regional Park Master Plan calls for the southern

expansion of its boundary to Bridge No. 9. This expansion would include Bluff Street Park

when the plan is adopted by the Met Council in late 2016.

Acquisition and Development

Most of the land for the park was purchased October 16, 1985 from First National Bank of

St. Paul as part of the Great River Road development.

The acquisition was complicated by ownership entanglements and the need for

environmental remediation of the site. The river bluff had been the site of a coal

gasification plant from the 1870s until 1961 when the gas works was demolished.

However, part of the site still contained a peak shaving plant and underground pipes and

storage for the natural gas company, Minnegasco.

Minnegasco and the Park Board began working together to remediate the site in the 1980s

and intensified those efforts in 1987 when James Rice Parkway was opened on the west

bank of the river from Plymouth Avenue to Portland Avenue upriver from the future park

site. At that time, the goal was to connect West River Parkway from 4th Street North along

the river flats, past the erstwhile city harbor and Bohemian Flats Park to Portland Avenue

South. Those river parkway connections were made in four construction stages from 1990

to 1998 culminating in a continuous river parkway from Plymouth Avenue in North

Minneapolis to Minnehaha Park in South Minneapolis. Remediation of pollutants on the

site was completed by 2000.

The I-35W Bridge over the Mississippi River was built near the site in 1966. After the

horrific collapse of the I-35W Bridge in 2007, the company contracted to rebuild the

bridge rented the park land as a construction staging site. The bridge contractor restored

the staging area to turfgrass after completing their work.

Following an agreement between the Park Board and the City of Minneapolis in 2013, the

City built a bicycle and pedestrian trail under the freeway and across the far southern edge

of the park. This new trail connects downtown Minneapolis with Bridge No. 9 and the

Dinkytown Greenway through the University of Minnesota.

In the same year, 2013, the Park Board approved a Landscape Planting Plan that restores

1.5 acres of the upper portion of the park to a bedrock bluff prairie. This bluff edge area of

Minneapolis along the Mississippi River had a specific pallet of plant species prior to the

settlement of Minneapolis, and the plan suggests species that are most likely to have been

in this area. The bedrock bluff prairie planting was installed in the fall of 2015.

Maintenance of this unique downtown planting includes mowing and burning over the

course of six seasons. Once established, the prairie will be very low maintenance.

Bohanon Park

Location: Bryant and 49

Avenues North

Size: 8.53 acres

Name: The park was the site of the city’s workhouse and was called simply the

Workhouse Site Playground from the time it was acquired in 1935 until it was officially

named John C. Bohanon Park in 1946. Bohanon was an early settler in that region of

Minneapolis.

Acquisition and Development

After the city closed the workhouse that had once occupied the site, the city council

transferred the land to the park board in 1935. The donation followed years of discussions

of what to do with the site. As early as 1926 the park board was involved in discussions

with the City Planning Commission and the Department of Public Welfare over

disposition of the site. The donation of land at the time was valued at $10,000. The

original eight-plus acres of land were expanded with the addition of approximately ½

acre in 1957 when 50

Street between Bryant and Dupont avenues was vacated to

connect the park to Jenny Lind School.

In 1936, the park board approved a request to locate in the park the home in which

Governor Floyd B. Olson was born—if it could be done at no expense to the board.

Apparently it couldn’t be, as the home was not placed there.

The park was originally graded and resurfaced as a Works Progress Administration

project in 1940.

In the late 1940s, Bohannon was one of 15 playgrounds in the city where the summer

schedule of afternoon recreation programs was adjusted to provide morning activities

because of a large number of younger children in the neighborhood.

In 1951, at the request of the Jenny Lind School P. T. A., plans for the improvement of

the Bohanon Field-Jenny Lind School Site were approved by the park board, the city

planning commission and the school board.

The park was finally developed in 1956-1958 and integrated with the facilities of Jenny

Lind School. New facilities included a wading pool, a hockey rink, floodlights and a

shelter building. The improvements were funded by bonds and property assessments

divided fifty-fifty between the neighborhood and the city as a whole.

The current Bohannon Park shelter was built in 1977.

One hundred new trees were planted in the park in 2009, two tennis courts were replaced

in 2012 and the basketball court was resurfaced in 2014.

Bohemian Flats Park

Location: 2150 West River Parkway

Acquisition and Development

Bohemian Flats was formerly a residential area. About the time city was incorporated

(1867), immigrants seeking employment in Minneapolis or at the St. Anthony mills began

settling there.

The Washington Avenue Bridge was constructed over the area in 1884, linking central

Minneapolis with the campus of the University of Minnesota, on the east bank of the river.

By 1900, the 100 homes, a few stores, and a church created what many described as an

Old World-style village below the University.

Boom Island Park

Location: From near Sibley Street NE to the Mississippi River between 6

Avenue NE

and 8th Avenue NE.

Size: 22.5 acres

Name: The park gets its name from the island that it once was. The island was named for

the booms that were used to separate logs floated down the Mississippi River to sawmills

was “branded.” Each lumber company put is own stamp on the end of its logs and they

were separated using those stamps and directed to the proper saw mill by men working

from Boom Island. The sawmills at the falls were eventually replaced by flour mills.

Acquisition and Development

The land that had ceased to be an island decades earlier due to a build up of silt and

sawdust was purchased by the park board with funds from the state legislature through

the Metropolitan Council in 1982. The land was purchased from a construction company

for $2.6 million. The land had been targeted for acquisition in the 1978 plan for the

development of the central riverfront as a park by the Riverfront Development

Coordinating Board (RDCB), which was chaired by park commissioner Ole Olson. The

RCDB considered plans to convert the land to an island once again, but decided against it

due to the cost.

The first phase of the park was dedicated in 1987 shortly before the completion and

dedication of James I. Rice Parkway across the river. The park was designed by Ted

Wirth, grandson of former park superintendent Theodore Wirth. At the time Ted Wirth

was a landscape architect based in Montana. The park was mostly completed in 1988.

The park featured a marina, boat dock, a landmark miniature lighthouse in the river,

picnic shelters and a playground for small children. An old railroad bridge from Boom

Island to Nicollet Island was converted into a bicycle and pedestrian bridge.

The acquisition and development of the park was seen at the time as an important spur to

redevelopment of the Central Riverfront, along with Nicollet Island, Historic Main Street

and Father Hennepin Bluffs on the east side of the river and James Rice Parkway and

Mill Ruins Park on the west side.

In 1988 the paddle boat Anson Northrup began using the docks at Boom Island Park to

board passengers for river cruises. That boat was later replaced by the Mississippi Queen.

In 2012 the park board stopped riverboat cruises from passing through the St. Anthony

Lock to help impede the spread of Asian Carp above St. Anthony Falls. Riverboat cruises

no longer operate out of Boom Island Park.

A complete redesign of the park began in 2011, with new landscaping and paths intended

to establish a greater connection to the river. The plaza along the river and the marina

were extensively rehabilitated.

In 2013, a Nice Ride bicycle rental kiosk was installed at the park and in 2016 a Paddle

Share kayak rental station debuted near the bridge connecting to Nicollet Island.

Boom Island Park is contiguous with B. F. Nelson Park to the south and is part of Central

Riverfront Regional Park.

Bossen Field Park

Location: 28

Avenue South and East 56

Street

Size: 36.5 acres

Name: When the park was first considered for purchase it was referred to as Airport

Park, due to its proximity to the airport. When the land was acquired in 1947 it was

immediately named for Christian A. Bossen, superintendent of parks 1935-1945.

Bossen, who was born in Denmark, came to Minneapolis from Hartford , Connecticut in

1906 with Theodore Wirth. He had already been Wirth’s bookkeeper in the Hartford park

system for several years. Bossen was given the title of Assistant Superintendent in 1907.

Bossen succeeded Wirth as superintendent in 1935 and remained in the job until he

reached the mandatory retirement age of 65 in 1945.

Bossen’s name also appears in “Bossen’s Lane” in the Thomas Sadler Roberts Bird

Sanctuary beside Lake Harriet. Bossen recommended formally creating the bird

sanctuary in his first year as superintendent (it had been referred to as a bird sanctuary as

early as 1923 in park board reports). It was one of Bossen’s favorite places in the park

system and his ashes were scattered there upon his death in 1956.

Acquisition and Development

Bossen Field Park was tax-forfeited land that was transferred from the state to the park

board, at no cost, in 1947. It was in a neighborhood targeted for a park since 1926, when

Minneapolis annexed from Richfield a strip of land about a mile wide across the southern

border of the city. The finances of the board didn’t permit many acquisitions anywhere,

and none in the annexed territory, through the Great Depression and World War II. The

impetus for acquiring the land after the war was a study conducted by Liebert Weir, the

national secretary of the National Recreation Association who identified several

neighborhoods that were without parks, but needed them. The neighborhood around

Bossen Field Park was an area that he targeted. The park was originally planned to be

only ten acres, roughly the size of most other neighborhood parks, but with an

opportunity to acquire more land for nothing, the park board acquired sufficient land to

construct multiple playing fields. From the time of its acquisition that was the plan for

Bossen Field.

The challenge with the parcel of land, as with much of the land acquired by the park

board, was that it was low, wet land that had to be filled to be useable. The park board

obtained some fill from construction projects at the airport nearby, which the park board

had owned until it had been turned over to the Metropolitan Airports Commission shortly

before Bossen Field was acquired. But the airport didn’t provide enough fill, so the park

board created a public dump at the park as well, which collected 70,000 cubic yards of

“material,” according to the 1955 annual report. In 1954 the park board considered future

use of the field, perhaps including a golf driving range or pitch-and-putt course. In the

end, plans for a regional athletic field and small playground won out. Most of the land

wasn’t brought up to grade by garbage and construction debris until 1955 when the south

end of the park was graded. Baseball backstops and playground equipment were installed,

and the fields were seeded initially in 1957. Lights were also installed for the fields. The

initial plans for improvement were not completed until 1959, when a shelter building was

constructed.

Playground equipment was updated at the park in 1967 and areas surrounding the ball

fields were also landscaped then. Major park upgrades were made in 1989.

The Bossen Field Park Master Plan was approved by the Park Board in 2015. It identified

a slate of improvements planned at the park in the coming years, including renovated

athletic fields and a new playground.

Bottineau Park

Location: 2

St. and 19

Avenue NE

Size: 7.18 acres

Name: Bottineau Park was named for Pierre Bottineau, one of the first settlers of St.

Anthony, who owned a large portion of what is now northeast Minneapolis. According to

a 1975 compilation of the names of park properties, Bottineau at one time had platted the

land for a park. In 1933, the Polish Central Organization petitioned to change the name of

the park to Pulaski Field, but that request was never approved. Kazimierz Pulaski was a

Polish soldier who became a general in the Continental Army during the Revolutionary

War and is credited with establishing the first cavalry in the U. S. Army.

Acquisition and Development

The original 6.22 acres of Bottineau Park were purchased in 1915 for nearly $29,000.

The first plans for Bottineau in the 1915 superintendent’s report show that the park was

to be devoted exclusively to recreation. In 1916, the park that had once been a vegetable

field was improved to include one baseball field and one football field, to double as a

skating rink in winter, six tennis courts, one outdoor gymnasium each for girls and boys

and two drinking fountains. The park was also provided a temporary frame fieldhouse of

“plain but neat appearance,” according to Theodore Wirth’s report of 1916. At that time

Wirth also recommended a permanent fieldhouse and a wading pool. The park was given

its first toilets in 1918 when the board transferred two toilets from Loring Park, which

already had indoor toilets in the Loring Shelter.

While money to further improve Bottineau and other first ward parks was approved in

1917, the improvements were put off until 1929, when the park got a “much-needed”

resurfacing and other improvements, which cost about $5,000, according to the 1929

annual report.

With the onset of the Great Depression, followed by World War II, few improvements

were made to any parks. In 1938, Park Superintendent Christian Bossen presented a plan

for a wading pool and a permanent shelter building at the park. Those plans were not

executed until 1950, when the wading pool was built and an architect was hired to create

new plans for a recreation building. A bandstand was also constructed in the park in

1950. Construction of a new recreation shelter in the park finally began in 1956, but it

wasn’t completed in time to serve as a warming house that winter, so a temporary shelter

was put up for skaters.

Near the end of the park board’s building boom of the 1970s, Bottineau Park received a

new recreation center in 1977. That shelter burned down in 1999 and was replaced in

2001 by a domed fieldhouse unique among Minneapolis recreation centers.

A skate park was added to Bottineau Park in 2005. Significant improvements to the

playing fields were begun in 2010 and completed in 2011, including the installation of an

irrigation system, new fencing and new lighting.

Trivia

Bottineau Park was the site of a memorial concert on August 8, 1923, to honor President

Warren G. Harding whose funeral was held that day. All other parks, except Lake

Harriet, where another memorial concert was held, were closed that day and park

employees at all other parks were given the day off with pay. The park board also posted

notices throughout the park system asking park visitors to show proper respect on that

day of national mourning.

Brackett Field

Location: 36

Avenue South and East 28

St.

Size 10.32 acres

Name: The park was referred to as the Short Line Playground for its proximity to the

railroad tracks from the time it was designated for acquisition on November 16, 1921

until it was formally named George A. Brackett Field on January 17, 1923.

George A. Brackett

George Brackett was one of the original park commissioners appointed in the legislation

that created the park board in 1883. He was then elected to serve another three year term.

Brackett was one of the most public-spirited of all early leaders of the city, serving as

mayor, councilman and the city’s first fire chief. He was among the handful of people

who had pushed for years for the city to acquire parks and helped lead the campaign to

gain approval of the park act during the referendum of 1883. Brackett was also a leader in

founding several charities in Minneapolis. In 1885, the governor of Minnesota appointed

Brackett to a five-member commission to acquire land for a state park at Minnehaha

Falls. When the legislature did not have the money to buy the land around the falls for the

park, Brackett secured temporary private financing to ensure the acquisition could be

completed.

Acquisition and Development

Brackett Field, a portion of which was still unplatted at the time, was designated for

acquisition November 16, 1921. Awards for condemning the land for the park amounted

to nearly $35,000. The entire cost of the acquisition and initial improvements, a

combined cost of almost $92,000, was assessed against neighborhood property for

payment over ten years.

Improvements to the playground park began almost immediately. Park superintendent

Theodore Wirth had included in the 1921 annual report a proposed plan for the still

unnamed field, noting that it was devoted to “concentrated gymnasiums and playground

facilities.” “Every foot of the twelve-acre ground,” he wrote, “is taken advantage of in

some useful manner.” Brackett was one of the first neighborhood parks in the city

designed from the start exclusively for active recreation with almost no landscaped open

spaces. In his 1923 report, Wirth wrote that improvements at Brackett Field were

completed faster than any other property in the history of the park board. A shelter for the

park took a bit longer to build however. When bids to build a modest shelter at the park

came in more than 30% higher than Wirth’s estimate of $12,000 in May 1923, the park

board rejected them all. It sought bids again that December and found one more to its

liking. The first shelter was built in early 1924.

With the rapid growth in use of park recreation facilities in the 1930s, Brackett was first

designated as a year-round recreation center in 1935. With the financial challenges at the

end of the Depression and World War II, however, Brackett didn’t remain a full-time,

year-round facility for long. In 1958 Superintendent Doell reported once again that

Brackett was one of three new year-round recreation centers.

In the early 1960s residents near Brackett Field began circulating petitions to support

renovation of the park with assessments split 50-50 between the neighborhood and the

city. With the success of the petition drive, Brackett was upgraded in 1963, including a

renovated shelter and new playground equipment that featured a jungle gym and slide in

the shape of a rocket. It was the ultimate in modern play equipment.

The Brackett recreation center was expanded in 1980 with a basement renovation, along

with other site improvements. The recreation center was demolished in 1999 and replaced

with a new building, designed by architect Milo Thompson, with the help of

Neighborhood Revitalization Program (NRP) funds.

A skate park was built at Brackett Field in 2005, taking the place of two of the four park

tennis courts. The two remaining courts were resurfaced. At that time the park also

witnessed the return of the Brackett Rocket. The jungle gym and slide installed in the

park in the 1960s, which had become a neighborhood icon, was converted into a park

sculpture in the southwest corner of the park. When the park was renovated, innovative

new playground equipment, designed in Denmark, was also installed.

A project completed in 2014 improved drainage and redesigned a path traveling through

the park, making it safer for both pedestrians and cyclists.

Brownie Lake

Location: West of Cedar Lake Parkway and south of I-394.

Size: 27.66 acres, including 9.59 acres of water

Name: The name of the lake predates the creation of the park board in 1883. “Brownie”

was the nickname of Agnes McNair, the daughter of William McNair who owned the

land. In a 1913 plan for the development of Glenwood (Wirth) Park, park superintendent

Theodore Wirth labeled Brownie Lake “Hillside Harbor,” but there is no record that the

park board ever officially changed the name of the lake.

Acquisition and Development

Brownie Lake was acquired as a part of the 100-plus acre expansion of Glenwood

(Wirth) Park and the acquisition of portions of the southern and western shores of Cedar

Lake in April 1908.

The lake at one time had been considerably larger. It was reduced by a third when the

railroad tracks were built beside the lake in 1867. Even when it was acquired by the park

board, however, it was larger than it is now. When a navigable channel was opened

between Brownie Lake and Cedar Lake in 1917, the lake level dropped ten feet according

to Theodore Wirth, who was park superintendent at the time. (The water level in Cedar

Lake had dropped five feet when it was connected by the Kenilworth Canal to Lake of

the Isles in 1913.)

In 1927 Brownie Lake almost became better known when the park board approved a

suggestion from the park superintendent and the city engineer that the name of Cedar

Lake Road in Glenwood (Wirth) Park be changed to Brownie Lake Road, to distinguish it

from Cedar Lake Parkway around the lake, if the city would agree to change the name of

Cedar Lake Road from the park to Western (Glenwood) Avenue. The city apparently did

not agree.

The park land west of Brownie Lake is the largest park area in Minneapolis ever to be

sold. Thirty-two acres of Wirth Park west of the lake were sold for $200,000 to the

Prudential Insurance Company in 1952 as a location for the company’s regional office.

The park board bowed to intense public pressure to sell the land. Prudential had made it

clear that the site adjacent to the lake was the only site it would consider for its offices in

the city. Ultimately the park board was convinced that the benefit to the Minneapolis

economy was a greater good than keeping the land as a park. The board justified its

action in part by asserting that with the growth of traffic on Highway 12 (now I-394) and

the widening of that road, the land west of Brownie Lake had already been isolated from

the rest of Wirth Park anyway.

In 1958 Brownie Lake became the connecting link between Basset’s Creek and the Chain

of Lakes as a plan was implemented to pump water from the creek to raise lake levels.

Years of below-average rainfall had left lake levels at historic lows. At that time the

water level in the channel connecting Lake Calhoun and Lake of the Isles was too

shallow to navigate even in a canoe.

Bassett’s Creek, which flows from Medicine Lake in Plymouth, had never suffered the

low water levels associated with Minnehaha Creek, which made it the target of those

seeking a source for water in the Chain of Lakes. At various times in the history of

Minneapolis parks and as recently as the late 1930’s the park board had used city water to

raise lake levels, but the cost of doing that had become prohibitive. In much earlier times

the idea of connecting Wirth Lake and Brownie Lake by a canal had been considered but

abandoned when it was determined that the elevation of Wirth Lake was 37 feet lower

than Brownie Lake, thus the need for a pump to get water from Bassett’s Creek to

Brownie Lake. The level of water in the lakes was important, because many recreational

facilities—docks, bath house, and boat house—were permanent facilities that required

relative proximity to water.

Initially the pumping station on Bassett’s Creek raised lake levels, but not even that creek

produced enough water to raise the levels of four lakes and keep them at an acceptable

level. So in 1966 a pumping station was constructed on the Mississippi River to pump

water from the river into Bassett’s Creek and from there to Brownie Lake. Pumping from

the river caused concern beginning in the 1970s, when the water quality in Minneapolis

lakes first became an issue. Critics of pumping river water into the lakes noted that

phosphate levels in the river were too high to be acceptable in the city’s lakes. The

pumping station on the river was dismantled in the 1990s.

Brownie Lake was the target of a campaign to remove invasive plants and improve

vegetation management in 2007 and a canoe rack was installed near the north shore in

2009. Trail improvements, a new canoe launch, pedestrian bridge, 75 new trees and other

landscaping features were completed in 2014. The project was enhanced by a trail

easement donated by Target Corporation, the current occupant of the former Prudential

Insurance offices. The first “Black Diamond” mountain biking trail in Minneapolis was

completed in Brownie Lake Park in 2016.

Bryant Square

Location: Bryant Avenue South and West 31

Street

Size: 3.66 acres

Name: The park was commonly referred to as 8

Ward Park until it was officially named

for its location on Bryant Avenue in 1907. Bryant Avenue was presumably named for

American poet and journalist William Cullen Bryant.

Acquisition and Development

The park was designated for purchase in late 1903. The purchase was completed in 1904

for a little more than $9,000. The board agreed to complete the purchase only after

neighborhood improvement associations promised to fill the land themselves before

asking the park board to make improvements. The problem was that the land for the park

was very low land, as much as twenty feet below street level.

The neighborhood associations had a hard time filling the land even when it was used as

a garbage dump for a time. Nearly four years later fill was still a problem. Theodore

Wirth reported in early 1908 that the park still needed fill and that “until we know where

to get it” improvements to the park were “impossible.” Finally in 1912, after eight years

of no success finding fill for the park, the park board spent nearly $6,000 to purchase fill

to raise the level of the park so that it could be improved and used.

In 1913 trees were planted in the park, but money was not available for other

improvements. Some playground equipment was added to the park in 1914 and the open

field was used for football, baseball and a skating rink in winter. In his 1914

superintendent’s report, Theodore Wirth provided a plan for the development of Bryant

Square by which, he said, the sunken play-field could be made one of the “most compact

and useful playgrounds” of the entire system. Wirth provided cost estimates for the

improvements that he said could serve as a “standard for other playgrounds of a similar

size.”

While Wirth may have considered his plans for a recreation shelter and equipment

“standard,” the park board apparently did not, because Wirth urged seven years later that

Bryant Square still needed a small shelter and suggested that it could be paid for with a

small property assessment on the district.

Although nothing came of plans for development of the playground, the recreation

instructor assigned to the park was being noticed. Alice Dietz was mentioned in the 1918

annual report for her work at the park. She would later become one of the leaders of the

park board’s greatly expanded recreation programs in the 1920s and 1930s.

In 1923, the park board authorized plans to build a recreation shelter and hired architect

and former park commissioner Harry Wild Jones to create plans. The building was

completed in 1925 at a cost of only $15,000. The building stood for 45 years until it was

demolished in 1970 and replaced by a new recreation center.

In 2008 a small amphitheater, the Bryant Square POPS (Pubic Outdoor Performance

Space), was built into the hillside south of the park’s recreation center. The recreation

center was also upgraded that year to improve energy efficiency.

In 2012 two multipurpose sports fields were renovated with funding and dozens of

volunteers provided by Toro and the Minnesota Twins.

New flooring and furnaces were installed at the rec center in 2016, along with five new

decorative mosaic panels. Each panel depicts a different theme: spring/summer, winter,

autumn, water and butterfly garden.

Bryn Mawr Meadows Park

Location: Morgan Avenue and Wayzata Boulevard

Size: 51.56 acres.

Name: The neighborhood and the park named Bryn Mawr take their names from John

Oswald’s farm that once occupied that region of the city. Bryn Mawr means “great hill”

in Welsh. As early as the 1860s, Oswald grew tobacco on his farm and also produced

fruit wines there, which led eventually to Oswald establishing the first wholesale wine

and liquor business in Minneapolis. Oswald was a commissioner on the first park board

created by the legislature in 1883. The name was officially adopted May 11, 1911.

Acquisition and Development

John Oswald’s son-in-law and business partner, Theophil Basting, offered to sell part of

Oswald’s estate to the park board in 1910. Theodore Wirth’s assessment of the property

at the time was that it did not offer any “special advantage” except as part of a parkway to

connect The Parade and Loring Park to Glenwood (Wirth) Park through Bassett’s Creek

Valley. Even then, Wirth reported in 1910 that compared with other needs in the park

system it was of “little importance.”

The 45 acres originally offered to the park board was appraised at $81,203 in late 1910, a

sum the park board was not inclined to pay. For the 39 acres eventually acquired in early

1911, the park board paid only $32,000. The land left out of the purchase was the far

western end that would have connected Bryn Mawr to Glenwood Park, which meant the

park board bought the land without a connection to Glenwood—and therefore no Valley

Drive. Perhaps the park board was convinced to acquire the land when Bastil and other

residents said they would not ask for any improvements on the land. The cost of the

purchase was assessed on property in the neighborhood

The first suggestions for improvement of the land, nonetheless, were made in 1915 when

Wirth recommended converting the land into an equestrian center, complete with horse-

riding park and polo grounds. The plan was never pursued despite being presented again

by Wirth in 1924. At that time he recommended a neighborhood and city-wide

assessment to pay for the development. The park board did approve a baseball field for

Bryn Mawr, at a cost of $3,000, in 1922, but never approved the equestrian center.

Bryn Mawr was targeted for a neighborhood playground in a 1928 report produced by

Wirth. A year later Wirth presented a plan to improve the 39 acres of “almost useless”

land. The plan included the improvement of Bassett’s Creek from Glenwood to Bryn

Mawr.

Sixty acres of land along Bassett’s Creek from Bryn Mawr to Glenwood (Wirth) Park

was acquired in 1934 for $14,000. Included in that acquisition were about 14 acres

donated by the Glenwood-Inglewood Company and Arthur Fruen, a city council member

and ex-officio park commissioner 1929-1933. (See Bassett’s Creek Valley Park.)

The first building constructed at Bryn Mawr was a combined toilet building and storage

shed to serve the athletic fields in 1953. In addition about 7,000 yards of clay were

removed from the playing field areas and replaced with a good grade of back fill.

A small part of Bryn Mawr was lost to freeway construction in 1966, but freeways

ultimately resulted in the enlargement of the park. Seven athletic fields at The Parade

were lost due to freeway expansion and the park board replaced some of that loss by

expanding Bryn Mawr and building more playing fields there.

Important renovations were made to Bryn Mawr’s playing fields in 1992.

Bryn Mawr was connected to the Luce Line bicycle trail in 2005, which connected paths

from Wirth Park with the Cedar Lake Trail and links to downtown Minneapolis.

Caleb Dorr Circle

Location: East end of Franklin Avenue Bridge

Size: 0.06 acres

Name: Unlike the other parcels of land acquired at the same time, Caleb Dorr Circle was

the only tract that was given a name that was the least bit creative. While the other four

parcels were simply named for the streets on which they were located— Bedford, Barton,

Clarence and Orlin—this slightly larger piece of land was named for an early settler of

Minneapolis and a pioneer lumberman. Caleb Dorr also had been elected alderman for

area in the first St. Anthony city elections in 1855.

It was the only park property in Minneapolis called a “circle.” All the other odd lots of

park property at intersections were called triangles, except two “ovals”—Lakeside and

Highland, neither of which still exist. The only remaining “oval” in the park system—

Seven Oaks Oval near West River Parkway—was acquired in 1922.

Acquisition and Development

The city council requested on September 24, 1915 that the park board take over five

parcels of land in southeast Minneapolis, including Caleb Dorr Circle. The park board

agreed to take control of the land on October 11, 1915 and officially the parcels on

November 17, 1915. The other four parcels accepted were Bedford, Barton, Clarence and

Orlin Triangles.

The circle was improved—graded, seeded, planted and curbed—in 1916 along with the

four other small triangles in the Prospect Park neighborhood.

Cavell Park

Location: Fillmore Street and 34

Avenue NE

Size: 3.63 acres

Name: The park was named for Edith Cavell School that had previously occupied the

site. Edith Cavell was an English nurse working in Belgium at the outbreak of World War

I. When the German army occupied Belgium, she helped Allied soldiers escape to the

Netherlands. She was executed by Germany in 1915 for her efforts and became a

propaganda symbol to generate support for the war against Germany in England, the

United States and other Allied countries.

Acquisition and Development

The Cavell School site was targeted for joint development by the school board and park

board as early as 1948 following a joint resolution of cooperation between the two boards

to provide park facilities in under-served sections of the city. However instead of

developing the Cavell site, the two boards opted to work together to build a new school

and park, Waite Park, four blocks east.

With the Waite Park development, the Cavell site dropped off the park board’s radar until

the Northeast Lions Club requested the park board’s cooperation in developing a “cub”

baseball field on the site. The park board approved an expenditure of $2,500 for the

improvement and operation of that field and authorized the superintendent to work with

the school board to obtain their approval.

The park board finally acquired the site from the school board in 1968, using funds from

the federal government’s Open Space Act and the Minnesota Conservation Department.

The site was redeveloped as a park, with ball fields, playground equipment and a

recreation shelter in 1977.

New courts and paths were installed at Cavell Park in 1999. At that time additional

landscaping was also done in the park.

Cedar Avenue Field

Location: Cedar Avenue and East 25

Street

Size: 1.89 acres

Name: The park was named for its location on Cedar Avenue.

Acquisition and Development

When the park board received petitions from residents in the summer of 1916 for a park

in the area, it turned to man who had helped them in the past. The board wrote to David

Stewart of St. Albans, Maine and asked if he’d be willing to donate the land for the park.

It was a logical, if hopeful, request. In 1912, Stewart had donated six lots valued at

$4,000 to complete the acquisition of Stewart Field. David Stewart had inherited the land

from his brother, Levi Stewart, an early pioneer and large landowner in Minneapolis.

David Stewart donated the land in memory of his brother and Stewart Field was

subsequently named for his brother.

David Stewart once again responded favorably to a request from the park board and on

October 20, 1916 he donated 1.89 acres of land for Cedar Avenue Field. At the time the

park board placed a value on the donation of $10,000. When the park board received the

donation, it approved discussions with the original petitioners for a park to see if they

would be willing to be assessed for the cost of acquiring the southern half of the block to

add to Stewart’s gift. There is no record of further contact with those petitioners on the

matter. On December 2, 1916 the park board named the small park across 25

Street

from the original South High School, Cedar Avenue Field.

In response to requests for improving the land in 1919, the park board authorized

spending up to $1,000 to improve the empty ground for a small combination baseball and

football field. The action came in response to two requests by the alderman for the district

for improvements, as well as a request from the coach at South High School for his teams

to be able to use the field. The grading was delayed in hopes that the neighborhood would

agree to pay for more extensive improvements.

The board’s 1919 annual report presented a plan for the park, which included a

playground for children, a small shelter and wading pool. The layout provided “room for

such games as small children may play.” The estimated cost of the plan was $30,000,

which would have been assessed against property owners in the area, who were evidently

unwilling to pay. The following year the field was graded for a ball field and a backstop

and benches were installed, as well as a sandbox for children. Playground equipment was

installed in 1921.

Cedar Avenue Field was upgraded in 1969 with the installation of playground equipment

and creation of a hard-surfaced play area. The park was renovated again in 2003 with

new

playground equipment,

basketball

court, and

landscaping improvements.

The

hard

courts were

resurfaced

11.

Cedar Lake

Location: Around and including Cedar Lake

Size: 288.1 acres, including 173.02 acres of water

Name: The lake was named long before the park board was created for the red cedar

trees that once grew on its shores.

Acquisition and Development

No lake in the Minneapolis park system was considered for acquisition as a park for so

long and took so long to acquire as Cedar Lake. Even before Lake of the Isles was

acquired in 1886, the park board was considering proposals to acquire the western shores

of Cedar Lake as a parkway that would loop from Central (Loring) Park to Prospect

(Farview) Park in north Minneapolis. The appeal of the route, similar to the appeal of

parkways around Lake Harriet and Lake of the Isles, was that landowners had offered to

donate much of the land for that parkway.

The park board discussed the route with William McNair, the owner of much of the land

along the route (and the law partner of early park commissioner and park board attorney

Eugene Wilson), however some park commissioners thought the route was too far from

the city to be of much use. Regardless of divided opinion on the acquisition, the issue was

dropped when McNair died in 1885. Landscape architect Horace Cleveland did not

mention Cedar Lake in the blueprint he was asked to prepare for the new park system in

1883. Cleveland’s focus was much more on acquiring the banks of the Mississippi River

than on acquiring the shores of the distant lakes. It was Cleveland’s idea of a system of

parkways connecting features of natural interest, however, which kept alive the idea of a

parkway around Cedar Lake.

When Cleveland’s friend and former University of Minnesota president William Folwell

urged the park board to plan carefully the expansion of the park system in 1891, he

suggested a parkway around Cedar Lake to connect to Glenwood (Wirth) Park and then

continue north to a large, yet-to-be-acquired park in the northwest part of the city.

Cedar Lake came up at park board meetings several times in the 1890s, including an offer

from McNair’s heirs to donate land for a parkway in 1894 to connect Dean Parkway with

Glenwood Park, but no action was taken. As president of the park board William Folwell

again recommended adding Cedar Lake to the park system in 1899. His advice was

seconded by landscape architect Warren Manning who was hired to advise the board in

1899 after Cleveland had retired.

With the clamor for more parks nearly everywhere in the city, however, the park board

didn’t seriously consider acquiring Cedar Lake again until 1905. In that year’s annual

report park board president Fred Smith made note of petitions to acquire the west shore

of Cedar Lake in the context of plans to enlarge Glenwood Park. Once again Cedar Lake

was viewed principally as a scenic connection from north Minneapolis to the parkways

around Lake of the Isles and Lake Harriet. (The west shore of Lake Calhoun wasn’t yet a

park either.) Another petition from citizens in 1905 asked for the linking of the lakes,

including Cedar Lake, by a navigable channel.

Finally, at the same time it was designating land to enlarge Glenwood Park, the park

board designated just enough land along the west shore of Cedar Lake to “secure shore

rights” and build a parkway. The land acquired stretched 1¾ miles from the railroad

bridge on the northwest shore of the lake to a point near Dean Parkway between Lake

Calhoun and Lake of the Isles. The cost of most of the land was $1,200.

Later that summer the park board also accepted a donation from Anna Lewis of land

between Cedar Lake and Lake of the Isles to create a channel between the lakes. (Lewis

was later paid $1,000 for that land when the park board couldn’t complete the channel in

time to comply with the conditions of her donation. The channel was scheduled for

completion about the same time as a channel from Lake of the Isles to Lake Calhoun, but

faulty engineering on the new bridge over the yet-to-be dug channel on the west side of

Lake of the Isles caused that bridge to be rebuilt, thus delaying the connection.)

Park superintendent Theodore Wirth included a plan for Cedar Lake improvements in the

1909 annual report, primarily to show the proposed connection with Lake of the Isles.

The map is also interesting because it shows the shore line of Cedar Lake before the

water level dropped five feet after the connection with Lake of the Isles was made. A

dotted line on the map shows where the water level was expected to be after the

connection, creating considerable additional land for the parkway and making a peninsula

of an island near the lake’s western shore. The channel between the lakes was finally

opened in 1913—after the dredges had completed their first round of dredging on Lake

Calhoun—and the level of Cedar Lake dropped as expected.

Before the dredging on Cedar Lake began, the Women’s Christian Association donated

two-plus acres of meadow and wetland southwest of Cedar Lake for a park in 1912. That

year Wirth also recommended that the park board acquire all the shores of Cedar Lake.

Despite inaction on that recommendation, the park board proceeded with the linking of

Cedar Lake to Lake of the Isles in 1913 and began construction of the parkway south and

west of the lake on the additional land that was created by lowering the water level. It

was only as Cedar Lake was linked to Lake of the Isles that park commissioner Wilbur

Decker first recommended also linking Cedar Lake with Brownie Lake. Wirth expressed

his support for that action in the 1915 annual report and suggested that the board pay the

extra cost of constructing a more appealing concrete bridge for the railroad over that

proposed channel, instead of the more utilitarian steel-girder bridge the railroad was

willing to construct.

Dredges hired by the park board were busy at Cedar Lake from 1913 to 1916 deepening

the lake, generating fill for the parkway and connecting to Brownie Lake, which was

completed in 1917. Wirth noted in the annual report for 1917 that dredging in Cedar lake

had been much more difficult than expected due to the coarse gravel found on the lake

bottom. With the improvements to the lake, board president Francis Gross called once

again for the acquisition of the entire lake. “This beautiful lake,” he wrote, “its shores

only partially parked, is now like a picture incompletely framed.”

Late in 1917 the board instructed Wirth to present a plan for acquiring the remainder of

the lake and he presented that plan in the summer of 1918. The board voted to place the

report on file, noting that the land should be acquired “at the proper time.” In 1921 Wirth

presented a plan for the development of Cedar Lake that included athletic fields on the

east shore and in the southwest meadow, and tennis courts in three locations west of the

lake, including four on the new peninsula created when the lake was lowered. Despite

repeated recommendations from Wirth over the next several years to proceed with that

acquisition, the “proper time” didn’t arrive for almost forty years.

With the many other major acquisitions and improvement projects under way in the early

1920s, it is not surprising that the board did not acquire the remaining shores of Cedar

Lake, even though Wirth suggested in 1920 that the value of the land, particularly on the

north side of the lake, “should not be very high.” What is more surprising is that the new

Cedar Lake Boulevard along the western and southern shores did not connect to Dean

Parkway. A gap of 750 feet existed in the park board’s ownership of land between the

two parkways. A city street did connect the two parkways, but the park board didn’t

control that one short stretch where it crossed the railroad tracks. In proposing a bridge

over the railroad tracks to connect the parkways in 1921, Wirth called it “one of the worst

railroad grade crossings in the city, and the most dangerous point of the Grand Rounds.”

At the same time, Wirth admitted that the improvements to Cedar Lake were not as high

a priority as improving Kenwood Park because the same property would be assessed for

both projects. Kenwood Park had been owned by the park board for 14 years with almost

no improvements and Wirth’s plans for Kenwood Park had been gathering dust that

whole time.

Cedar Lake Boulevard was improved in 1923, but there was still no grade crossing to

Dean Parkway. It wasn’t until 1929 that the grade crossing was finally improved to make

it less dangerous, but no bridge was built. The city and the railroad paid for the grade

crossing improvements, but the work was done by park board crews. At that time,

perhaps weary of his nearly annual recommendation that the north and east shores of the

lake be added to the park system, Wirth recommended that the acquisition of that land

should take place when the “Southwest Diagonal” was undertaken. The Southwest

Diagonal was a proposed thoroughfare from what is now I-394 to the southwest that

would have passed beside the railroad tracks near Cedar Lake. It was never built. With

the coming of the Great Depression, followed by World War II, very little was done to

maintain the park system, let alone expand it—or build new roads through the city.

In 1933 a land developer offered to donate a strip of land on the east shore of the lake for

a parkway and the park board accepted the offer of a little more than an acre of land,

which gave the park board its first small piece of the eastern shore of the lake. The

donation was valued by the park board at $5,000.

Cedar Lake did not feature prominently in park board plans or proceedings during the

1930s and 1940s. Part of the southwest meadow was designated during the depression as

a vegetable patch for the Minneapolis Direct Relief Committee. Another interesting

mention of the lake was in 1934 when the Cedar Lake Ice Company sponsored the

community sings in parks throughout the city. Because Cedar Lake was not wholly

owned by the park board, ice was still harvested from the lake to be used throughout the

year in “ice boxes.” Ice harvesting had been terminated on other lakes, especially Lake

Calhoun, when the park board had acquired them.

The park board’s “Postwar Progress” list of $11.7 million in proposed acquisitions and

developments in 1945 did not include the acquisition of Cedar Lake. The list was

generated as part of a city-wide effort to identify projects that could help stimulate the

economy after the war and redress years of “deferred maintenance.” The park board’s

focus was on acquiring and developing neighborhood recreation parks in parts of the city

that had been neglected for decades, not on adding lake shore and parkways to its

inventory. Few projects on the park board’s list were funded by city bonds until the

1960s, even though the City Planning Commission recommended in 1950 that the east

and north shores of Cedar Lake be acquired as a park.

That recommendation was followed in 1953 by the park board seeking and obtaining

from the Minnesota legislature legal control of the waters of Cedar Lake, even though it

didn’t own the entire shoreline.

In 1954 and 1955 the park board took additional steps to acquire all of the lake by adding

nearly nine acres of land to its holdings on the east shore at a total cost of about $32,000.

With the final five acres acquired in 1955, paid for with proceeds from the sale of land

west of Brownie Lake to The Prudential Insurance Company in 1952, the board reported

that it had completed the acquisition of the east shore. The land was purchased without

comment in the park board’s annual reports of 1954 and 1955 suggesting that the

acquisitions had not been among the park board’s highest priorities. In 1956 the park

board initiated proceedings to acquire additional land on the east shore by condemnation,

which resulted in nearly 19 acres being purchased in 1958 at a cost of about $13,000.

The park board added the last piece of Cedar Lake’s shore in 1959 when it designated the

north shore of the lake for acquisition from the railroad. The final piece of shoreline cost

the park board approximately $15,000. For that sum, the park board added to its

inventory of parks not only the nine acres of land purchased, but the 173 acres of the

lake’s surface.

With that act, the park board completed its acquisition of the all the major bodies of water

in the city—river, lakes and streams—with the exception of the Mississippi River banks

at and above St. Anthony falls. Seventy-six years after the park board was created in part

to preserve for public use the shores of the city’s lakes and the banks of its river it had

succeeded in acquiring nearly all of the city’s land that bordered water.

Fourteen acres were added to the park in 1968.

Cedar Lake Parkway was paved in 1977 and new lighting and paths were installed at the

same time.

The most significant change on the land owned by the park board near the lake occurred

when the park board initiated a project in 1995 to improve the water quality of the lake. A

new storm water pond and wetland was created southwest of the lake in 1995-1996 to

filter storm water runoff. Cedar Lake also received an alum treatment in 1996 in a further

attempt to improve water quality.

Extensive improvements to the east beach, known as Hidden Beach, were competed in

2007. A lifeguard stand, portable toilet and picnic tables were added and considerable

landscaping, including removal of invasive species, was completed to open up the area

around the beach. Significant improvements were made to the trails near Cedar Lake in

2013.

Beginning in 2010, the park board was involved in complex discussions over a plan to

run passenger trains from the proposed Southwest Light Rail Transit line across the

Kenilworth Channel between Cedar Lake and Lake of the Isles. In 2010 it formed a

Community Advisory Committee to advise the park board regarding the project’s impact

on park land. In 2012 the park board first formally stated its opposition to the proposed

route traveling over Kenilworth Channel.

In 2014 engineers were hired to take a closer look at alternatives to the proposed bridge

needed to cross the channel. After careful examination of the report issued by the

engineers and consulting with its legal team, the park board determined an alternative

option – tunneling under the channel – was feasible but it added construction time and

cost to the project that rendered it not prudent.

In February 2015 the park board reached an understanding with the Metropolitan

Council, the public agency overseeing the project, and in September the design of new

bridges over the channel was approved.

Central Gym Park

Location: East 34

Street and 4

Avenue South

Size: 3.84 acres

Name: The park began as the gym of the former Central High School. Land was

subsequently acquired around the gym, but by then its name was well-established. The

park board officially named the property Central Park in June 1991. It was the second

property in the city to have that name. From 1883 to 1890, today’s Loring Park was

named Central Park.

Acquisition and Development

The park board’s involvement in the property began after Central High School closed in

1982. The park board had acquired an option to develop a park on the site if the school

were ever to close as a part of an exchange of land with the school board at Shingle Creek

elementary school in 1957.

In 1987 the park board agreed to convert the gym of the former high school for park use.

The gym had been built only 11 years earlier. The rest of the school, which was built in

1922, was demolished. For several years the park board had wanted to establish a park in

the neighborhood, but the neighborhood was opposed to having homes razed for a park.

The closing of the high school presented the park board with a way to offer recreation

services in the neighborhood without removing houses. The gym was dedicated as a park

facility in October 1988. A totlot playground was created outside the gym in 1989.

Eventually, however, the park board did purchase the land containing homes along 3

Avenue South to create an outdoor park as well. The land was purchased from 1998 to

1999 using funds from city bonds, state grants, Neighborhood Revitalization Program

and the Minneapolis Community Development Agency. The park board installed a

softball field, soccer field and tennis courts.

Chergosky Park

Location: Seymour Avenue and Sharon Avenue in southeast Minneapolis.

Size: 0.38 acres

Name: The park was referred to in the neighborhood as Chergosky Park long before the

park board acquired the land in 1992. Chergosky was the name of a grocer in the

neighborhood. The park board continued using the name although it was never formally

adopted.

Acquisition and Development

The acquisition and development of this small park and playground for children, a totlot,

in southeast Minneapolis, separated by a sound wall from I-94, may have set a speed

record. In response to requests from the neighborhood to take over and develop the land

as a park in February 1992, the park board expressed its support in April for efforts to

revitalize the park. In July of that year the park board applied to the state for acquisition

of the land, which was originally acquired by the state for non-payment of taxes. In its

application to the state for the land, the park board called it “vacant and unused” and

“suitable for park purposes.” The development of the small park was aided by a donation

of $7,500 from the Weyerhauser Foundation in August and initial improvements to the

park were completed by September.

What makes the speed of development especially noteworthy was that at the beginning of

1992, the City of Minneapolis, not the state, owned the land. The city had acquired the

land from the state in 1942 to be used exclusively for street purposes. At that time the

land was on the state’s list of property forfeited for failure to pay taxes. Due to that

restriction, using the land for a park required that the city return the land to the state and

the state then give it to the park board.

The park board has acquired significant properties over the years from the state’s list of

tax-forfeited properties, including parts of North Mississippi, Bossen, Northeast, Peavey

and McRae parks.

Chowen Triangle

Location: West 28

Street and Chowen Avenue

Size: 0.06 acres

Name: The triangle was named for Chowen Avenue on December 18, 1911.

Acquisition and Development

Chowen Triangle was purchased as a “two-fer.” On October 2, 1911, Alfred Dean, who,

along with his brothers had donated most of Dean Parkway and sold most of William

Berry Park to the park board, offered to sell two triangles. Both had been designated in

the plat of West End Addition in 1887 as “park.” The park board accepted the offer on

November 6, 1911 and became the owners of Chowen Triangle and West End Triangle.

The two-for-one price? Fifty bucks.

The triangle was curbed, graded and seeded, and a sidewalk was laid on one side of the

triangle in 1915. Trees and shrubs were planted in 1916.

Chute Square

Location: University Avenue and 1

Avenue SE

Size: 1.10 acres

Name: The park was named for Richard Chute in October of 1904. Chute was an early

settler of St. Anthony who owned considerable land there and is credited with devising

the street naming and house numbering systems of the city. His brother, Samuel Chute,

was a commissioner on the first park board and developed the motto “Health and Beauty”

for the park board. William Folwell reportedly suggested the motto to Chute. Some of the

land purchased for Richard Chute Square was bought from the Chute brothers.

Acquisition and Development

The board first decided to purchase the park on November 2, 1903, but only after park

commissioners asked representatives of property owners in the neighborhood to provide

assurances that they were willing to pay assessments to cover the cost of the purchase.

When those assurances were provided the board agreed to purchase the park for $18,775

to be paid over three years. Not only did residents of the neighborhood agree to pay

assessments for the acquisition, but the East Side Improvement Association provided

$1,000 to grade the lot and plant grass and trees.

The idea of locating the house of Ard Godfrey in the square was first proposed—and

rejected—in 1905. But in October 1908 the park board changed its decision, over the

objections of some members of the St. Anthony Commercial Club, and gave permission

to move the house to the square.

The house, originally built in 1848, was moved by the Hennepin County Territorial

Pioneers Association, which also refurbished the exterior of the house to make it

“presentable.” The association was given permission to improve the house and convert it

into a public museum in 1914.

In 1941, Theodore Wirth, then park superintendent emeritus, proposed that the park

board trade Richard Chute Square for a portion of the old Exposition Building site along

the river that had then been acquired by the Coca Cola Company. The suggestion was

never acted upon.

When the Hennepin County Historical Society proposed in 1955 to build a museum on

the square, the board denied the request because there wasn’t enough space.

The Godfrey House was extensively restored by the Woman’s Club of Minneapolis in

1975 and was opened to public tours in 1979. A replica of the house’s kitchen wing,

which had collapsed in 1908, was opened in 1985.

Clarence Triangle

Location: Clarence Avenue and Bedford Street SE

Size: 0.02 acres

Name: Named for the street on which it is located.

Acquisition and Development

The city council requested on September 24, 1915 that the park board take over four

triangles in southeast Minneapolis, including Clarence Triangle. The park board agreed to

take control of the triangles October 11, 1915 and officially named them on November

17, 1915. The other three triangles accepted were Bedford, Barton and Orlin.

The triangle was improved—graded, seeded, planted and curbed—in 1916.

Cleveland Park

Location: Queen Avenue and 33

Avenue North

Size: 1.4 acres

Name: The park was named for the Cleveland School, which was adjacent to the park at

that time. The school was named for President Grover Cleveland. Until 1959 the park

was referred to as the Cleveland School Site. Park board documents began calling the site

Cleveland Park in 1959, without formal action to name the park.

Acquisition and Development

The first land for the park adjacent to Cleveland School, less than an acre, was acquired

by the park board on November 16, 1949. The purchase followed long negotiations with

property owners. The first parcel of land cost the park board $10,513.

Attempts to create a neighborhood park and playground in the vicinity had a long history.

In December 1926, the park board had designated for acquisition as a park the block

between 34

and 35

Avenues North from Russell to Sheridan Avenues North. Those

proceedings were abandoned late the next year without explanation by the board. The

neighborhood had been identified as one that needed a playground in the park board’s

1938 annual report

After the first land for the park was purchased in 1949, the park board continued

negotiations to acquire more, but failed to add to the park. The park board then proceeded

with plans to develop the small plot it owned in conjunction with the school board in

1951. There the matter rested until eight years later.

Through most of 1959, the board tried again to purchase land to expand the small school

playground. It finally reached agreement with the owners of adjacent land to purchase

three more lots, just over ½-acre, for $13,500 in early 1960.

In the face of intense protests from neighborhood residents against acquiring and

improving the land as a park—and assessing the costs on area landowners—the park

board decided to proceed with the purchase and improvement of the park in early 1961.

While park board proceedings record petitions with hundreds of signatures against the

park, it received only two petitions in favor of the park—from the Cleveland School PTA

and the Jordan Junior High School PTA. Those opinions ultimately prevailed after public

hearings. In announcing its decision to proceed, the park board said that the park was “in

the best interests of the community.”

A “totlot” for smaller children was added to the park in 1973 and the shelter and wading

pool were renovated in 1977. When the new Lucy Laney Craft School was built to

replace Cleveland School in 1993, the park board renovated the park layout. One

interesting addition to the park at that time was an eight-foot-high basketball hoop on a

hard-surface court area, one of the only baskets in the city where most people could

dunk

basketball.

The wading pool at the park was renovated in

2005.

Clifton Triangle

Location: Clifton Avenue and Clifton Place

Size: 0.03 acres

Name: The name comes from the streets on which it is located.

Acquisition and Development

Clifton Triangle was transferred from city council to the park board August 16, 1889. The

park board had been asked to take the triangle as a park by Thomas B. Walker and others

on August 3. The park has since been paved over for street use. Residents of the

neighborhood petitioned for the triangle to become part of the street in 1994.

Clinton Field

Location: Clinton Avenue and East 25

Street

Size: 1.47 acres

Name: The park was named for its location on Clinton Avenue on April 6, 1927, but

could just as well have been named for Clinton Morrison who set in motion the events

that led to the acquisition of this small park. Clinton was the son of Dorilus Morrison one

of the first park commissioners in 1883. Clinton Morrison donated the house and estate of

his father to the park board in 1911 specifically for use as a site for a new art museum.

That land, Dorilus Morrison Park, two blocks west of Clinton Field, is now the site of the

Minneapolis Institute of Arts.

Acquisition and Development

Clinton Field is a park today because the park board agreed to demolish the grandest

building it ever owned. When Clinton Morrison donated the home and estate of his

father, Dorilus Morrison, to the park board in 1911 for the express purpose of becoming

the site of an art museum, Dorilus Morrison’s old friend William Washburn, whose estate

was across the street from Morrison’s, made his own donation to the park board. William

Washburn and his wife sold to the park board the eight acres on which their home stood,

but they threw in at no cost all the buildings on the property—a considerable donation

given that their home, Fair Oaks, the grandest home in the city, was worth an estimated

$400,000. Following the death of Mrs. Washburn in 1915, when the park board took

possession of the property, named Washburn Fair Oaks Park, it soon demolished the

barns and greenhouses on the estate. But Fair Oaks, the mansion, remained standing for

several years although it was never maintained by the park board and fell into disrepair.

While the building deteriorated, the grounds around it became used as a playground by

neighborhood children. Neither a dilapidated mansion nor children’s ball games were

appreciated by some in the neighborhood. The building deteriorated to the point that in

1923 Helen Law and others offered to give the park board $25,000 to buy a new

playground in the neighborhood if it would demolish Fair Oaks. (Earlier in the year Law

had asked the park board to ban baseball in the park and to build two tennis courts there

instead.) The Minneapolis Society of Fine Arts, which operated the Institute of Arts,

favored the demolition so that a suitable setting and approach to the Institute could be

created.

The park board accepted the offer and began to consider sites for a new playground in the

neighborhood. The old mansion was demolished in 1924, but the purchase of the new

playground, Clinton Field, was not completed until 1926. Washburn Fair Oaks continued

to be used as a playground in the interim.

The site chosen for the new playground was not the first considered. The park board’s

first option was the block between 27

and 28

Streets and Third Avenue and Stevens

Avenue. When that didn’t materialize, the park board settled on the southern two-fifths of

the block on Clinton Avenue. Theodore Wirth in his superintendent’s report for 1926

recognized that the small field “must be enlarged, in order to provide for the most

necessary accommodations of a medium-sized field.” His report included a plan to extend

the park to the west or the north to make it large enough to accommodate a playing field

and a small shelter. Without that expansion, the neighborhood wouldn’t have to worry

about ball games on the new park because it was too small. The park was never enlarged.

Clinton Field is the only remnant of the plan to create a landscaped plaza and approach to

the Institute of Arts in 1923. In the same 1923 annual report in which Wirth and Phelps

Wyman proposed the plaza for the Institute of Arts, Wirth recommended that a small

park in northeast Minneapolis, Sheridan Field, either be enlarged or abandoned because

its “inadequate size” did not “justify the expenditures for operation.” It was roughly the

same size as the land eventually purchased for Clinton Field.

Clinton Field was provided with a skating rink and warming house in its first year as a

park in 1926, but when neighbors petitioned for a “more commodious” warming house

the next year, the petition was denied.

The next time the park board spent a dollar on the park was almost thirty years later. The

park board included Clinton Field on a list of playgrounds that needed extensive

improvements—$150,000 worth—in its post-WWII list of the city’s playground needs,

but few park board requests for bond funding were approved by the city council in the

late 1940s and early 1950s.

Finally in 1955 the western edge of the park was regraded for a playing field and an area

was paved for a basketball and volleyball court. Playground equipment, a drinking

fountain and picnic tables were also installed at a cost of less than $20,000.

A new master plan created in 2000 for Clinton Field and Washburn Fair Oaks—

appropriate given their linked histories—provided for a complete makeover of the park,

including new playground equipment and hard-surface courts.

Columbia Park

Location: Central Avenue NE and St. Anthony Parkway

Size: 181.78 acres, including 150 acres of Columbia Golf Course

Name: The park was named to celebrate Columbia Year, 1892, 400 years after

Columbus’s first voyage to the new world. The name also may have been derived from

the Columbia Heights Addition north of the park. The name was adopted December 15,

1892.

Acquisition and Development

The first 144 acres of Columbia Park, including most of the 40-acre Sandy Lake, were

acquired in December 1892 at a total cost of $208,000, which the park board assessed

over ten years on property owners in the area. Area landowners had petitioned the park

board to approve the acquisition, thus indicating their willingness to be assessed for it.

The sellers of the land donated $20,000 for the immediate improvement of the land.

Even before the land was purchased, the board had approved creating a skating rink on

Sandy Lake for the winter of 1892-93.

The acquisition was not without controversy. Park Commissioner William Folwell

opposed the deal because he thought the price was too high. He called it “jobbery” by

“wealthy capitalists.” Other commissioners thought it was in keeping with land values in

the area. Park commissioner Albert Boardman wrote later that he thought the

acquisition—at the peak of a land boom in the city—was a mistake at that price. One of

the promoters of the acquisition was Portius C. Deming who would later serve on the

park board for nearly 15 years in two stints, and would have part of St. Anthony

Parkway, Deming Heights, named for him many years later.

Folwell opposed the deal even though he supported acquiring the land. A year earlier he

had authored a report on the expansion of the park system in which he had encouraged

residents of northeast Minneapolis to agitate for the acquisition of a park in northeast that

could be the hub of a parkway from Camden Park west of the Mississippi and continuing

south back to the Mississippi at the University of Minnesota. It was in that report that

Folwell recommended a name for the system of parkways encircling the city: The Grand

Rounds.

Folwell’s objection to the price was partially assuaged when the Minneapolis Investment

Company, which had sold the land to the park board, donated an additional eight acres of

land for the park after Folwell objected to the price.

The park was expanded by 18 acres in 1893 at a cost of $26,600 and by another 13-plus

acres in 1911 for about $14,000 more. The 1911 annual report referred to the land

acquired as “a finely wooded tract lying immediately west of Central Avenue and north

of Thirty-first Avenue Northeast.”

The first development in Columbia Park came in 1894 when the Minneapolis Investment

Company constructed a bandstand at its expense in the park.

Despite Folwell’s opposition to the cost of the original land for the park, the acquisition

of Columbia Park did serve as a prod for the development of the “Grand Rounds” he

desired. In the 1905 annual report of the park board, it noted that petitions to expand

Glenwood (Wirth) Park and acquire the shores of Cedar Lake were both viewed in the

context of the expanded parkway system. “This project contemplates at some future

time,” the report said, “the building of a boulevard northward from Keegan’s (Wirth)

Lake along the valley of Bassett’s Creek and across the city by some convenient route to

Columbia Park, thus completing the grand project of that master in landscape

architecture—the late H.W.S. Cleveland—a boulevard encircling the entire city.”

In 1911, the park board anticipated bond funding to help create a parkway from Camden

(Webber) Park in north Minneapolis to Columbia Park. In the next two years, the land

was acquired for St. Anthony Parkway from Columbia Park east to Stinson Boulevard.

About 60 percent of that land was donated. Those acquisitions left only two missing links

in the parkway system at the time, Camden to Columbia and Stinson Boulevard to the

University of Minnesota. The former was acquired in the early 1920s, the latter is still

“missing.” (A new route for the only remaining missing link was created by the park

board in 2008, although the board suggested at that time that it could take many years to

acquire the land and develop the parkway.)

In 1930, Theodore Wirth presented a plan for the creation of athletic fields, a picnic

shelter and a swimming pool at Columbia Park. In response to calls for swimming

facilities east of the river, Wirth proposed a swimming pool for Columbia Park along

Central Avenue. He recommended that instead of an outdoor pool, such as at Webber

Park, the extra money be spent to make it an indoor pool. With the Great Depression

taking hold, however, his plans were not acted on.

In 1940, the park board engaged in “an exchange of land to mutual advantage” at

Columbia Park with the Soo Line railroad. While that exchange has been cited by some

critics of the park board as an example of the board bowing to commercial interests, it

was neither the first nor the last time that the park board accommodated business interests

in exchange for what it considered fair value. The same year the park board leased a

block of land between Loring Park and The Parade to a car dealership for $5,200 a year,

citing the board’s “straightened financial position.”

An offer by the Northeast Lions Club to pay for a picnic shelter in the park in 1955 was

accepted by the park board and along with the construction of the shelter in 1956, roads

in the park were also upgraded. The park board began an experiment at the Columbia

Park picnic shelter that soon was adopted at other park shelters: the metering of

electricity. Picnic shelter users could buy electricity by the minute.

In 2015 the picnic shelter was renovated. The coin-operated electrical outlets and hot

plates are gone, but the shelter’s 1950s design was preserved while making numerous

accessibility upgrades.

Recreation facilities in Columbia Park received a major upgrade in 1997 with new

playground equipment, paths, volleyball and basketball courts and a soccer/rugby field.

By that time, cross-country ski trails had also been laid out over the golf course.

Sandy Lake

The original Columbia Park included most of a forty-acre lake called Sandy Lake. At the

time it was acquired, Sandy Lake was described as a spring-fed lake. In 1894, Sandy

Lake was officially renamed Lake Menomin, but the name appears to have been little

used. In 1910, park superintendent Theodore Wirth noted that Sandy Lake was

completely dry. He wrote then that the lake, the bed of which he calculated at 24 acres,

“will never be a satisfactory sheet of water” except “possibly” during wet seasons. In

1914, Wirth repeated that the lake existed primarily because of storm-water run-off from

the surrounding area. At that time the city was installing a storm sewer through the

neighborhood to the Mississippi River and Wirth recommended that the city be asked to

place the storm sewer at a level that would also drain the area of Sandy Lake. Park

commissioners approved Wirth’s recommendation. Other low land in the park had been

drained in 1906.

In his 1926 annual report, park board president Burton Kingsley, recalled fishing and

boating in Sandy Lake and suggested restoring the lake by sinking a deep well, which the

board had recently done at Longfellow Glen near Minnehaha Falls to ensure a supply of

water over the falls. The park board never took up the suggestion. One reason it didn’t

may have been that by then the old lake bed had been converted into a golf course.

A persistent myth in northeast Minneapolis is that Theodore Wirth filled Sandy Lake

when he was dredging Lake of the Isles from 1907 to 1911. Although water levels in

Sandy Lake are reported to have dropped considerably in that time, it is highly unlikely

that thousands of yards of muck could have been transported by horse-drawn wagons

across the entire city from Lake of the Isles to Sandy Lake.

The muck dredged at Isles was so hard to handle that the first contractor hired to dredge

Lake of the Isles quit the job after a couple months in 1907. Even when the park board

sued him, he wouldn’t resume work and sacrificed his bond instead. The dredged

material was so wet that a system of dikes had to be built on the shores of Lake of the

Isles to keep the muck from oozing back into the lake before it dried. It would have been

difficult, at the very least, to carry that liquid dirt across the city in wagons.

Moreover, considerable fill was used around Isles: building up the shores of the lake from

two to eleven feet along the entire western and southern shores, filling in the lake where

two islands once existed near the south shore, building up bridge approaches for the

linking of Isles with Calhoun and Cedar, and significantly enlarging the south island that

remains. When Lake of the Isles was connected to Calhoun in 1911, the lagoon between

them had to be dredged deeper than planned just to get enough fill to create the

approaches for street and railroad bridges over the channel.

In addition, park land much closer to Lake of the Isles than Sandy Lake badly needed fill

at the time. Among parks needing fill was Kenwood Park, just across the street from

Lake of Isles, which was acquired in 1907 when Lake of the Isles dredging began.

Eventually, in 1912, the board spent nearly $4,000 to buy fill for the low areas of

Kenwood Park along Franklin Avenue. During the years Lake of the Isles was being

dredged, the park board authorized a garbage dump at Bryant Square just to bring it up to

grade so it could be improved, and in 1912 spent $6,000 on fill for that park. The Parade

also badly needed fill and it was just over the hill from Lake of the Isles. Wirth had once

proposed doubling the size of Spring Lake next to The Parade just to generate enough fill

to make the low-lying land at The Parade useful. Jackson Square, lying between Lake of

the Isles and Sandy Lake also needed fill. The difficulty of transporting oozing mud, and

the needs of the park board for fill much closer to Lake of the Isles, make it unlikely at

best that Lake of the Isles muck was used to fill Sandy Lake.

The final argument against that theory is that Wirth was a meticulous record-keeper and

his reports make no mention of transporting thousands of yards of fill across the city.

That Wirth did not devote much attention to Columbia Park relative to his work

elsewhere in the city is clear, but it is doubtful that he filled Sandy Lake.

In 1933, Wirth reported that attempts to reestablish Sandy Lake would not be desirable

because there was no source of water other than ground water and with no movement of

water the lake would become stagnant and unsanitary. Moreover, in Wirth’s opinion soil

conditions were not good for the re-creation of a lake there. Wirth also explained that

plans to further develop the area as a golf course and recreation field would be of great

value to the neighborhood.

Columbia Golf Course

Early in the history of Columbia Park, the park board wasn’t sure what to do with the

land. In 1898 it granted Patrick Ryan, perhaps the same Patrick Ryan who had served as a

park commissioner 1890-1896, permission to cultivate the low land in the park. The

following year the board gave some consideration to creating an arboretum at the park.

Subsequent proposals for the park included making it into a “popular resort” (1905), a

golf course (1910) and a large athletic field (1912).

The 1910 recommendation eventually was preferred. Following the popular development

of a nine-hole golf course at Glenwood (Wirth) Park in 1916, the park board created a

six-hole course with sand greens at Columbia in 1917. After only a year of operation, the

park board realized that six holes was too short for a golf course and by 1920, expanded it

to nine holes, still with sand greens however. It took only two more years to realize that

18 holes were needed and in 1922 the course was expanded again. The new course was

so popular that golfers had to be turned away, which led the park board to build a golf

club house, called a community center, in 1924. Revenues from golf were expected to

pay for the building, which cost about $70,000 to build. Suggested names for the golf

club house included “House of Seven Gables” and “Deming Hall,” but the name

eventually chosen in 1930 was “The Manor.”

Golf continued to increase in popularity leading to the implementation of a registration

system in 1927 to eliminate long waits for tee times. With the onset of the depression,

however, golf’s popularity took a big hit. Rounds played at Columbia dropped by 30% in

1934 as they did at other courses, except Armour (Gross) Golf Course, which was the

only course with an irrigation system to water the fairways. Even though the Columbia

course was upgraded to grass greens in 1935, with the help of federal work relief funds,

the course continued to operate at a loss for many years.

In the late 1960s, Columbia was upgraded from a length of 4600 yards to 6200 yards to

keep it competitive. The locker rooms at Columbia were upgraded in 1987 and the club

house was remodeled in 1990.

Columbia Golf Course was the first Minneapolis course to have a Golf Learning Center

added in the 1990s.

A new concrete patio and entrance steps to The Manor were poured in 2007 and a new

irrigation system on the course was installed in 2009. In 2011 a tree inventory was taken

at the course to help plan for maintenance and potential replacement of ash trees.

The historic bridge spanning the railroad tracks cutting through the course was

rehabilitated in 2016. The bridge was originally constructed in 1896 and is one of only

two steel-arch bridges that remain standing in Minnesota.

Trivia

In 1900, 150 tons of hay were harvested from Columbia Park, Lake of the Isles, Lyndale

Park and Minnehaha Parkway.

In 1923 the park board approved creating an auto tourist camp at Columbia Park, similar

to the one developed at Minnehaha Park, but it was never developed.

Corcoran Park

Location: 19

Avenue South and East 33

Street

Size: 3.12 acres

Name: The park was named for Corcoran School, which had previously occupied the

site. The school was named for William Wilson Corcoran, a banker, philanthropist and

collector of American art, who founded the Corcoran Gallery of Art in Washington D.C.

Acquisition and Development

The land for Corcoran Park was acquired from the Minneapolis School Board in 1976 for

$95,500. The park was one of three former school sites acquired by the park board in the

mid-1970s. The park was in a neighborhood that had been designated in 1944 as one that

needed more recreation facilities. The final four parcels of land needed for the park were

condemned in 1977. Development of the property began in 1977 when a recreation

shelter was built along with playgrounds, tennis courts and horseshoe pits. The new park

was completed and dedicated in 1979.

A fire severely damaged the Corcoran Park recreation center in 1998, but it was brought

back into service in three months.

Improvements were made to the park in 2000, when a new totlot was built. Volleyball

standards were placed on the existing tennis court and the little-used horseshoe pits were

removed. The following year Corcoran became one of the first five recreation centers in

the city to have a computer lab installed.

Internet-based thermostat controls were added to the recreation center in 2009.

Cottage Park

Location: James and Ilion Avenues North

Size: 0.45 acres

Name: The name was taken from the park’s location in the Cottage Park Addition of the

city.

Acquisition and Development

Cottage Park was dedicated by Samuel C. Gale and others as a park in the plat of Forest

Heights on July 31, 1883, along with Glen Gale, Irving Triangle and Oliver Triangle. The

first mention in park board proceedings of what were called the “Forest Heights parks” is

a request by Gale and others in May 1887 that certain park land in Forest Heights be

drained. The park board responded in June 1887 by officially requesting the city council

to turn over to the park board the four properties. (See Glen Gale Park for more

information.)

A small addition to Cottage Park occurred in 1914 when the city council asked the park

board to take control of an adjoining small triangle at the street intersection.

1970s-era playground equipment at the totlot in the park was replaced in 2008.

Creekview Park

Location: 5001 Humboldt Ave. N

Size: 7.36 acres

Name: The name of the park is taken from the creek. The creek’s name came from the

shingle mills that once operated on its banks near the Mississippi River.

Acquisition and Development

The first petition from citizens for a park along Shingle Creek came to the park board in

1905, but that petition was targeted at land that later became Camden (Webber) Park. With

the acquisition and development of Camden Park on the creek in 1908, there was little

demand for more parks in the neighborhood for many years.

In 1930 the park board received a petition from residents of the area for plans and estimates

for the acquisition and development of Shingle Creek from Webber Park to the city limits.

The park board extended the concept, asking park superintendent Theodore Wirth to

prepare plans for Shingle Creek from Webber Park to its source at Twin Lakes in

Robbinsdale in November of that year. The instructions perhaps were confusing because

the creek does not flow from or through Twin Lakes, but originates in Eagle Lake in Maple

Grove. Nonetheless in early 1931 Wirth presented the requested plans and estimates—and

that was the last heard of Shingle Creek for another fifteen years. In a discussion of a

proposed Hennepin County park authority, however, Wirth did produce a map in the 1930

annual report that showed the possible park developments in northwest Minneapolis and the

northwest suburbs. He marked Shingle Creek on that map as a proposed acquisition within

the city of Minneapolis and recommended a parkway along the entire length of the stream

to Eagle Lake.

The park board received no more requests for a park along Shingle Creek and the park

board did not address the issue again either. Perhaps the demand for a park in the area was

reduced when in 1935 the park board obtained from the city the site of the former city

workhouse and converted it into Bohannon Park, which is only a few blocks from the creek.

The impetus to acquire Shingle Creek as a park eventually came not from the park board or

residents of the neighborhood, but from the city sewer department and city council.

Following World War II Minneapolis experienced a severe shortage of housing and one

area of the city that had yet to be developed for housing was the area of northwest

Minneapolis surrounding Shingle Creek. The area hadn’t been developed because it was

low, swampy land. The solution, in the eyes of city officials, was to lower the bed of

Shingle Creek to drain the entire region and make it dry enough for housing construction.

The city agency that could do it was the park board.

Although the acquisition and development of Shingle Creek was not on the park board’s

extensive “Postwar Progress” agenda, the park board went along with the city’s request to

acquire the land for storm-water drainage purposes. The city issued bonds for $270,000 to

fund the project, more than would be approved for all but a few park projects over the next

fifteen years. Bonds were, in general, not approved for projects which the park board

considered to be far more pressing than acquiring Shingle Creek.

The park board first designated for acquisition about seventy acres of land in a 300-foot-

wide strip along two miles of the creek in 1946. The park board’s annual report of 1947

announced that the acquisition of the land had been started but not completed. Finally in

1948 the park board concluded transactions to acquire slightly more than 55 acres for the

park with a few more acres added the following year. The total cost of the land was slightly

more than $200,000.

The park board’s reticence to acquire the park in view of more urgent needs may have been

responsible for the slow development of the creek as a park. Tentative plans for the park

were not introduced until 1951 at which time park superintendent Charles Doell noted again

that the principal objective of the project was drainage and that provisions for a park were

incidental.

It took another seven years before work on the creek began. With another $280,000 in

bonds, augmented by a $150,000 assessment on property in the area, the park board

initiated the process of lowering the creek and grading the land around it. The board

focused on the area between 50th and 52nd avenues north where it had developed plans for

a playground in a joint project with the school board. Joint school and park developments

had proven successful in the late 1940s and early 1950s at Waite Park, Armatage Park and

Kenny Park and the two boards pursued a similar strategy at Shingle Creek.

The creek bed was relocated, lowered and widened, and ball fields, a wading pool and

tennis courts were built at what was later named Creekview Park along the creek.

Construction of a recreation shelter was begun in 1958 and completed in 1959 near the site

where the school board built Floyd B. Olson Junior High School a couple years later. The

initial work at the creek lowered the creek bed by five feet. The lowering of the creek bed

also required the relocation of the creek through Weber Park, which required moving some

playground equipment, filling the old channel and slight enlarging the lagoon.

Work on the creek did not resume in earnest until 1962. In the annual report of that year the

park board expressed its goal over the next five years: to produce an area along Shingle

Creek “similar to Minnehaha Creek.”

In 1977, during a construction boom in Minneapolis parks, the park board completed a new

recreation center at Creekview Park attached to Olson Junior High (now a middle school)

which allowed both park and school use of facilities in both buildings. The name of the

Creekview Recreation Center was formally adopted in late 1976 to replace the unwieldy

informal name of Shingle Creek/Bohannon Recreation Center. To ensure that there were no

objections to the name, the park board sent notices home with students at Olson Junior

High informing people of the proposed name change. When no objections were raised, the

name was adopted.

In 1979 a pedestrian and bike pathway along the creek was financed by a state grant and

city bonds, and that winter the park board developed a cross-country ski trail along the

creek. A renovation of the playground at Creekview was funded in 1980. Further

improvements were made to the trails along the creek in 1993 and in 1996 a “Children’s

Forest” of 150 trees was planted on the south side of creek.

In 1998 an arson fire damaged the Creekview Recreation Center, but it was reopened in

1999.

Extensive improvements were made to the playground at Creekview from 2005 to 2007. A

skate park was built, a baseball field was upgraded with by a grant from the Minnesota

Twins, new playground equipment was installed, and a computer lab was created in the

recreation center.

Currie Park

Location: 15

Avenue South and South 5

Street

Size: 2.72 acres, plus 1.78 acres on which Coyle Community Center is located

Name: The park was named for Edward A. Currie in 1977. Currie was the director of the

Pillsbury Settlement House that had existed next to the new park land for many years. For

decades before that the park was referred to as Sixth Ward Playground, although in later

years it was at times called Cedar Square West Neighborhood Park. The park board also

holds title to the land adjacent to the park on which Pillsbury United Communities built

Brian Coyle Community Center in 1993. The center was named for a city council

member from the neighborhood who had served on the council from 1983 to 1991.

Acquisition and Development

The idea of a playground in the Cedar-Riverside neighborhood is far older than the

playground itself. In 1919 the park board considered purchasing two lots for playgrounds

in the area, but the neighborhood was evenly divided for and against acquiring the land

and charging the cost to area property owners through assessments. Park superintendent

Theodore Wirth noted in the 1919 annual report that one reason for reluctance to

establish playgrounds in the area was the projection that the area would decline in

population and become more of a commercial and industrial neighborhood. The lack of

agreement within the neighborhood on the location and method of paying for a park

ended consideration of a playground for many years.

One of the next mentions of a playground for the Sixth Ward in park board proceedings

came in May 1932 when Wirth recommended that the park board “renew” its lease, for

$100 a year, on a portion of the land where Currie Park is now located, with an option to

renew the lease for four years. Park board records do not indicate if that lease was ever

renewed—or when it originated.

More requests for a playground at the site were received in 1937 and in 1939 the park

board once again approved leasing the land, this time for only $1 a year. At that time the

park board reported that the land had previously been leased to the Pillsbury Settlement

House. The challenge to the park board in adding another playground after years of

depression and pinched pennies was not the cost of leasing the land but maintaining it

and providing supervision. This was at a time when the only improvements in the park

system were made with the help of federal work relief programs and even recreation

supervisors were paid by federal programs.

Writing in the annual report of 1939, park board president Francis Gross mentioned the

Sixth Ward playground issue specifically. “Faced with justified demands,” he wrote, “we

have not been able to deny them so long as a temporary solution can be found, even if

they make more acute our future financial problems.” Gross worried that if federal work

relief programs were ended the new playground would be “simply an unattended

playlot.” He went on to note that this was a departure from previous park board policy of

only providing neighborhood parks if they could offer “adequate” facilities and service.

The newly leased park and the method of supervising it was “not adequate,” wrote Gross,

but it would “serve a definite purpose in community life.”

In the next year the park board equipped the park with a small skating rink, a softball

field, a few swings, a sandbox, and a small tool and office building. All the work was

done by federal work relief crews. The 1940 annual report noted that the new park was

“well patronized.”

The success of the new playground led the park board to purchase the 1.2-acre lot in 1941

in large measure thanks to a gift of $1,000 from Mary E. Howe. The site was acquired for

a little more than half of her donation—$525. As cheap as it was, it was one of the few

land purchases by the park board in the 1930s. Other than some additional grading and

fencing for the park in 1946, the park board spent no additional money on improving the

park.

The construction of freeways beside the park in the 1960s did not require land to be taken

from the park, but those freeways effectively severed the park from neighborhoods to the

west. Another major development in the 1960s, the expansion of the University of

Minnesota on the west bank of the Mississippi River, served to further reduce the

population of the neighborhood.

The next major development at the little park awaited the explosion of population in the

area with the construction of Cedar Square, a high-rise apartment complex across the

street from the park in the 1970s. In 1975, the Minneapolis housing authority sought the

park board’s help in expanding and improving what was then referred to as Cedar Square

West Neighborhood Park and offered to use redevelopment funds to expand the park,

which would be repaid when the park board had funds available. The housing authority

gave the park board an additional 1.5 acres of land to expand the park in 1976 and

together with the park board developed the park in 1979 under a joint powers agreement.

Under that agreement a shelter was built in the park and playground and athletic facilities

were improved.

In 1992 the park expanded again when Pillsbury United Communities, the social service

agency that grew out of the Pillsbury Settlement House that had once existed next to the

park land, built a community center adjacent to the park. The agency deeded the building

and the land it occupied to the park board, but retained operating control of the facility. It

named the center for Brian Coyle who had been a city council member from 1983 until

his death in 1991.

The playground at the park was updated, along with other improvements, in 2003-2004.

In 2011, artificial turf was installed on the soccer fields, making them playable and

maintainable for much more of the year. Also that year a Nice Ride bicycle rental kiosk

was installed.

In 2013 a new maple gym floor was installed in the

community

center, which is

still

operated by Pillsbury United

Communities

under a lease

agreement

with the park

board.

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, 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 to Lake Calhoun 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—1.10

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

impassable roads 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. It was repaved in 1996 and again in 2016.

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.

Dell Park

Location: Thomas Avenue South from West 44

Street to West 45

Street

Size: 0.78 acres

Name: The park was named for its topography, a small dell approaching Lake Harriet.

Acquisition and Development

On June 17, 1907 the park board approved a petition from the Linden Hills Improvement

Association that the park board accept and maintain the land as a park. A condition

imposed by the park board was that the improvement association or interested property

owners first “suitably curb and fill (the park) to grade with good soil.”

In 1909, park superintendent Theodore Wirth presented a plan to the park board that

would have changed the little park dramatically. As the park board was proceeding with

plans to connect the chain of lakes with navigable canals—the first canal between Lake

of the Isles and Lake Calhoun opened in 1911—it requested from Wirth a plan to connect

Lake Calhoun with Lake Harriet. Wirth suggested three alternatives. One was a canal

south from Lake Calhoun along Washburn Avenue to 43

Street, then east to Thomas

Avenue and along Thomas to 45

Street where it would head east again to connect to

Lake Harriet. The plan would have turned Dell Park into a waterway between the lakes.

Although he presented the option, Wirth considered the route impractical and said he

preferred a route through Lakewood Cemetery. A connection between Lake Calhoun and

Lake Harriet was never pursued, in part because of the seven-foot drop in elevation

between the lakes: any canal route would have required a lock and dam to be navigable

making the cost prohibitive.

Deming Heights Park

Location: 31

Avenue Northeast and Polk Avenue Northeast

Size: 10.65 acres

Name: The park is named for Portius Deming who was a park commissioner 1895-1899

and 1909-1919. He served as president of the board 1915-1917. Deming was among the

group of northeast Minneapolis businessmen that organized the sale to the park board of

the land for Columbia Park in 1892. The first land for Deming Heights Park was acquired

in 1913 to be a part of St. Anthony Boulevard. Deming was the one who had proposed

the name St. Anthony Boulevard for the northeast Minneapolis parkway. It wasn’t until

1923 that the board named the land Grandview Park to distinguish it from the rest of the

parkway. The park was officially named Portius C. Deming Heights Park in 1930 and a

plaque commemorating Deming’s service to Minneapolis parks was placed in the park

that summer.

Acquisition and Development

The first land for the park was acquired in 1913 along with the rest of the land for St.

Anthony Boulevard from Columbia Park to East Hennepin Avenue. The land was desired

because it was the highest point in the Minneapolis park system. At 963 feet above sea

level it is ten feet higher in elevation than Sunset Hill on Memorial Parkway north of

Wirth Park.

Writing in the 1914 annual report, park board president Thomas Voegeli commented on

the “great natural beauty” of the land through which the new St. Anthony Boulevard

would pass. Voegeli wrote that the view from the highest point in the city at yet-to-be-

named Deming Heights Park, could “fill the hearts of Minneapolis citizens with patriotic

pride.”

The park board acquired several additional lots on the south edge of the park and the

southwest corner to remove houses that impaired the view of the city from the park in

1916. In 1919 the park board acquired from the city council control of 31

Avenue

Northeast from Polk Street to Johnson Street, which enabled the construction of the

double-lane parkway between Taylor and Fillmore streets.

The parkway through the park and all the way south and east to East Hennepin Avenue

was begun in 1921 and completed in 1924. The parkway from Central Avenue into

Deming Heights Park required a steep 11 percent grade.

Since its acquisition the park has been treated as a section of St. Anthony Parkway and its

acreage included with that of the parkway. With Columbia Park located just two short

blocks to the east and Audubon Park two blocks south, the neighborhood already was

considered to be well-provided with recreation amenities, so none were ever added to

Deming Heights Park. The land was acquired for the view it provided and

therefore little

has been done in the way of park

improvements

since its

acquisition.

Diamond Lake Park

Location: Portland Avenue and Diamond Lake Road

Size: 73.04 acres, including 54.9 acres of water

Name: In a park board report on park names in 1975, it was reported that the name of the

lake probably came from the Diamond Lake Terrace Addition surrounding it. But it

seems more likely that the name of the addition was derived from the name of the lake.

Acquisition and Development

The first mention of Diamond Lake in park board documents is in the proceedings of the

board meeting on December 19, 1923, when the park board received a proposal from

Clarke’s Diamond Lake Realty to donate land around Pearl Lake and a portion of the

shores of Diamond Lake for park purposes. It is likely that the realty company hoped to

boost the value of its other holding in the area by having parks developed. That donation

of 16.4 acres from F. H. Clarke and others was accepted in 1925.

By 1927 the park board had grander plans for parks in the area. With the annexation of a

portion of Richfield across southern Minneapolis in 1926 all of Diamond Lake was then

within city limits, which meant that the park board could then assess property owners

around the lake for acquisition and improvement costs. The 1927 annual report of the

park board mentioned the intention to acquire an additional 116 acres around Pearl Lake

and Diamond Lake. The report noted that all but 21 acres of the land the park board

already owned and planned to acquire were swamp and lowland. Park superintendent

Theodore Wirth’s plan was to fill Pearl Lake and dredge Diamond Lake to create a beach

on the north shore. Wirth compared the plan to what had been done at Lake Nokomis

where a lake with well-defined shores was created from considerable swampy land.

Wirth’s plans were revised when in 1930 he reported city plans to direct storm water

runoff from the area into Diamond Lake. At that time his plan for the two lake areas was

budgeted at $337,000. With the onset of the depression that money was not going to be

available. Wirth noted his regret that the Diamond Lake plan had come to a standstill in

1931, especially in light of the success of similar lake-shaping efforts at Lake Nokomis

Still, in one of its largest depression-era acquisitions the board designated 80 acres of land

around the two lakes for acquisition. The deal was consummated in 1936 when the park

board purchased 72.32 acres around and including the lakes. The reason the park board

proceeded with an acquisition when it had so little money was probably the price it paid

for the land and water: $1,035. The board’s 1936 annual report noted that the “time was

not propitious” for additional land acquisitions in the area or for improvements to the land

except what could be accomplished through the Works Progress Administration (WPA), a

federal depression-era work-relief program. The annual report continued that

improvement work would be done when area property owners were willing to pay for it

through assessments, but added that it was “questionable” whether the great majority of

property owners there would agree to those assessments.

A year later the board noted no change in plans for the area but did comment that home

building in the area had increased rapidly, which it said could be attributed to the

stimulating effect of the initial improvements the park board had made at Pearl Lake.

(Pearl Lake was not referred to as Pearl Park until the board built a recreation center at

“Pearl Park” in 1968.)

In 1938 the board completed its ownership of the north shore of Diamond Lake with the

purchase of four lots for $55 each. The board also reported that it was finalizing

acquisition of the remaining southern shore of the lake by donation.

In the 1938 annual report park superintendent Christian Bossen presented ambitious plans

for the development of the lake. He noted that the lake had once been a beautiful sheet of

water a half-mile long but that with initial development in the area and the grading of

streets, combined with deficient rainfall, the lake had almost dried up in the 1920s. He

added that with the separation of sanitary and storm sewers by the city, the lake had been

designated as a storm water reservoir. With the lake’s future more certain, the park board

presented ambitious plans for development, which Bossen noted was in greater demand

by the neighborhood since more housing development was taking place east of the lake.

The plan included making the lake smaller and deeper, an average depth of 17 feet, in

order to generate the 890,000 yards of fill needed to develop the shore parks. The filling

would have created a parking lot for 80 cars on the north end of the lake and another lot

for 40 cars on the south end to provide access to four tennis courts, baseball fields,

playground and a toilet building that were planned there. The board debated constructing

a park road along the west shore of the lake, but decided against it.

The last mention of park board plans to develop Diamond Lake appeared in the 1939

annual report, when Bossen reported that final plans for improvement would require three

to four years of construction and that neither the city nor the federal government, through

WPA, would commit to any financing longer than 12 months. Without that financing,

Bossen concluded, there was no opportunity to begin the project.

Ironically, the abandonment of plans for Diamond Lake came the same year that the park

board finally completed acquisition of the entire lake bed with the donation of 8.54 acres

of land.

The park board wasn’t done promoting the development of Diamond Lake, however. In

its 1945 “post-war progress” list of projects that required funding, an $11 million

shopping list, one of the largest single proposed expenditures, behind only paving Lake

Harriet Boulevard, was improving the Diamond Lake and Pearl Lake properties. But in

the post-war years the park board would get funding for very few projects on its wish list.

Diamond Lake was destined to remain an unimproved wetland and lake. (Lake Harriet

Boulevard wasn’t paved either.)

The change in how those areas were viewed is suggested by a 1977 agreement by

the

park board that it would take responsibility for coordinating a joint effort by the city,

county and state to restore Diamond Lake to its "desirable wildlife habitat

condition"

through the interception and removal of particulate matter flowing into the lake. A new

wildlife habitat improvement plan was implemented in 1991.

Dickman Park

Location: Main Street between 6

and 7

Avenue NE

Size: 2.11 acres

Name: When acquired, the park was logically called the Main Street Northeast

Playground Site. The park was named in 1955 for Ralph E. Dickman, a youth worker in

northeast Minneapolis, attorney and Hennepin County Commissioner.

Acquisition and Development

The initial 1.23 acres of land for the park were purchased by condemnation in 1949 for

$8,500, following original authorization to spend up to $10,000 to acquire the property in

1948. Although the park was smaller than desired, it was located in a neighborhood

described as under-served in a 1944 survey of park properties and the needs of the city.

The park was expanded in 1954 in an unusual deal. Pioneer Engineering Works acquired

ten acres of land from the park board at Northeast Athletic Field in exchange for an acre

of land it owned adjacent to Holmes Park and five parcels of land the company bought

for the park board to expand Dickman Park. The original deal was for the Holmes land

and $30,000 in cash, but the district court, which had to approve all land dispositions by

the park board, ruled that the deal had to be for land only. So Pioneer bought the land at

Dickman Park and turned it over to the park board.

Before the park was improved in 1955, an additional 0.39 acre was also purchased by

condemnation.

In 1955, the park was filled and graded after the buildings on the land were moved. Initial

plans were for a small athletic field, volleyball and basketball courts and a picnic area. In

1957 a wading pool was added to complete initial construction.

Skaters at Dickman Park were able to put on their skates in a warming house for the first

time in the winter of 1958-1959. A recreation shelter for the park was completed in 1962.

Dickman Park facilities were renovated in 1991 and 2014. The 2014 renovation included

a new playground, two new benches and a new picnic table.

Dorilus Morrison Park

Location: East 24

Street and Stevens Avenue

Size: 9.03 acres

Name: The park is named for Dorilus Morrison, one of the commissioners named in the

Park Act of 1883, who once lived on the site of the park. The park is rarely referred to by

its name; it is better known as the site of the Minneapolis Institute of Arts.

Dorilus Morrison

Dorilus Morrison, like many of the city’s early leaders, came to Minnesota from Maine.

His first business, like that of many others immigrants from Maine, was cutting timber

along the tributaries of the Mississippi and floating logs down the river to sawmills at

Anoka and St. Anthony Falls. In addition to cutting timber, Morrison operated a

lumberman’s supply store in Minneapolis. Both Loren Fletcher and his later business

partner, Charles Loring, found their first employment in Minneapolis at Morrison’s store.

Morrison was known as one of the wealthiest Minnesotans at the time the park board was

created and he had been elected mayor of the Minneapolis in 1867 and 1869. In his first

inaugural address as mayor he advocated creating a park in Minneapolis, calling parks the

“pride of cities east and west.”

Morrison was a prominent supporter of parks for many years before the park board was

created. He was among those who called a town meeting in 1865 to consider acquiring a

park for the city. In 1871, he was one of the founders of Lakewood Cemetery, which was

in effect a privately owned park. In 1872, Morrison, William King, George Brackett and

Richard Mendenhall, purchased forty acres near the present Minneapolis Institute of Arts

that had been offered to the city council for a park, but which the council had refused to

purchase. The four men held the land and each invested $1,000 to improve it as a park,

hoping that the council would eventually agree to acquire it as a public park. Without

action from the council, however, the men eventually divided up the land. The others sold

their pieces of it, but Morrison built his house, Villa Rosa, on a portion it. His cousin,

another prominent Minneapolitan, William Washburn, built his mansion, Fair Oaks,

across the street from Villa Rosa.

Acquisition and Development

In the winter of 1911, Clinton Morrison, Dorilus Morrison’s son, approached the park

board with an unusual offer: He would donate to the park board the home his father had

built and the surrounding estate totaling more than eight acres. He had one condition,

however: the land would be designated as the site of an art museum, which would be

built with funds raised privately by the Minneapolis Society of Fine Arts.

Morrison even drew up legislation authorizing the park board to accept the donation. The

legislation also provided for the collection of a tax levy on all property in Minneapolis

that would pass through the park board for the operation and maintenance of the proposed

museum. The legislature approved the measure, the park board accepted the land, the

Society of Fine Arts raised more than half a million dollars to construct the museum, and

to this day the park board collects and passes on to the Minneapolis Institute of Arts the

tax levy approved in the legislation. In 1959 the Minnesota legislature extended the

museum levy to cover all of Hennepin County instead of just the city of Minneapolis.

The Minneapolis Institute of Arts opened in 1915 in what remains Dorilus Morrison Park.

The donation of land by Clinton Morrison led directly to two other park acquisitions:

Washburn Fair Oaks Park and Clinton Park.

Additional Sources: Information on the ownership of the land in the 1870s is drawn

from correspondence and legal documents in the George A. Brackett Papers, Minnesota

Historical Society, St. Paul

East Phillips Park

Location: Cedar Avenue South and East 24

Street

Size: 6.46 acres

Name: The name comes from the neighborhood in which the park is located. The name

comes from the Phillips School in the neighborhood, which was named for abolitionist

orator Wendell Phillips.

Acquisition and Development

The park was acquired from the Minneapolis Community Development Agency (MCDA)

in 1977. The land was available after the MCDA decided not to develop the site for

housing.

Development of the park began in 1978 with construction of playing fields, playgrounds

and a wading pool, as well as general landscaping. A shelter was built in the park in

1979. Additional improvements continued into 1981 with the construction of tennis

courts and additional paths.

At the time the land was acquired the Police Athletic Council used a concrete block

building on the site. The park board leased that building to the American Indian

Movement when it acquired the land. In 2006 the building was demolished due to

structural deterioration.

In 1997, the basketball courts in the park were refurbished with a grant from the

Minnesota Timberwolves.

In 2007, the state legislature approved funds for a new community center in the park.

Ground was broken for the new center in late 2009 and the center was substantially

completed in 2010. The 14,000-square foot center includes a gym, teen center, computer

room, kitchen and multi-purpose rooms. In 2010 the playing fields at the park were also

upgraded. The outdoor hard courts were resurfaced in 2011.

In 2013, the Park Board’s annual Arbor Day celebration was held at East Phillips Park.

More than 200 trees (40 different species) were planted with the help of local volunteers.

East River Parkway/East River Flats Park

Location: The east bank of the Mississippi River from Arlington Street SE on the

University of Minnesota campus downriver to the Minneapolis boundary with St. Paul.

Size: 84.99 acres

Name: The name is descriptive. Originally the property was referred to informally as

East River Bank Parkway, but was officially named St. Anthony Parkway in 1901. The

name of the parkway was changed to East River Road in 1906. At the same time, the east

and west river roads, Riverside Park and Minnehaha Park were all officially named parts

of Mississippi Park. The current name was adopted in 1968 when most park roads were

officially renamed as “parkways.” In December 1894, upon the suggestion of William

Folwell, the board approved naming the east river flats “Cheever’s Landing,” for the man

who had operated a ferry on the site in the early days of the city. While the name was

officially adopted, the area has always been referred to informally as the East River Flats

Park.

Acquisition and Development

The banks of the Mississippi River below St. Anthony Falls, the only true gorge along the

entire length of the Mississippi River, played a central role in the creation of the

Minneapolis park system. Horace Cleveland, the Chicago-based landscape architect who

later created the first general plan for Minneapolis parks, was an eloquent crusader for the

preservation of the river banks from the early 1870s. At his urging, civic leaders from

Minneapolis and St. Paul met to consider the prospect of acquiring and preserving the

river banks as a park as early as 1872—eleven years before the Minneapolis Board of

Park Commissioners was created by the state legislature and approved by Minneapolis

voters.

Shortly after the city’s voters gave their approval for a park board in April 1883, the new

board hired Cleveland to create a general plan for the development of Minneapolis parks.

In his “Suggestions for a System of Parks and Parkways for the City of Minneapolis,”

presented to the park board June 2, 1883, Cleveland devoted considerable attention and

passion to creating a park on the river banks on both sides of the river. He wrote:

“The Mississippi River is not only the grand natural feature which gives

character to your city and constitutes the main spring of prosperity, but it

is the object of vital interest and center of attraction to intelligent visitors

from every quarter of the globe, who associate such ideas of grandeur with

its name as no human creation can excite. It is due therefore, to the

sentiments of the civilized world, and equally in recognition of your own

sense of the blessings it confers upon you, that it should be placed in a

setting worthy of so priceless a jewel.”

He went on to write that a boulevard along the banks of the river would be of “such

picturesque character as no art could create and no other city can possess.” As for how to

develop the river banks into a park, Cleveland wrote, “No artist who has any appreciation

of natural beauty would presume to do more than touch with reverent hands the features

whose charms suggest their own development. No plan for such work could be made.”

What he did propose was a park on the east river flats, opposite Riverside Park on the

west bank, which the park board had already designated for acquisition and a bridge over

the river linking the two parks.

Despite the best efforts of the park board, Cleveland’s vision for the east river bank

would not be realized for nearly a decade. The stumbling block was the cost of the land.

Within weeks of Cleveland’s “Suggestions” the park board surveyed and designated for

acquisition the east river bank from the University of Minnesota downriver to the city

boundary with St. Paul. After many revisions to the acquisition, and the initial purchase

of some lots along the river, in early 1885 the park board rescinded its resolutions to

acquire the river bank. The park board’s appraisal of nearly every piece of land to be

acquired was challenged by property owners in court. Owning the river bank was going

to cost more than the park board could spend.

In 1887 the park board sold three of the river lots it had purchased and advertised for sale

its remaining land on the river. Those lots became the only land that the park board has

ever purchased twice. The first president of the park board, Charles Loring, wrote in the

1887 annual report that “while it is regretted that this parkway was abandoned, it is

fortunate that by reason of increase in value the Board will lose no money by the

undertaking.” The lots were sold for $1,000 each.

The impetus for returning to the issue of acquiring the river banks was the election to the

park board in 1888 of the former president of the University of Minnesota, William

Folwell. Folwell had become a close friend of Horace Cleveland. From 1872 until 1886,

when Cleveland moved from Chicago to Minneapolis, Cleveland stayed at Folwell’s

home near the University of Minnesota campus when he visited the city and the two men

carried on a lively correspondence. Folwell’s papers at the Minnesota History Center

include nearly one hundred letters from Cleveland and his partner William Merchant

Richardson French.

In his second year as a park commissioner, in 1890, Folwell proposed that the park board

revisit its goals and objectives—and its vision for the future of the park system. The

board appointed Folwell to lead a three-person committee to do that. The report they

produced, presented in early 1891 and included in the 1890 annual report of the park

board, refined Cleveland’s “Suggestions” of eight years earlier and established the

direction of the park board for decades.

As Folwell was preparing his report, he received a letter from Horace Cleveland (without

telephones, people often wrote letters to each other even within the city) in October 1890.

As always, Cleveland’s focus was on the river banks. He encouraged Folwell to go down

to the east river bank below the University with him—and showed his frustration that the

river banks still hadn’t been acquired by the park board. “If all your committee could go,”

Cleveland wrote, “it would do their souls good if they’ve got any. When you once take in

the possibilities that are open it will drive you frantic to think of losing them. I will

devote a day or any part of a day to the exploration of as much as you like and it will

inspire you to make a report that will drown the sound of an eighteen pounder.”

Cleveland’s reference to Civil War-era cannons was likely meant to call up the fighting

spirit of Folwell, who had commanded a corps of Union Army engineers during the war.

Folwell’s report was indeed loud and reverberates still through the park system. Among

other proposals Folwell made, giving the credit “justly and gladly” to Cleveland, was a

system of parkways connecting parks in all parts of the city, not just around the lakes in

the southwest corner of the city. Folwell’s system of parkways—they could be called the

“Grand Rounds,” he suggested— included parkways along both sides of the river.

And the park board acted. By the end of 1891 the park board expressed its intent to try

once again to acquire the river banks on both sides of the river. Led by Folwell, the board

appointed a committee to investigate acquiring the river banks, and in July 1892 the

board approved once again the acquisition of East River Bank Parkway from the

University of Minnesota campus to St. Paul. The board also passed a resolution

encouraging St. Paul to extend Summit Avenue along the east river bank to meet up with

Minneapolis’s new park.

By the end of 1892, the park board had the east river bank appraised and made offers to

land owners there. Once again about half of the property owners appealed the appraisals.

The District Court appointed a second team of appraisers, which raised the appraised

value of the land to be taken from $70,000 to $115,000. Even with the increased cost, the

park board confirmed the new awards in March 1893. The park board noted at the time

that it was trying to negotiate a lower price for Meeker Island, which it believed should

be included in the east bank acquisition. No further mention is made in park board

proceedings of those negotiations or the island.

The cost was to be assessed on property owners in the area, but those assessments were

also challenged. In March 1893, the park board reduced the assessments due to unusual

circumstances. For one, the University of Minnesota, which owned much of the adjacent

land on the northern section of the parkway, was exempt from assessments. Two, the

parkway was unique in that there was taxable property on only one side of the park—the

other side was water. The park board agreed to spread the assessments over a larger area

of the city and to pay for part of the purchase with $20,000 in park bonds because in its

view the parkway was “of benefit to the entire city.”

One of the arguments used by Cleveland and others for acquiring the river banks and

preventing development there was that an undeveloped river would provide a path of

fresh air through the city; it would serve as the “lungs” of the city. In the 1893 annual

report, park board president Charles Loring praised the acquisition, writing “cities as well

as animals must have lungs.”

To justify the acquisition Loring wrote: “When a person is ill the doctors say, ‘Go to the

country where you can get fresh air.’ But alas! all cannot go to the country, and it is the

duty of those who control the laying out of cities to furnish the means for supplying the

God-given element to the poorest of people.” By acquiring the lakes, creeks and “the

great river” as parks, Loring wrote, we are “supplying the pure blood to our children,

which will make them physically and morally strong.”

Perhaps not everyone agreed, however, because in the summer of 1893 the park board

approved Folwell’s motion that the mayor be asked to prevent the dumping of offal and

rubbish along the east river bank.

The park board ordered that work commence on the construction of the east bank

boulevard from the university to Franklin Avenue in June 1894. Included in the

improvements was the construction of a stone culvert to permit the stream that fed Bridal

Veil Falls to pass under the parkway. Buildings on the river flats, which had been in place

for many years, were removed in 1899 and the parkway along the bluff was finally

completed.

When the east river bank was acquired the river was not as we know it today. It was

wilder, rockier, narrower, and dotted with islands; it was not navigable by steam boats.

That began to change, and the park board’s river acquisition began to shrink, when in

1895 the park board granted flowage rights and deeds for portions of the east river park to

the U.S. Government for the construction of the Meeker Island lock and dam. When

construction of the dam began in 1898 the park board granted the U.S. Army Corps of

Engineers permission to use part of the parkway for trackage and storage during

construction.

Despite the imminent loss of land at the east river flats to the reservoir created by the

dam, the park board commissioned landscape architect Warren Manning to develop a

plan for the layout of the east river park in 1899. Manning noted in his report on the park

system in 1899 that he had submitted plans, which were being executed, to create a large

central playground for the city on the river flats with an exercise track, gymnasium, bath

house and boat house. The park board allocated $3,000 for the improvement of the park

and later that summer approved the construction of a stone walk along the parkway from

Oak Street near the university to Franklin Avenue with the cost to be assessed on

property in the area. The playground that Manning proposed was never built.

The park board’s annual report of 1902 referred to the “charming lake” that would soon

be created by government dams. The lake was indeed created by the construction first of

the Meeker Island Dam near the downriver end of the land acquired for St. Anthony

Parkway and later by the “high dam” farther downstream, but it was far from charming.

Much of the raw sewage of the city flowed into the river and the reservoir became in

reality a cesspool. In 1921 park superintendent Theodore Wirth called the smell of the

river nearly unbearable. That result may have contributed to the lack of development of a

park on the east side of the river. But apart from the East River Flats, or Cheever’s

Landing, the plan for the river banks was always to leave it as nature had made it. In 1910

and 1911 Wirth advocated the development of the flats into a playground, an arboretum

that could be run by the University of Minnesota, or a baseball field. In 1912 the flats

were graded for the creation of a baseball or football field, but neither was ever

completed.

The development of the parkway, however, was a higher priority. The parkway along the

bluff was completed to subgrade from Franklin Avenue to the St. Paul city limit in 1909

and improved in 1911. The parkway was not paved for the first time—it had always been

an oiled dirt road—until 1957. At that time the parkway was also widened, the first curbs

and gutters were installed south of Franklin Avenue, and a concrete sidewalk was poured.

The East River Flats were leased to the University of Minnesota for a parking lot in 1949

and the original ten-year lease was renewed until 1976. The flats were used as a concert

venue in the late 1970s and permission was also granted to the university to use park land

to access its Showboat.

Beginning in 1999 the park board developed a master plan for the river flats and the

parkway below the University of Minnesota. In 2001, in cooperation with the university,

the parkway adjacent to the university was redesigned with paths, a park entrance road,

traffic calming measures and landscaping. That planning process has also led to the

restoration of native vegetation and shoreline and bluff stabilization at the park.

In 2002 a new bike trail was built from Franklin Avenue to the St. Paul city line. The

one-mile section of trail completed the connection along the river to Summit Avenue and

downtown St. Paul from the university.

More improvements to the trails followed in 2008 when new benches, lighting, signage

and railings were installed, along with water fountains. At the east river flats the parking

lot was improved with the installation of rain gardens and storm water filtration systems.

Erosion controls were installed between the University of Minnesota and Franklin

Avenue in 2010. A new culvert was placed under the trail at Bridal Veil Falls and

retaining walls and railings were repaired.

Additional Sources: Information on the relationship of William Folwell and Horace

Cleveland and their correspondence from William Watts Folwell Papers, Minnesota

Historical Society, St. Paul, and William Watts Folwell Papers, University of Minnesota

Archives, Minneapolis.

Edgewater Park

Location: The east bank of the Mississippi River south of Lowry Avenue.

Size: 2.13 acres

Name: The name comes from the park’s location alongside the river, but also from the

Edgewater Inn, which occupied the site for many years.

Acquisition and Development

The land for the park was purchased for about $300,000 in 1993 after the Edgewater Inn

closed. The Edgewater Inn had been a well-known riverside supper club that had featured

musical entertainment by the Edgewater Eight since the 1960s. The money to purchase

the land was provided by the Legislative Commission on Minnesota Resources, which

allocated state proceeds from the Minnesota Lottery.

A master plan for the property was developed with neighborhood input in the late 1990s.

The plan was partially funded by the Mississippi Watershed Management Organization.

The park was developed as part of the Above the Falls Master Plan, which established the

goal of acquiring and developing as parks portions of the Mississippi River banks

upstream from St. Anthony Falls as land became available.

Most of the work to develop the park, including an overlook of the river, was completed

in 2006 and the park was dedicated in April 2007.

Elliot Park

Location: Elliot Avenue South and 8

Street.

Size: 6.44 acres

Name: The park and avenue were named for Dr. Jacob S. Elliot, who along with his wife

donated the original land for Elliot Park in 1883. The Elliot’s son, Wyman, served as a

park commissioner 1899-1901.

Acquisition and Development

Dr. Elliot had once resided in Minneapolis but had moved to California by the time the

park board was created in 1883. Upon learning of the new park authority, he offered to

donate as a park the land that had once been his garden. The park board accepted his

donation of 2.18 acres in July of that year.

The park was quickly expanded when the Homeopathic Hospital offered to sell an

adjoining two blocks of land to the park board for $20,000. The park board accepted that

offer in December 1883. In the summer of 1884 the park board vacated 9

Street through

the park and asked Horace Cleveland to create plans for the park.

The original plan included a pond in the center of the park. A water pipe was installed to

the center of the lake in 1889, which produced a fountain of water that reached fifty feet

into the air. The pond served as a skating rink in the early years of the park.

Nearly three acres were added to the park in 1908-09 for about $34,000. Negotiations for

the land to the east and south of the original park took more than a year to complete.

With the addition of the new land Superintendent Theodore Wirth presented two plans

for the park in the 1909 annual report. In both plans the one-time pond was shown as a

wading pool. The plans differed in that one would have developed the eastern part of the

park as a playground and the other plan called for a sunken flower garden. Wirth’s plans

assumed the closing of 10

Avenue through the park, which had been approved by the

board. However with improvement plans on hold, 10

Avenue was kept open by request

of residents of the neighborhood.

Wirth’s playground option for the park was selected by the board for implementation in

1912, but after less than a year of operation, the nearby hospitals complained about the

noise of children playing, and the playground equipment was removed in early 1913.

Although Wirth’s sunken garden was never created, even after the removal of the

playground equipment, Elliot Park was planted with more flowers each year than most

other parks. Elliot trailed only Loring Park, Minnehaha Park, Lake Harriet and the

Armory Gardens in the number of flowers and bedding plants planted in 1919, with more

than 4,000 plants.

As with most other parks, few improvements were made again until after World War II.

In 1948, 10

Avenue was finally closed in preparation for a new playground, athletic

field, tennis courts and wading pool, which were built in 1949. A shelter at the park was

completed in 1950. The shelter was renovated in 1961.

In 1980, Elliot Park became the site of a unique project in Minneapolis parks. With the

help of federal and state grants totaling nearly a million dollars, a new recreation center

was built with the special needs of the handicapped in mind. Elliot Park had the first fully

accessible recreation center in city parks.

The play areas in the park were updated in 1998, including a new basketball court, new

pathways and landscaping. A skateboard park was added to the park in 2004.

Internet-enabled thermostat controls were installed in the rec center in 2008 to improve

energy-efficiency and reduce operating costs. Security cameras were also installed that

year.

In 2010, one of the first Nice Ride bicycle rental kiosks in Minneapolis was installed at

the park.

In 2015, a new synthetic turf athletic field replaced the battered grass field that had fallen

into disrepair. The new field is larger, sporting NCAA-regulation dimensions (70 x 115

yards). The men’s and women’s soccer teams from neighboring North Central College

(NCC) host home games and practice at the field. NCC provided a significant portion of

the funds used to build the field.

Elmwood Triangle

Location: Elmwood Place and Luverne Avenue

Size: 0.01 acres

Name: The property was named for Elmwood Place, the adjoining street.

Acquisition and Development

The triangle in the Tangletown neighborhood north of Minnehaha Creek was donated to

the park board by Mr. and Mrs. Walter L. Sawyer, August 14, 1898. It wasn’t until

November 25, 1911, however, that the board noted that the property had been overlooked

and never named. The board at that time approved the name of Elmwood Triangle.

Elmwood Triangle and Gladstone Triangle (which became park property in 1918)

represented the last contribution to Minneapolis parks by landscape architect Horace

Cleveland—years after his death. Cleveland was the man who first proposed a system of

interconnecting parkways around features of natural interest in the city, especially its

lakes and river. That suggestion led eventually to today’s “Grand Rounds.” Cleveland

also designed the first parks acquired by the park board.

But Cleveland’s legacy also includes the street layout of Tangletown north of Minnehaha

Creek between Lyndale and Nicollet. Cleveland hated the rectilinear street layouts in

most cities and towns of the Midwest. He blamed it on the railroad companies that laid

out the towns quickly and cheaply along their new track as they moved west. Cleveland

thought streets should follow the natural contours of the land, a belief he put into practice

in Tangletown when he was hired privately in the 1890s to develop a plan for that

neighborhood. The odd angles at which streets intersect under his plan created triangles

that are not suitable for buildings. Two of those unusual intersections created small

parcels of land—Elmwood and Gladstone triangles—that were later given to the park

board.

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Farview Park

Location: Lyndale Avenue North and 26

Avenue North

Size: 20.98 acres

Name: At the time it was acquired in 1883 the park was referred to as Third Ward Park

after the political division in which it was located. After its acquisition, the park was

named Prospect Park for its views, but in 1890 the name was changed to Farview Park.

The name has caused confusion ever since, because many people think the name is

Fairview with an extra “i” inserted. The view may have been “fair,” too, but the name

was chosen because one could see “far” from the hill in the center of the park.

Acquisition and Development

Farview Park was one of the first parks acquired by the Board of Park Commissioners

when it was created in April 1883. At its second meeting, April 20, 1883, the new park

board appointed committees to recommend land to be acquired for parks in various

sections of the city. The committee for the “northerly” part of the city was chaired by ex-

officio commissioner Henry Morse, who sat on the park board because he was the city

council member who chaired the council’s planning committee. Also on the committee to

consider a park for the district were park commissioners Adin Austin and John Oswald.

Oswald’s farm, Bryn Mawr, occupied the land that is now the Bryn Mawr neighborhood.

The committee worked fast. On May 12, 1883, the committee recommended acquiring

thirty acres of land for a Third Ward Park. The land was familiar to at least one

commissioner; the committee noted that it was recommending acquiring land that had

recently been sold by commissioner Dorilus Morrison to Henry Beard. (Henry Beard

later was the first landowner to offer to donate a strip of his land around Lake Harriet for

a parkway. The park board also acquired from Beard the land that became Linden Hills

Boulevard and Beard Plaisance west of Lake Harriet.) The site of the park was chosen,

the board reported in its 1883 annual report, because it was the highest land in the city,

offering panoramic views of downtown and the “Mississippi River for miles.”

The original proposal was to designate thirty acres of land that had been offered to the

board for $75,000, but the board’s final purchase of land was only about twenty acres.

The final purchase included ten acres that at the time was the site of the city’s small pox

hospital, which the city council offered to the park board for $15,000. The total purchase

price of the twenty-plus acres was $34,438, an amount that was assessed on property

owners in the neighborhood, to be paid over ten years. Farview was the least expensive of

the three parks the park board acquired in its first year, only one-third the per-acre cost of

Logan Park and Central (Loring) Park. The neighborhoods around Logan and Loring

parks were more densely populated, but the cost of the Farview land was also lower

probably because the steep hill in the park made it less suitable for residential or

commercial uses. Visionary landscape architect Horace Cleveland often said that some of

the most desirable land for parks—hills, ravines and river banks—were often those

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parcels that were ill-suited to other uses. The price paid for Farview Park supported that

claim.

Farview Park was originally intended to be the northern terminus of a parkway system

envisioned by Horace Cleveland. Lyndale Avenue on the park’s west edge was to be a

parkway that ran from Farview Park to the city’s southern boundary at 36

Street. The

park board did designate Lyndale Avenue North as a parkway and maintained it as one

until 1905. Cleveland suggested that the parkway would turn east at the southern edge of

Farview Park on 26

Avenue North and cross the city to the far eastern boundary of

Minneapolis at what became Stinson Boulevard. Although the “suggestion” by Cleveland

of an east-west parkway across the north and northeast was eventually implemented in

Camden and St. Anthony Boulevards farther north, the park board never pursued

Cleveland’s proposal for a parkway east from Farview.

Cleveland was also hired to create a plan for the original park, which he completed in late

1883. His original plan for what was then still called Third Ward Park (Cleveland’s

original drawing is owned by Hennepin History Museum) included a road to the top of

the hill in the park. The hill provided an ideal location for sledding and the park board

had a toboggan track built there in 1887.

In 1888 the park board commissioned an observation tower to be built on top of the hill.

The observatory was completed in 1889. In that year, residents of the neighborhood also

petitioned the park board to build a tennis court in the park. The first ice-skating rink was

created at Farview Park in 1891. And when the park board installed its first toilets in

parks in 1892, Farview was given two, complete with sewer connections.

Farview Park was the site of a celebrated event in park history in 1906 when newly hired

park superintendent Theodore Wirth visited the park and instructed the park policeman

on duty there to stop preventing children from sledding on the hill and, instead, assist

them. It was an early step in opening Minneapolis parks to active recreation uses.

The first playground equipment was installed at Farview in 1906, a “Hartford” merry-go-

round, the kind children push. The next year the board appropriated $1,000 for more

playground equipment at the park, following the popularity of the merry-go-round and

the success of playground equipment installed in 1906 at Logan and Riverside parks.

Farview was one of five city parks at which Clifford Booth supervised the use of

playground equipment in 1907, becoming the park board’s first recreation supervisor and

instructor. Also in 1907 the park board offered its first free outdoor music concerts at

Farview. The first basketball hoops were installed at the park in 1908.

The hilly terrain of Farview Park made it difficult and expensive to improve as athletic

fields, however. This was especially true when contrasted with North Commons, the

second major park in north Minneapolis, which was acquired in 1907. North Commons,

on flatter terrain, became a much more heavily used park for sports and active recreation.

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As recreation in city parks became more popular, the park board built its first fieldhouse

at Logan Park in 1912. Theodore Wirth recommended that one be built at Farview the

next year, and in succeeding years he recommended that Farview get a fieldhouse, tennis

courts and ball fields, so the park would be “as useful and popular as Logan,” in Wirth’s

words.

Finally, in 1917 the park board graded playing fields and put up a shelter that could be

used as a warming house for skaters in winter. (The shelter was actually moved from

Marshall Terrace Park, where it was underused, in the opinion of the board.) The

improvements were paid for out of a bond issue, but they were never completed.

Theodore Wirth proposed in 1921 and again in 1925 that the improvements begun in

1917 be completed. An inexpensive bandstand was installed at Farview, as in most other

parks, in 1919 to avoid the time and expense of moving the board’s portable bandstand

from park to park for free concerts.

In his 1927 superintendent’s report, Wirth presented a plan for the improvement of

Farview, which eliminated all roads in the park except for the drive to the top of the hill

from 26

Avenue North. The roads in the park had already been closed earlier that year

when the park board approved a request for that action from the PTA at nearby

Hawthorne School.

Despite the lack of improvements for active recreation, Farview Park excelled in another

activity: singing. Farview won the “community sing” trophy from 1924 to 1927 and again

from 1935 to 1937. The travelling trophy was awarded to the park that sang the best

during summer music concerts. That string of three wins in a row “retired” the trophy, or

allowed Farview to keep it. A new trophy was created for subsequent years for

community sings, which ran in city parks from 1919 to the mid-1950s. By 1949,

however, attendance at community sings had dwindled at Farview and Farview was

replaced by Peavey Park on the roster of parks that participated in community sings.

In 1938, in the midst of depression, the park board again considered plans for substantial

improvement of the park, including grading the park for athletic fields, but little money

was available at the time. Finally in 1940, using WPA labor, four new tennis courts were

built and the following year, once again with WPA labor, the board graded, resurfaced

and sodded some areas of the park.

In 1953, a concrete wading pool was installed at Farview, but other than that and the

installation of lights in the park in 1958 near the lookout tower, where teens often

loitered, major improvements of Farview waited until 1959-1960 when the park was

given a significant makeover at a cost of $260,000. Half the cost was financed by city

bonds and half by assessments on neighborhood property. Improvements included

grading fields, enlarging and resurfacing the tennis courts, replacing obsolete playground

equipment, and constructing an “attractive shelter of unusual design,” according to the

1960 annual report. Bond funds that were not used for the Farview redevelopment were

transferred the following year, along with funds from other parks, to a fund to acquire

Seward (Matthews) Park in south Minneapolis.

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During the recreation center building boom of the mid-1970s Farview was once again

redeveloped. In 1976, substantial work was done in the park and a new recreation center

was built. The recreation center was expanded in 1992 with the addition of a gym.

Farview Park was one of the first Minneapolis parks to have a computer lab, when

computers were installed in the recreation center in 2001. The interior of the community

center was remodeled in 2008 and a new fire alarm system was installed too.

A Nice Ride bicycle rental kiosk was installed at the park in 2011.

A new wading pool complete with play and shade structures opened in 2012, along with a

new, high-quality ball field paid for with donations from the Cal Ripken, Sr. Foundation,

Pohlad Family Foundation, Minnesota Twins Community Fund and Edward J. Phillips

Family Foundation.

In 2014 the inaugural Hmong Flag Football Tournament was held on the new synthetic

turf fields.

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Farwell Park

Location: Sheridan Avenue North and Farwell Place

Size: 1.15 acres

Name: The park was named for Farwell Place, the origin of which is unknown. The park

was named in the original 1889 plat and the name was never officially adopted or

changed.

Acquisition and Development

Park board records indicate that the land was platted as a park in the Oak Park

Supplement on June 4, 1889. However the first mention of the park in park board

proceedings is in a request from the David C. Bell Investment Company on February 7,

1910 asking the board to formally accept the land as a park and to make modest

improvements. The board approved initial improvements, grading and seeding the lot, on

March 21, 1910.

In the board’s annual report of 1910, superintendent Theodore Wirth included a plan for

the improvement of Farwell Park in what he said “promises to become one of the finest

residential districts of the northwest side,” a neighborhood he referred to as “Home

Wood.”

The plan for improvements is unusual in that it was not prepared by Wirth, but by Morell

and Nichols, the landscape architects hired by D. C. Bell Investment Company. Wirth

recommended that the plan be adopted by the board. Initial grading and seeding

commenced in 1911, but was not finished until the following year. The improvements

were paid for by the D. C. Bell Company, but the company was later reimbursed.

Playground equipment was first installed in the park in 1968 as part of an effort to

provide more facilities for children in north Minneapolis.

The playground and plaza in the park were improved in 2001.

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Father Hennepin Bluff

Location: The east bank of the Mississippi River between 3

Avenue Northeast and 6

Avenue Northeast.

Size: 8.02 acres, including the 0.06-acre Lucy Wilder Morris Park

Name: The park was named for Father Louis Hennepin, a Franciscan priest who was the

first European to view St. Anthony Falls from the site of the park in 1680. Hennepin

named the falls for his patron saint, St. Anthony of Padua. Hennepin was also the first

European to make a record of viewing Niagara Falls.

A portion of the park is officially known as Phillip W. Pillsbury Park. The Pillsbury

Company donated 2.4 acres of land to enlarge the park in 1981. The Pillsbury family,

founders of the milling company, had been linked with Minneapolis parks from the

earliest days of the park board. George Pillsbury was one of the Minneapolis

businessmen who had been instrumental in pushing the Minneapolis Board of Trade to

draft legislation for presentation to the state legislature to create the Minneapolis Board

of Park Commissioners in 1883. His brother John Pillsbury, a former governor of

Minnesota, was one of the first twelve park commissioners appointed by the legislation.

It was John Pillsbury who proposed to the new park board that it hire landscape architect

Horace Cleveland to create a plan for the fledgling park system. The result was

Cleveland’s “Suggestions for a System of Parks and Parkways for the City of

Minneapolis,” presented to the park board in June 1883.

John Pillsbury’s son, Alfred, also became a park commissioner and was president of the

park board in the 1930s.

Acquisition and Development

The initial land for the park was acquired by the park board in 1977. It was the first park

land to be acquired for what would become Central Riverfront Regional Park.

The land was acquired for about $800,000 with funds provided by the state legislature

through the Metropolitan Council. The land had been part of the initial, and least

controversial, part of the plan for the central riverfront created by the Riverfront

Development Coordinating Board (RDCB), a joint effort of the park board, city council

and the Minneapolis housing authority, chaired by park commissioner Ole Olson. The

RDCB envisioned the bluff left in its natural state with trails down to and along the river.

The RDCB’s plan also included Hennepin Island and the east channel of the river, but

those parts of the plan have never been completely implemented. The plan for the area

was intended to evoke images of Huck Finn. The bluff park was initially developed and

opened in 1979. It was designed by famous landscape architect Hideo Sasaki.

In 1981 the park was augmented by a donation of 2.4 aces of land from the Pillsbury

Company in honor of Phillip W. Pillsbury.

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Another half-acre of land on the bluff, Lucy Wilder Morris Park, was officially added to

the park when title to the land was turned over to the park board by the Hennepin County

Historical Society in 1989. The park board had been maintaining Lucy Wilder Morris

Park, however, since 1931 under an agreement with and funding from the Daughters of

American Colonists.

The finishing touch to the park, which gave it its present appeal, was the agreement to

convert the Stone Arch Bridge to a pedestrian and bicycle path in 1993. The bridge

connects the eastern edge of the park with the west bank of the river and Mill Ruins Park.

Proposals to convert the east channel of the river between Father Hennepin Bluff Park

and Hennepin Island into a whitewater park have been under consideration for years. The

sticking point has always been the source of funding for that development.

In 2011 the stairs from Main Street down to Hennepin Island and the river were repaired.

In 2014 the inaugural Owamni: Falling Water Festival was held at the park. The annual

festival celebrates indigenous Minnesota cultures with art, music food and film.

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First Bridge Park

Location: Beneath and around the west end of Hennepin Avenue Bridge across the

Mississippi River.

Name: The name for the park was chosen because it is the site of the first bridge across

the Mississippi River—anywhere. The first suspension bridge on the site was built by

Franklin Steele in 1855.

Acquisition and Development

The land for First Bridge Park was acquired in 1985 from the real estate subsidiary of

Burlington Northern Railroad, which owned much of the land along the river downtown.

The company donated 22 acres of riverfront to the city in part in return for changes in

zoning that enabled the company to develop other land holdings in the area for

commercial and residential purposes. A condition of the donation was that the park board

construct a park and parkway along the river from Plymouth Avenue to Portland Avenue

by 1987. That parkway was completed in 1987 and later named James I. Rice Parkway.

The impetus for the creation of First Bridge Park, which features the excavated footings

of the three earliest bridges on the site, was the construction of a new Federal Reserve

Bank on the site of the former railroad depot adjacent to James Rice Parkway. The park

was completed in 2001.

Along with Mill Ruins Park, First Bridge Park represents an effort to preserve and

illustrate the history of Minneapolis.

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Folwell Park

Location: Knox Avenue North and 36

Avenue North

Size: 26.98 acres

Name: The park was named for William Watts Folwell, park commissioner 1889-1907

and president of the park board 1895-1903. The name was officially adopted November

21, 1917. Before that the site was known as Highland Park. This was the second park that

the park board considered naming after Folwell. The board had once considered naming

what is now Marshall Terrace Park, Folwell Terrace, but chose instead to name it for the

street that passed by that park.

William Watts Folwell

Folwell was an influential man in Minneapolis history from the time he came to

Minneapolis in 1869 to be the first president of the University of Minnesota. As president

of the park board during a time of economic depression in the 1890s, Folwell kept alive

Horace Cleveland’s vision of the park system as a series of interconnected parks of

natural beauty. He also championed neighborhood parks interspersed throughout the city.

In 1891, he proposed the name “Grand Rounds” for Minneapolis’s parkways and the

name stuck. He was also a proponent of playgrounds for children and playing fields in

parks before those activities were widely considered appropriate in parks.

The annual reports he wrote for the park board while he was president are filled with

inspiring exhortations for the park board and the public to retain a vision of what parks

could become in the city. One example was from the annual report for 1900 when he

wrote, “We owe it to our children and all future dwellers in Minneapolis to plan on a

great and generous scale. If we fail to accomplish, let them know it was not for lack of

ideas or ideals.” Folwell was 92 when he attended the dedication of Folwell Park in 1925.

Acquisition and Development

The land for the park was designated for acquisition by the park board in December 1916.

The park board purchased the land through condemnation proceedings and the awards to

property owners were confirmed in August 1917. The total cost of the land was $35,160,

which was assessed to property owners in the vicinity of the park.

The first plans for the park were published in the 1917 annual report. The plan showed

the northern half of the park devoted to playgrounds, a wading pool and playing fields,

with the southern half reserved for, in park superintendent Theodore Wirth’s words,

“general park effects,” meaning woods and walking paths and lawns. In the center of the

park, facing a park drive created from 37

Avenue North, was a fieldhouse. Along the

west edge of the playing fields in the northern half, Wirth proposed a grandstand for

spectators. Near the center of the southern half, Wirth proposed a bandstand. Wirth noted

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that the plan would provide one of the “most complete and attractive neighborhood parks

in the country.”

Wirth didn’t create a detailed plan for the fieldhouse or estimates for any of the

improvements. At the time, the cost of all improvements in neighborhood parks was

assessed against property in the neighborhoods. If neighborhood property owners were

not willing to pay, no improvements were made. (Property owners were already paying

for the land through assessments.) Wirth wrote that he would provide detailed plans after

the people of the neighborhood “voiced their wishes,” which meant that he and the park

board awaited feedback from property owners as to how much they were willing to pay

for the facilities.

Apparently they were not willing to pay anything at all, because three years later Wirth

complained in the annual report that the park needed development because, as it was, it

had been of “no service to the people.” He repeated again in 1921 that the investment in

the land four years earlier “brings little return if not improved.” A temporary ball field

was created at the park in 1921.

It wasn’t until November 1922 that residents of the area asked the board to improve the

park. At that time the board instructed Wirth to revise his original plans to include a

shelter and toilet building of “moderate cost.” His new plan, submitted in January 1923,

and included in the 1922 annual report, no longer included a grandstand, field house or a

drive through the park, but was otherwise similar to his first plan in dividing the park into

halves for active and passive recreation. The estimated cost of the improvements was

$147,000.

Work on the field began with grading and filling in 1923 in time for a skating rink to be

established that winter. The first playground equipment was also installed, a merry-go-

round, which cost $328. Work was nearly completed in 1924, including the construction

of a shelter building that also served as a warming house. The one-story building was

built into the bank separating the higher southern half from the northern half of the park.

The roof of the building formed a terrace from which the activities and games could be

watched. The new park included ball fields, playgrounds, a wading pool, tennis courts

and horseshoe courts. The finishing touches were put on the park in early 1925 and on

July 4, 1925 the park was dedicated. William Folwell, then 92 years old, attended the

ceremony.

Improvements to the park were completed in 1927 when a pergola and permanent

bandstand were added to the southern half of the park. It was the first permanent

bandstand built in a park other than the pavilions at Lake Harriet and Minnehaha Park.

Liebert Weir, field secretary of the National Recreation Association, who conducted a

survey of Minneapolis parks for the board in 1944, was not a fan of the park board’s one

effort to build a bandstand in a neighborhood park. The bandstand, he wrote, “violates

almost every principle for sound projection and seating arrangements for performers.”

Weir continued wryly that it could not be “recommended as a model to other

communities.”

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Regardless of Weir’s opinion of the bandstand, the Folwell neighborhood embraced

performances at the bandstand and was usually among the top-performing parks in the

community sings that were popular in parks from 1919 into the 1950s.

Following World War II, Folwell Park was one of the first five parks (the others were

Loring, Logan, Nicollet and Sibley) that offered year-round playground programming

and were equipped with lights for outdoor games at night. Folwell also began an

experimental program to provide recreation services to Jordan Junior High School. In the

mid-1950s the skating rink at Folwell Park was by far the most heavily used in the park

system. One of the few improvements to the park from the time the bandstand was

finished until 1970, was the remodeling of the wading pool in 1963.

The Folwell shelter stood until 1970 when it was replaced by a community center and

gymnasium, and the park was completely rehabilitated. A new community center at

Folwell was one of the park board’s top priorities at the beginning of the park building

boom in the 1970s. By then, the practice of assessing property owners for improvements

to neighborhood parks had ended; the new center was paid for by city bonds.

From 1994 to 1998, a new playground was built, walkways and basketball courts were

repaved, fields were re-graded and the community center was remodeled.

The basketball court in the park was relocated in 2008 and security cameras were

installed. The parking lot was resurfaced in 2010. In late spring 2011, a tornado caused

extensive damage to trees in the park. With funds donated by businesses and civic

groups, 270 new trees were purchased and planted that fall.

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Fort Snelling State Park/Neiman Sports Complex

Location: Upper Bluff of Fort Snelling State Park, Highway 55 and Highway 5

Size: 152.32 acres, including 49 acres of golf course

Name: The park is named for its location in Fort Snelling.

Acquisition and Development

The park board’s site at Fort Snelling includes three separate facilities.

Fort Snelling Golf Course

The Minneapolis park board’s first presence at the park occurred in 1992 when the park

board leased an existing 9-hole golf course from the Minnesota Department of Natural

Resources. The land covered by that seven-year lease totaled 50 acres. When the lease

expired in 1999, the park board leased an additional 50 acres, extending the lease for the

entire property for 30 years, and purchased 17 acres more for additional recreation

facilities.

A disc golf course was added to the nine-hole layout in 2011.

Neiman Sports Complex

With the additional land leased in 1999, the park board had the space to develop the

competition-quality athletic fields that had been recommended by a Select Committee on

Youth Sports in 1997. The park board also considered developing state-of-the-art fields at

Bryn Mawr Park, but the Fort Snelling site was selected instead.

In 2001 construction began on a complex of athletic fields that now includes three

softball fields, two baseball fields and eight soccer fields, all of which have lights for play

at night. The softball and baseball fields also have bleachers.

When construction began the park board chose to honor Leonard H. Nieman by naming

the complex for him. Neiman was a park commissioner 1967-1978 and was a leader of

the Southwest Activities Council (SWAC), which included Linden Hills Park and

Pershing Park. He was a youth football coach and a played a central role in making

SWAC one of the leading park activity councils in the city. As a park commissioner he

was a passionate supporter of youth sports programs. Neiman’s son, Scott, was also a

park commissioner, 1982-2002, and served as president of the park board.

The playing fields opened for competition in 2003.

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An existing building on the Fort Snelling site that was unused adn did not fit into plans

for the complex was sold to the Boy Scouts in 2007.

Fred Wells Tennis and Learning Center

The third facility created at the site was developed by a private, non-profit organization

on a portion of the 17 acres of land the park board purchased in 1999: a tennis complex

with both indoor and outdoor courts. The center provides programs to encourage athletic

and academic excellence. The center was developed with a gift of $5 million in 2000

from the Wells Family Fund.

It was not the Wells family’s first involvement with Minneapolis parks. In 1927, the four

children of Frederick and Mary Wells, who was the daughter of Frank Peavey, had

donated to the park board the 3.4-acre site of Peavey’s former home at Park Avenue and

East 22

Street. The gift stipulated that the park be named for Frank Peavey. Now

considerably larger, Peavey Park extends north to Franklin Avenue. Frank Peavey was

also a donor to the park system. In 1891 he donated the first fountain in a city park. The

fountain he donated at the intersection of Kenwood Parkway and Lake of the Isles

parkway remains there today.

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Franklin Steele Square

Location: Portland Avenue and East 16

Street.

Size: 1.57 acres

Name: The park was named to honor Franklin Steele, one of the first European settlers in

the area and a civic activist. Steele built the first bridge over the Mississippi at Nicollet

Island. He was also president of the first board of regents of the University of Minnesota

Acquisition and Development

The land for the park was donated to the city in 1882, prior to creation of the park board,

by the daughters of Franklin Steele: Mary C. Morris, Catherine B. Steele, and Caroline H.

Addison. A condition of the donation was that the city appoint Charles Loring to

supervise improvements to the park, a condition that both the city council and Loring

accepted. The ownership of the park was transferred to the park board by the city council

April 27, 1883.

A fence around the park was constructed in 1883 and in 1884 trees and shrubs were

planted and an asbestine sidewalk was laid around the park. New walks were laid, some

redirected, in 1906.

In 1912 the park board approved a plan submitted a year earlier in the annual report to

improve Franklin Steele Square, including creating space for a small children’s

playground along 17

Street.

In 1916 the school board requested use of the park as a playground for Madison School

across the street, but the park board determined that such a use would violate the spirit of

the conditions of the original donation of land and denied the request. The issue was

revisited in 1948 when the park board approached the heirs of the donors and restrictions

on the use of the park were removed so the park could be integrated with Madison School

by the vacation of 16

Street. Plans included a wading pool, a children’s play area, a

small athletic field and picnic facilities.

In 1949 the plans were expanded to include basketball and volleyball courts and an

unusual shelter. A portion of the building had removable walls that could be stored in

summer to provide an open air shelter, yet provide protection for skaters as a warming

house in winter. The building also featured state-of-the-art automatic heating controls and

radiant heat, as well as what the 1949 annual report called “indestructible hardware

fixtures.” The building was designed to be “as automatic as possible in order to provide

the minimum in maintenance.”

Franklin Steele Square lost 0.14 acre in 1962 to freeway construction. The land lost was

not as significant as the fact that freeways on two sides of the park isolated it from parts

of the neighborhood it had once served.

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A “totlot” playground for small children was added to the park in 1975 and upgraded in

1990, when the park was renovated. In 2006, the aging shelter was removed.

The park was completely rebuilt in 2008-2009. A new “splash park” and playground

equipment were the main features of the new park, but renovations also included a new

picnic shelter with tables, benches and grills.

Trivia

Despite their generosity in donating land for a park before the park board was created, the

daughters of Franklin Steele put up a fight when the city and the state wanted more of

their land for parks. The sisters owned land near Minnehaha Falls that was taken by the

park board in condemnation proceedings in 1889 when Minnehaha Park was acquired.

The daughters contested the condemnation awards in court, but lost their challenge and a

portion of their land was incorporated into Minnehaha Park.

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Fremont Triangle

Location: Mount Curve and Fremont Avenue South

Size: 0.02 acres

Name: The property was named in 1925 for the street on which it is located. It was

originally known and listed in park board inventory as “Mt. Curve Triangle.” It retained

that name until 1925, when a second, larger Mt. Curve Triangle, now known as Thomas

Lowry Park at Mt. Curve and Douglas, was acquired. The park board changed the name

of the smaller, older triangle to Fremont Triangle.

Acquisition

The small triangle was transferred from the city council to the park board in 1896.

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Fuller Park

Location: Harriet Avenue South and West 48

Street

Size: 2.13 acres

Name: The playground park was named for Margaret Fuller School built in 1896, which

occupied the site until 1974. The name Fuller Park was officially adopted November 3,

1976. Fuller was an American writer and women’s rights activist in the mid-1800s. She

was the first female book reviewer, foreign correspondent and editor of the New York

Tribune. Her book, Woman in the Nineteenth Century, published in 1845, is considered

the first major feminist book in the United States.

Acquisition and Development

The park was acquired in 1976 from the school board for $112,500 after Margaret Fuller

School was closed in 1974. It was the culmination of more than six decades of agitation

for a park on—or near—the site. The first petition to acquire a playground in the

neighborhood was submitted to the park board in March, 1915. The petitioners

volunteered to pay for the acquisition of the block to the east of the school, between

Pleasant and Grand, through assessments on their property. More petitions followed in

April and May, including one written by former park commissioner and noted architect

Harry W. Jones, who lived in the neighborhood, and another by the Washburn Park

Improvement Association. The neighborhood was gaining population fast, as indicated by

additions to Fuller School, first in 1909, and again in 1915.

Curiously, with a rapidly growing neighborhood solidly behind the effort to acquire the

park, and even willing to pay for it, the park board voted in June of that year, after

consultations with the school board, not to accept the offer and designate the property for

acquisition. Even curiouser, the 1915 annual report by park superintendent Theodore

Wirth included “Margaret Fuller Field” in a chart of new acquisitions. The report listed

the new acquisition that wasn’t at 2.31 acres.

Undeterred by an “almost,” residents petitioned for a park again in June 1917, for the

south half of the block on which the school was located and half of the block east of the

school. This time the board agreed and on September 5, 1917, the board designated the

requested land for a park to be paid for by assessments on benefited property. Despite

some protests against the acquisition, which caused the board to defer action for a month,

the park board directed Wirth to proceed with a survey and plans for the park.

Wirth introduced his plan for the property May 1, 1918. And what a plan it was: four

tennis courts, a recreation shelter, a playground and an assembly stage with concrete

steps on the hillside for seats, which Wirth called a “desirable feature for school

recitations and musical and dramatic entertainments.”

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But there was a catch: Wirth’s plan required the use of some land adjacent to the school

owned by the school board. Because the park board couldn’t legally assess the cost of

improvements on land it didn’t own, the plan required the school board to pay $5,200 of

the total cost of $32,200 to execute the plan. The park board referred the plan to a joint

committee to consider—and the plan was never mentioned again.

The only subsequent reference to the plan was a succinct note in the 1920 report by the

park board’s attorney, James Shearer: “Margaret Fuller School Playground. Proceedings

to acquire, abandoned.”

It would be 55 years before the idea of a playground in the Fuller neighborhood was

revived—and then only when the school was demolished. (One reason given for

demolishing the school was that it didn’t have adequate playground space!) With the

closing of the school in 1974 and the park board aggressively trying to fill holes in its

playground map, the park board was first in line to acquire the abandoned school site.

(Keeping up the tradition of neighborhood petitions for a park on the site, the Fuller

School PTA requested in November 1972 that the park board acquire the school property.

By then the school had already been scheduled to close in 1974.) The site was paid for

with funds the park board obtained from the state Department of Transportation in

payment for park land taken for freeways.

In 1975, with the park board’s acquisition of the school site certain to proceed, the park

board began work to convert the site to a park. Walkways were laid, landscaping was

begun and a recreation center was designed. Due to the park’s topography and small size,

the recreation center is one of the only two-story centers in Minneapolis parks. The park

acquisition was completed in 1976 just in time for the dedication of the new recreation

center. Nearly sixty years after the first plans were drawn for the playground, it was done.

The park included the new recreation center, a wading pool and a children’s playground.

The park was renovated and new playground equipment was installed in 1992. The

playground was upgraded again in 2015. A new basketball court was built in the park in

2005. The wading pool was upgraded to meet new safety regulations in 2008. The

interior of the rec center was the focus of attention from park board crews in 2010 when

new furniture was constructed and installed and the carpet was replaced.

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The Gateway

Location: Hennepin Avenue and 1

Street South

Size: 1.66 acres

Name: When the park was first envisaged in 1908 it was viewed as a “gateway” to

Minneapolis because of its proximity to the train depots. The Gateway would have been

one of the first things seen by arriving passengers as they moved from the train stations

toward downtown. The name, which had arisen “spontaneously” according to park board

proceedings, was officially adopted December 7, 1908. Suggestions were made later to

change the name to “Gateway Park” or “Gateway Plaza.”

Acquisition and Development

The present park called The Gateway was acquired from the city in 1962 as part of a deal

between the city and park board to reconfigure the old gateway as a part of urban

renewal. The good part is that the park board traded 1.52 acres of the old Gateway, which

had been the site of the Minneapolis’s first City Hall in 1883, for 1.66 acres of the new

Gateway. The bad part of the deal was that in addition to the land swap, the city paid only

$184,000 for land that the park board had acquired more than fifty years earlier for

$635,000. An increase in land value in that part of downtown of less than 30% in fifty-

plus years, suggested the need for urban renewal of the area. (To create enough available

land to make the swap, the city vacated Nicollet Avenue and 2

Street through what

became the new park.)

The only constant between the old Gateway and the new was that the flag pole, which

had been erected in the original park in 1917—a gift of the Daughters of the American

Revolution—was moved to the new Gateway.

The acquisition of The Gateway in 1908 was one of the most controversial decisions of

the park board up to that time—and one of its most expensive failures ever. Part of the

objection was to the cost of the land. At more than $600,000, it was by far the most

expensive acquisition by the park board until it began acquiring property on the Central

Riverfront in the 1980s.

Heavyweights in civic affairs lined up on both sides of the issue. Among those opposed

were Thomas B. Walker, the creator of the Walker Art Center; Charles Loring, the first

president of the park board and known for more than twenty years then as the “Father of

Minneapolis Parks;” and, William Folwell, former president of the University of

Minnesota and the park board. Loring argued that the park would simply become a

hangout for vagrants, and was philosophically opposed to the park board taking land from

businesses (his wife owned some of the land, too). Folwell said the park was too small to

be useful.

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In favor of the acquisition were most business leaders, including Thomas Lowry, who

had built the city’s streetcar system. Lowry called the acquisition the most important

issue the board had ever considered and hoped the “splendid enterprise” would go

forward.

Park board president Jesse Northrup, who first proposed the idea, painted a picture in

1908 of why many thought the Gateway would be positive for the city, as it sat near the

entrance to the train station: “Greeted by day with the sight of a beautiful park, and a

glimpse of our leading business streets, at night by our three principal avenues brilliantly

illuminated as they would be, the stranger visiting our city would receive an impression

never to be forgotten, and our own people returning to their homes would experience a

new feeling of pleasure and pride that they lived in Minneapolis.”

Park commissioner Edmund Phelps suggested that The Gateway would be the beginning

of “redemption” of the neighborhood, which he noted was “not one of which the city is

especially proud.” The neighborhood around Bridge Square, between The Gateway and

the Hennepin Bridge, was home to dozens of saloons, which were patronized by many

mill workers, lumbermen between jobs, and others looking for work.

Park superintendent Theodore Wirth was strongly in the camp of proponents, confident

that it would win over critics when it was done.

The park board first dedicated the land for park purposes on June 1, 1908. The debate

raged for the rest of the year, but the process of appraisals and assessments was

completed and the park board took possession of most of the land in 1909. Because

business tenants in many of the buildings acquired had longer-term leases, some quite

lucrative for the park board, the board did not raze the buildings on the land until 1913.

The park board calculated that the rents it received would eventually pay for

improvements to the site. The city formally deeded the old City Hall to the park board in

1912. When the park board did finally level the area, it took out 27 saloons in barely 1½

acres. The costs of buying the land, and improvements, were assessed partly on the

neighborhood and partly on property owners citywide.

Wirth’s first plan for the area, published in the 1909 annual report, suggested a

renaissance design for a public comfort station and information bureau. In 1914, park

commissioner Phelps donated to the board, specifically for the park, a fountain that was

the park’s centerpiece. Often referred to as the “Turtle Fountain,” it was relocated to

Lyndale Park near the Rose Garden in 1964.

The Gateway was formally dedicated August 15, 1915 when the fountain was finally

completed. The legend inscribed on the building that housed the toilets and information

bureau read: “More than her gates, the city opens her heart to you.”

Problems emerged immediately. With the park open for only four months, Theodore

Wirth expressed his concern in his 1915 annual report. “The building is too small,” he

wrote, “for a place of prolonged rest for the army of unemployed that frequent this

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neighborhood. It was not intended as such, and for this purpose a larger building and

grounds are required.” Both Loring and Folwell’s predictions were accurate. Wirth

estimated that 8,000-9,000 people used the toilets every day. He immediately

recommended a pier or park on city property on Nicollet Island to relieve the

overcrowding at The Gateway.

The information bureau was not established in the park building until 1917. The board

assumed the bureau would be self-sustaining through the sale of cigars, candy and

newspapers. The same year the Daughters of the American Revolution contributed an

ornamental flagstaff for the park. In 1919, the Minneapolis Library was given space in

the building for a “deposit station.” The park board provided space and furniture for the

library “at the pleasure” of the board.

Contrary to the desires of The Gateway’s promoters, it did not lead to renewal of that part

of the city. But it did become a place to hang out. In 1921 the Bureau of Public Welfare

began using the Gateway building to help the unemployed. It was apparently going where

its clients were. The crowds at The Gateway were responsible for one of the major costs

of operating the park: police deployments.

In 1923 the park board reported that 5% of the General Park Fund, for maintaining and

operating all city parks, was spent at The Gateway. In a bit of understatement the board

called the expense “out of proportion” for that small part of the park system.

The hopes of the park board that The Gateway would be self-sustaining were dashed

when the city began distributing free road maps at The Gateway in 1925, further cutting

into revenues at the board’s information bureau. When the Chamber of Commerce was

given permission to open a tourist bureau at the site in 1927, Wirth suggested that the

park board relinquish the entire space to that organization.

The Gateway largely disappeared from park board reports and publications for the next

25 years, perhaps out of embarrassment. In 1950, when the Chamber of Commerce

closed its tourist bureau, the park board asked whether the park had outlived its

usefulness and, to test public sentiment, solicited bids to raze the building. It deferred

action at the request of the City Planning Commission, not because there was a public

outcry. When the park board talked again of razing the building in 1952, a group of

citizens brought suit to stop it. But with a court ruling in the board’s favor, and the City

Planning Commission not standing in the way, the building was leveled in 1953 and

turned into open space and gardens—with a four foot fence around it. The fountain and

flagpole remained.

That changed in 1960 when the city began condemnation proceedings to obtain the park

for its neighborhood renewal efforts. Over the next two years the city and the park board

negotiated a price for the land, and the eventual relocation of the park to the east.

The new park was built in 1963 after the Phelps Fountain was moved to Lyndale Park. A

new fountain was installed in the newer Gateway in 1967.

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At the same time the city acquired the old Gateway, it also acquired Pioneer Square, the

park in front of the post office (see Pioneer Triangle), as part of its renewal efforts. Sadly,

both of the park board’s ventures into downtown were expensive failures.

The Gateway still exists as a small park, but it is barely noticeable, when it was once

intended to be the centerpiece of a majestic entrance to the city. The fountain and the

flagpole are still worth a visit, and green space anywhere in downtown is pure pleasure,

but The Gateway is a far stretch from the glory once envisioned—and paid for.

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Gladstone Triangle

Location: Elmwood Avenue and Gladstone Avenue

Size: 0.06 acres

Name: The property was named for the street on which it is located.

Acquisition and Development

The city council transferred the triangle to the park board “for beautification and care” on

September 18, 1918. The park board accepted and named the triangle on November 6,

1918.

(See Elmwood Triangle for more information on the layout of streets in this section of

Tangletown—and the famous man in Minneapolis park history who was responsible for

the curving streets.)

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Glen Gale Park

Location: Irving and 23

Avenue North

Size: 1.42 acres

Name: The park was named for Samuel C. Gale, a prominent settler, scholar, attorney

and realtor who donated the land to the park board. Gale was an early proponent of parks

in the city and helped create one of the earliest parks near downtown at Oak Lake, which

no longer exists. He initially platted parks in his real estate development in 1873, ten

years before the park board was created. Gale was a leader in most business and civic

organizations of his time, including the Board of Trade.

Acquisition and Development

The park was donated to the city by being dedicated as parkland in the plat of Forest

Heights on July 31, 1883. Other park properties dedicated in the plat were Cottage Park,

Irving Triangle and Oliver Triangle. In 1887, the park board officially requested the city

council to turn over the land for park purposes and park board expenditures for 1887

include $2.80 for the “Gale tract.” The 1888 annual report includes “Gale” among other

small parks in its inventory.

The Forest Heights “squares” were first included separately in the annual report inventory

of 1890, which listed them as 4 acres total.

The board appropriated $2,000 for the initial improvement of Glen Gale in 1892, but that

work was not done until 1894. City water was extended into the park in 1898.

The first improvements to the park were made in 1909 according to plans published in

the annual report that year. The center of the park, which Theodore Wirth noted was

about a foot below the street grade, was used for a skating rink and playground.

A small addition was made to Glen Gale n 1914 when the city council asked the park

board to take over a small street triangle adjacent to the park.

Glen Gale at one time was provided with a skating rink and warming house, but the

warming house was removed at the request of area residents in 1925.

Petitions to create a baseball or softball field at Glen Gale were turned down in 1914 and

again in 1932.

A tot lot built in Glen Gale in 1968 as part of an effort to provide more facilities for

children in the neighborhood was renovated in 1987. New playground equipment was

installed in 2010.

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Gluek Park

Location: 2000 Marshall Avenue Northeast

Size: 2.91 acres

Name: The park was named for the Gluek Brewery and Gluek Mansion that once

occupied the site. The Gluek Brewery was established in 1857. The name was officially

adopted in 1995.

Acquisition and Development

The land for the park was purchased by the park board in 1978, eight years after the

Gluek Brewery was demolished. The land was purchased with money provided by the

Legislative Commission on Minnesota Resources, which allocated money from proceeds

of the Minnesota Lottery.

The first improvements to the park, including a playground, picnic area and river

overlook, were completed in 1988. The park was closed in 2004 due to concerns over

contaminated soil from long industrial use. Following remediation work by the U.S.

Environmental Protection Agency, the park officially reopened in 2008 with new paths,

river overlook, picnic shelter, drinking fountain and landscaping.

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Gross National Golf Course

Location: 22

Avenue NE and St. Anthony Parkway NE

Size: 149.82 acres

Name: The course was named for Francis A. Gross, a park commissioner for 32 years

between 1910 and 1949 and president of the park board 1917-1919 and 1936-1948. He

was so closely connected to the parks that he earned the nickname “Mr. Park Board.” The

park board voted to name the golf course for Gross on November 5, 1947 in what came

as a complete surprise to Gross. Until then the course was called the Armour Golf Course

after the meat-packing business Armour & Company, which owned the land. For a few

months in 1925 the board renamed the course St. Anthony Golf Course, but reverted to

the original name.

Francis A. Gross

Gross became involved in park issues in 1909, when as a banker in north Minneapolis he

was one of the leading proponents of creating Webber Park (then Camden Park). His

stance in favor of parks in that debate, which bitterly divided the neighborhood, was

remembered by the park board the next year when Charles Johnson resigned his seat on

the commission. The park board considered no other nominees and unanimously elected

Gross, then 40 years old, to fill out the seven months remaining in Johnson’s term.

(Johnson resigned when he was hired to be the director of refectories for the park board,

one of the few park commissioners to later work for the park board.)

That was the first of four times that Gross was elected by other commissioners to fill

vacancies on the board due to resignations or, in the case of Harry Cramer’s seat in 1926,

death. Gross was also elected to four six-year terms as well, but he was always elected as

an incumbent.

Gross had his greatest impact on park policy during his presidency of the board from

1936 to 1948. This was at a time when new recreation demands were placed on parks and

when the role of parks in city life was changing. It was also a time of transition in park

management as Gross’s friend, Theodore Wirth, who had been park superintendent for

thirty years, was required to retire due to civil service age rules and was replaced by

Christian Bossen. To complicate matters further, it was also a time of economic

depression, then war, when the park board had almost no resources to meet increasing

demand and had to rely on federal and state work-relief programs, such as the Works

Progress Administration, for both park maintenance and recreation supervision.

Throughout this period the annual reports written by Gross were thoughtful, insightful

discussions of what parks could and should contribute to the life of a city, including an

exploration of how the park board could work with other government agencies to address

problems in society that parks and recreation alone could not.

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During Gross’s presidency of the board, it began to consider a more equitable distribution

of park facilities, particularly playgrounds, throughout the city. The board also first began

to question its policy of many years of acquiring new parks and playgrounds only if

property owners in the areas agreed to pay for them through assessments on property.

The policy had left gaps in the city where no parks and playgrounds existed, mostly in

older and poorer neighborhoods.

“In spite of our professed principles of human justice, we still do not have equal

opportunities in all quarters,” Gross wrote in the 1944 annual report.” The most satisfying

argument for equal recreation opportunities for all remains the simple one of human

justice.” Gross wrote more in the 1944 report of the vision the park board needed as it

looked to its tasks in a post-war America.

“Action taken without regard to the welfare of all people, no matter how

apparently good it may seem to the interests of the parties taking the

action, no longer meets the proper standard of responsibility. It follows

that action taken by our Board in the interest of public recreation must be

correlated with the general public interest. The frontiers of human welfare,

understanding and happiness are today as close, as real and as of great a

scope as ever were the physical frontiers that challenged past generations;

the mastering of those frontiers calls for men of as great a stature, and

individual initiative, as the giants of the past; but the enlarged

responsibilities presume a different approach—an approach characterized

by the charitable understanding of the problems, rights and welfare of

other units of the human family of which we all are a part.”

In addition to providing the philosophical rationale for the park board’s work, Gross

played a critical role in the rapid expansion of the park board’s airport leading up to and

during World War II. He was a member of the first Metropolitan Airports Commission,

created in the mid-1940s, to which the park board transferred control of the Minneapolis

Municipal Airport.

In 1948, at age 78, “Mr. Park Board” was defeated in his bid to be re-elected to the board.

Acquisition and Development

The story of the purchase of Gross Golf Course is one that tells of the Roaring 20’s, the

Great Depression, World War II and the spectacular increase in the popularity of golf.

The contract to acquire and develop the land for a golf course was approved by the park

board March 5, 1924, but the terms of that contract, greatly revised in the park board’s

favor, were not complied with until 1947. At that time the city issued $320,000 in bonds

to pay off the 23-year-old contract.

The story of Gross Golf Course really begins with stockyards. In 1912 the park board

designated for acquisition land to widen Stinson Boulevard on the eastern border of the

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city. The owner of the land was Armour & Company, the Chicago-based meat-packing

company. Armour owned about 800 acres of land west of the city that it had acquired as

the possible site of a meat-packing plant near the New Brighton stock yards. At about that

time, however, Armour had decided to build a new plant adjacent to the South St. Paul

stockyards instead. The Armour plant in South St. Paul opened in 1919.

(George Brackett, one of the heroes in the story of Minneapolis parks, was once one of

the principal investors in the New Brighton stock yards, but lost his share of the business

in the Panic of 1893.)

Because of its decision to locate its new plant elsewhere, Armour was not only amenable

to giving up some of its land for the widening of Stinson Parkway, but suggested that a

parkway be built through its land west of the city limits. Armour not only donated the

land for what is now part of St. Anthony Parkway, but paid for construction of the road

across its property in 1913.

With the popularity of the first golf courses developed by the park board at Wirth Park

(then Glenwood) in 1916, followed by a course at Columbia Park in 1919, Armour

approached the park board in 1923 with a proposal to develop a golf course on the

property it still owned west of St Anthony Parkway. The company offered very attractive

terms: they would provide the land, and pay for the development of a golf course and a

small club house. Their investment, valued at $150,000 for land and another $60,000 in

improvements, would be paid off by the park board over twenty years from the earnings

of the golf course. Until it was paid off, the park board would pay Armour 4½ percent a

year in interest on the outstanding amount it owed. The park board approved the terms of

that contract in March 1924. In the park board’s 1924 annual report both board president

Burton Kingsley and park superintendent Theodore Wirth assured the public that the

course was acquired and improved “without any charge whatsoever” to taxpayers.

The golf course opened in 1925. William D. Clark of Minneapolis helped design the

course for the park board, as he had done at Wirth and Columbia, and would at

Meadowbrook. It was the first golf course in Minneapolis that had grass greens and tees.

The Wirth and Columbia courses had sand greens and clay tees. The fee for playing the

new course was initially set at $1.00 for eighteen holes, more than double the forty cents

charged at Wirth and Columbia. Later that summer the fee was reduced to fifty cents due

to the “rough condition” of the still-young course. For the next few years fees were

seventy-five cents.

All went well—for awhile. For the first three years earnings at the course were less than

the interest owed on the contract. Wirth reassured the public in 1927 that “there need be

no apprehension that the finance plan, under which the entire indebtedness is to be paid

off, cannot be consummated.” The next year a registration system was implemented at all

city golf courses to eliminate long waits to get on the courses. From 1928 to 1931

earnings at the course enabled the park board to pay the accumulated annual interest and

even make payments on the principal.

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What Wirth could not have foreseen was that annual earnings at Gross would not reach

1927 levels again until 1950 and that earnings at the course would not even cover interest

payments to Armour after 1931. With the coming of the Great Depression the number of

golf rounds played dropped dramatically everywhere, and continued dropping even when

the park board cut fees at Armour from 75 cents to 50 cents in 1932. Not only did the

number of rounds drop, so did spending at the club house refectory.

In 1932 the park board couldn’t even pay the interest on the Armour contract from

proceeds at the course. So the next year, Armour and the park board took dramatic action.

Armour made a generous offer: it would make up any deficits in operation of the course,

ensuring that the park board’s meager operating revenues would not have to go toward

maintaining the golf course. The company also agreed to finance a new sprinkling system

for the course at a cost of about $7,000 and add it to the amount owed by the park board.

The sprinkling system, the only one on any park board golf course, and greener fairways

led to a one-year bump in rounds played at the course, but play then resumed its tailspin.

In 1935 Wirth suggested that the board should decide if it could continue to maintain the

course. It was in a bad location, with few golfers in the vicinity, and it was suffering from

competition with St. Paul courses, he wrote. (The new golf course at the University of

Minnesota, not far away, had opened in 1929.)

Again in 1936 and for the next eleven years Armour agreed to make up operating deficits

at the course—but interest continued to accumulate on the original debt. Meanwhile the

number of golf rounds played at park board courses had dropped in half from its peak in

1928—from more than 170,000 to less than 90,000. At the time the park board operated

four courses; Meadowbrook had also opened, but Hiawatha had not yet been built.

In the late 1930s, the course operated at a loss and debt continued to mount. As the

economy recovered in the early 1940s during Word War II, golf gained popularity even

with so many citizens gone to war. There was hope that when the “boys” came home,

golf would pick up. Wirth wrote in 1945 in his memoirs that it was not “unreasonable” to

anticipate that the future would bring better things for the course.

Even with the return to peace, however, it became evident that the park board would not

be able anytime soon to make good on its 1924 contract with Armour. By 1946 rounds

played at the course had jumped to a record of 31,000, but still the course earned only a

little more than $3,500, nearly $12,000 short of simply paying annual interest on the

contract by that time. At the end of that year the board owed more than $365,000 under

the original contract and its prospects for ever paying off the debt from golf course

earnings were slim.

Finally in 1947, Armour must have recognized the impossibility of the situation and

informed the park board that it was in default and that it had thirty days to make good on

the contract. If it didn’t, title to the land would revert to Armour. Armour already had a

buyer for the land, the cemetery across St. Anthony Parkway from the golf course.

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The park board took the news to the city council, which quickly approved the issuance of

$320,000 in city bonds to buy the land from Armour. In its final act of goodwill toward

the park board, Armour agreed to compute the interest it had been owed for 23 years

without compounding. The bonds were issued and Armour was paid on October 25,

1947. Finally, after 23 years, the park board owned Gross Golf Course outright.

In the end the park board was right that taxpayers would not have to pay for a golf

course. It just took much longer than the board thought it would in 1924. By agreement

with the city council and board of estimate and taxation, the bonds issued in 1947 were

retired by devoting ten cents (raised to 12 cents in 1964) from every round of golf played

on all five Minneapolis golf courses to paying off the debt. The $390,000 needed to pay

off the bonds and interest was finally reached in 1967.

The park board may have paid a high price indirectly, however, for the acquisition of

Gross Golf Course in 1947. After 17 years of no acquisitions and few improvements to

the park system, the board had compiled a lengthy list of “post-war progress” projects for

which it needed bond funds. A small fraction of those projects were funded over the next

twenty years. While taxpayers did not pay for the golf course directly, many other

desirable park projects were not funded with bonds, because of the city debt issued to buy

the course.

The modest original clubhouse at Gross was remodeled in 1949 and enlarged in 1963

with the addition of a basement. The 1963 improvements and the relocation of four tees

and the lengthening of fairways were done in preparation for hosting the 1964 National

Amateur Public Links tournament at Gross.

In 1966 a couple acres of park land south of Gross Golf Course were taken by the state

department of transportation for the construction of freeway I-35E. The park board was

paid $291,000 for that land. The loss of that land did not have an impact on the golf

course.

The golf course was put to a new use in the late 1970s with the creation of cross country

ski trails. The twice-remodeled clubhouse at Gross was demolished in 1985 and replaced

with a new $1 million dollar facility.

Despite lagging other city courses in rounds played for the first 60 years of its existence,

in 1987 Gross set an all-time record for rounds played at any Minneapolis course at

62,000. It broke the record of 58,000 rounds played at Hiawatha in 1963. The golf rounds

played at Gross, as at all other city park courses, have gradually declined since 2000,

dropping from the mid-50,000s into the low-40,000s.

In 2004 Gross became the third city golf course to have a First Tee learning center, which

provides additional practice spaces and another source of revenue from park board golf

courses.

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In 2013 Gross added two golf simulators, which allow golfers to practice year-round

replicas of some of the world's most famous courses.

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Hall Park

Location: Aldrich Avenue North and 16

Avenue North

Size: 5.95 acres

Name: The park was named for Elizabeth Hall School adjacent to the park, which was

built in 1960. Elizabeth Hall was a teacher who served as assistant superintendent for

elementary education for Minneapolis schools 1911-1934. In 1979 the park board

requested public input to rename the park. The city council passed a resolution to ask the

board to name it for council member and former park commissioner Louis DeMars, but

the neighborhood ultimately decided to keep the name of the school.

Acquisition and Development

The Hall neighborhood was identified in a 1938 study of the city’s playground needs as

one of five neighborhoods that had an “acute” need for a playground, but was unable to

pay the costs of acquiring land and developing a park through property assessments.

Studies in 1944 and 1965 repeated the recommendation for a playground in the

neighborhood.

The park board took a tiny step toward a Hall Park in 1968 when it built a totlot at Hall

School. In 1970 the board applied for federal funds to acquire five new parks in the city,

but only three of those projects were approved. Three parks on the near southside

received federal funding, but the Hall project did not.

The creation of more than a totlot in the area had to wait until the Minneapolis housing

authority began a program of urban renewal in the neighborhood. In 1977, six acres of

land adjoining the school were acquired from the housing authority for a park. Plans for a

playground park, including a shelter, were approved shortly after and construction of the

park began. Most park improvements were completed in 1979, but construction of the

shelter stretched into 1980. The total cost of the shelter was $83,598.

The most recent improvements to the park were begun in 2003 and completed in 2004.

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Harrison Park

Location: James Avenue North and 4

Avenue North

Size: 6.90 acres

Name: The park was named for Harrison School adjacent to the park site. The school was

named for William Henry Harrison, ninth president of the United States. The park board’s

first involvement on the property, in 1958, was developing a playground for the school—

even before the land for a larger park was acquired. At that time, however, the property

was already referred to as Harrison Park. The name was never formally adopted.

Acquisition and Development

The park was purchased by resolution of the park board on August 5, 1959. The board

approved paying the federal government $97,100 for the land, although later park

inventories never reflected that price and indicated that the land was acquired from the

Minneapolis Housing Redevelopment Authority (MHRA). The land was acquired as a

part of the MHRA’s redevelopment of the Glenwood housing area. The park board had

been reviewing the possibilities of playground development at the site with the MHRA

since 1953.

In 1958, before the park was officially acquired, the park board approved creating a new

playground on school property. The park board initially approved plans in 1959 to

develop the park with funds to be obtained through assessments on property in the

neighborhood. The MHRA informed the board that if assessments on property were

levied for those improvements, the project would lose $80,000 in federal funds. The

board then approved spending city bond funds for the entire cost of the improvements,

which was $243,000. MHRA paid to have the new park land graded before it was turned

over to the park board for development as a park.

The board used the bond funds in 1960 to construct a shelter with office space, develop

ball fields and hard surface courts for tennis, basketball and volleyball, and install a

wading pool and children’s play areas. The shelter was built to a design similar to earlier

shelters constructed at Franklin Steele Square and Peavey Field, which had removable

exterior walls for conversion from winter to summer use.

In 1975, the park’s tennis courts, walkways and walking paths were renovated.

Additional improvements were made to the park in 1984 when the original shelter was

renovated and fully enclosed.

From 1997-1999 a new secondary school and neighborhood center were built to replace

the old school and recreation shelter. The new building housed a gym, a park board

neighborhood center and the offices of the Harrison Neighborhood Association. The

playground was updated and other improvements were made to the park in 2003-2004.

The kitchen in the community center was renovated in 2008.

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In 2015 a new wading pool opened.

was shifted closer to the neighborhood center and

contains a number of colorful play

features.

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Hiawatha School Playground Park

Location: East 43

Street and 44

Avenue South

Size: 4.04 acres

Name: The park is exactly what it was named, a playground park for Hiawatha

Elementary School.

Acquisition and Development

The park board acquired the land for a playground at Hiawatha School in 1931 when it

swapped land with the school board. The park board gave up land it owned at Page

School, near Minnehaha Parkway, and Hamilton School, near Glenwood-Camden

(Memorial) Parkway, for the Hiawatha land. The park properties traded to the school

board had an appraised value of just under $10,000. Officially, the park board listed

Hiawatha School Playground in its inventory as a donation with a value of $15,525.

The playground was not developed beyond being graded for a skating rink until residents

of the area petitioned for improvements in 1939. At that time plans were drawn up for the

installation of a large skating rink, softball and baseball fields, tennis courts, volleyball

courts, horseshoe pits and a small amount of playground equipment. The work was

planned for the 1940 Works Progress Administration (WPA) program, a program created

by the federal government to provide jobs during the depression. The area was regraded,

the fields built and the entire area seeded or sodded. In general about 25% of the cost of

WPA projects—the vast majority of park improvement projects during the 1930s and

early 1940s—was paid by the park board, but park inventories attributed none of the

money spent for these improvements to the park board.

It wasn’t until 1963 that more extensive facilities were provided at the park. In that year a

park shelter was built, the athletic fields were enlarged and lighted, a wading pool was

built, and new playground equipment was installed.

The shelter was replaced by a neighborhood recreation center attached to the school in

1979.

In 2000 a state-of-the-art handicapped-accessible playground was developed in the park.

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Hi-View Park

Location: Main Street and Edge Place

Size: 3.86 acres

Name: The name derives from the topography: high ground that offers a view of the city.

The spelling of the name was changed from Highview to Hi-View in 1955.

Acquisition and Development

Hi-View Park was acquired from the state in 1950. The state had acquired the property for

non-payment of taxes. The original park was 3.74 acres, but was expanded by 0.12 acres

in 1961 at a cost of $4,900. The park board acquired the land at a time when it was

looking to fill gaps in playgrounds identified in a 1944 study of park facilities. While the

neighborhood around Hi-View was not on the list of neighborhoods needing playgrounds,

the park board seized the opportunity to obtain free land from the state, when it

discovered the land was on the state’s list of tax-forfeited properties. The undeveloped

land had been used as a playing field by children in the neighborhood for years.

The first instances of the park board seeking land on state tax-forfeiture lists was in 1905

when it acquired several lots to expand Glenwood (Wirth) Park and in 1914, when it

acquired Russell Triangle. With the acquisition of four lots to enlarge Peavey Park and

the acquisition of Northeast Field partly from the state’s tax forfeiture list in 1941, the

park board began looking to the state as a source of cheap land.

In a matter of a few years after World War II, the park board acquired nearly all of

Bossen and Perkins Hill parks and portions of McRae and Kenny from the state for no

cost. The park board also eventually acquired part of North Mississippi Park from the

state. By the late 1940s, the park board routinely scanned lists of land the state had

acquired for non-payment of taxes and spotted the Hi-View land on such a list.

The park board began developing the land for a park in 1951, partly because it had some

money left over from improvements at Bottineau Park. The initial improvements to the

park—an athletic field, volleyball courts and children’s play area—were completed in

1952.

In 1961, the park board expanded the park slightly, built a small shelter and rearranged

the playground equipment. The next round of improvements to the park occurred in 1977,

when a wading pool was added.

In 1989, the park was renovated with a new play area, or “totlot,” and a new baseball

field and backstop. The made-over park was dedicated in 1990.

In 2016, a new wading pool and playground opened.

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Holmes Park

Location: 2

Avenue SE and 4

Street SE

Size: 4.36 acres

Name: The park is named for Holmes School which once adjoined the park to the east. A

school still occupies that site but the new school is named Marcy Open School. Holmes

School was named for poet Oliver Wendell Holmes.

Acquisition and Development

The first 1.7 acres of land for the park adjacent to Holmes School were purchased in 1953

for about $69,000. The land was acquired with a combination of city bonds, assessments

on neighborhood property and proceeds from the sale of Elwell Field. Another acre of

land was acquired for the site in 1953 and 1954 in a complex deal with Pioneer

Engineering Works. Pioneer traded an acre of land to expand Holmes Park and five

parcels of land it purchased for the park board to expand Dickman Park in exchange for

ten acres of park board land at Northeast Athletic Field Park.

The park was purchased in part to provide a playground for the school and in part to

replace Elwell Field which had been sold in 1952. Elwell Field at East Hennepin and 5

Avenue SE was purchased in 1939 from a manufacturing company but sold to another

manufacturing company only twelve years later. At the time Elwell Field was sold the

park board promised to replace it with a park closer to Holmes School.

The neighborhood had been seeking a playground for decades. The history of the parks in

the neighborhood is tangled by the names of two elementary schools that had once

existed in the neighborhood: Holmes School and Marcy School.

Today’s Holmes Park was built to be the playground for Holmes School. However,

Holmes School was torn down and replaced by a new school in 1992. The new school

was named Marcy Open School. This was the third location for Marcy School in the

neighborhood. To complicate matters, when the second Marcy School was closed, the

park board acquired the site of that school for a park in 1979, which is named Marcy

Park. So Holmes Park is adjacent to Marcy Open School, which used to be Holmes

School, and Marcy Park is on the site of the former Marcy School. Perhaps all you need

to know is that the neighborhood draws its name from both schools; it’s called the

Marcy-Holmes Neighborhood. (See Marcy Park, too.) To confuse matters even more, the

neighborhood has had two Elwell Fields as parks, too.

After the first Marcy School at 9

Avenue SE and 5

Street SE was closed in 1908 the

park board initiated proceedings to acquire those grounds for a park. The park board’s

1910 annual report even included an etching of what a new park would look like on the

“Marcy School Block.”

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But that acquisition never was completed. The park board abandoned all proceedings for

the acquisition in the summer of 1911 due to protests from landowners whose land was to

be taken for the park (to make a larger park than just the former school grounds), and

objections from other property owners in the neighborhood who were to be assessed the

costs of acquiring and developing the park.

Again in 1924 efforts to secure a playground in the neighborhood led to preliminary plans

being drawn up for a playground between University Avenue and 4

Street SE at 5

Avenue SE (a plan for the park was included in the park board’s 1924 annual report), but

money for the park was once again not available. Area residents thought the park board

would purchase the land with bond funds or general funds, but that wasn’t the park

board’s policy on neighborhood parks. The policy at the time was that the park board

would acquire and develop neighborhood parks only if property owners agreed to pay the

cost through assessments on their property. In 1926 the park board deferred action on

acquiring the land until property owners in the area expressed their willingness to be

assessed for the cost of acquiring and developing the park. They never did.

But in 1937 the neighborhood did manage to get 1900 signatures on a petition to establish

a park in the neighborhood. That prompted the park board to try once again to provide a

park in what was then a densely populated neighborhood. At the time the nearest

playgrounds were Van Cleve Park to the east and Beltrami (then Maple Hill) Park to the

north, both across railroad tracks from the Marcy-Holmes neighborhood.

The debate over placing a park in the neighborhood led to a serious consideration of how

the park board could and should pay for parks in older, densely populated sections of the

city that were underserved by parks. Since 1911, the park board had used what was called

the Elwell Law, passed by the Minnesota legislature, to pay for neighborhood parks.

Ironically, as it turned out, the law was named for a prominent state legislator from

southeast Minneapolis. Under that law, property owners in the vicinity of a park were

assessed the cost of acquiring (and later developing) the park. If area landowners agreed

to pay those assessments, the park was acquired and developed. If they didn’t, it wasn’t.

As a consequence, neighborhoods that were newer and wealthier got parks and older,

poorer neighborhoods did not.

Wealthier landowners, or those in newer neighborhoods, who anticipated an appreciation

in land values with the addition of a park, more often volunteered to pay assessments for

a park. Landowners in poorer neighborhoods often couldn’t afford assessments, and

property owners in older, more developed sections of the city knew that the addition of a

park would not necessarily lead to appreciation in property values.

The petitions for a park near Marcy School (the second Marcy School) prompted an

eloquent consideration of the fairness of the Elwell Law in the park board’s 1937 annual

report. The report, written by park superintendent Christian Bossen, concluded that

“where congestion is great and the need is great, then consideration must be given to a

different method of financing than that of the Elwell Law.” One reason the board cited

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for there being a great need in the neighborhood was that property in the area had been

converted to apartment houses, which didn’t have yards with play spaces for children.

At the time the board estimated that the cost of a new playground in the area would be

more than $200,000, but that only $20,000-$25,000 could be raised through assessments

on property. Bossen and park board president Francis Gross proposed a study of the

neighborhood’s needs, even beyond recreation, to determine a proper course for the park

board. It was one of the park board’s first explicit statements recognizing its role in city

life beyond merely providing recreation spaces and equipment. The 1937 report, on the

heels of the Great Depression, came at a time of great introspection by the park board as

to its role in society.

One result of that discussion was the purchase in 1939 of a playground in the

neighborhood, Elwell Field at East Hennepin Avenue and 5

Avenue SE, which was not

financed with property assessments. It was the beginning of the end for the Elwell Law.

Although the law continued to be used for park improvements for nearly thirty years,

from that time more park projects were paid for with general park funds or city bonds,

although few parks were acquired at all from the 1930s to the 1960s. The park board and

the city council officially ended the practice of assessments for parks in 1968.

The Elwell Law had been initiated when Theodore Wirth was park superintendent. It was

viewed by Wirth and his successors as a faster way to acquire and develop neighborhood

parks than to wait for city bonds to be approved or for the park board to devote often-

scarce general funds to developing what were considered “local” parks. Wirth was

succeeded by three superintendents who had begun their service to Minneapolis parks

under Wirth, and had grown up professionally with the Elwell Law as an accepted means

of developing parks and, in fact, exported the concept to other cities. A Reader’s Digest

article in the early 1960s even trumpeted the success of the model.

But beginning in 1937, and confirmed by the report of an outside expert hired in 1944 to

review the park system, it was becoming obvious that the Elwell Law had led to gaps in

park service in the older, poorer central neighborhoods of the city. It wasn’t until the

succession of “Wirth Men” as park superintendents ended with the hiring of an outsider,

Robert Ruhe, in 1966, that the Elwell method of financing parks was discontinued.

Elwell Field—purchased in 1939 without using Elwell funds—was nearly four acres and

cost only $5,000 payable without interest over ten years. That park was sold, however, to

a manufacturing company in 1951, with a promise to replace the park with one nearer

Holmes School (today’s Marcy Open School). Over the next three years the park board

did acquire the block adjacent to Holmes School.

In addition to acquiring land for Holmes Park in 1952, the next year the park board also

acquired a one-acre parcel of land for a second Elwell Field at 9

Avenue SE and 4

Street SE. It was the site of the old Trudeau School. The park board acquired the site

from the school board by trading the 1.25 acres of land it owned adjacent to Sheridan

School in northeast Minneapolis, which had always functioned as little more than a

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playground for that school. (Adding to the long story of difficulties in providing parks in

the neighborhood, however, the second Elwell Field was taken by the state department of

transportation in 1966 for the construction of I-35E. After a long battle with the state, the

park board agreed to accept $125,000 for that land.)

As soon as the first land for Holmes Park was acquired in 1952, the park board removed

homes from the land and proceeded to grade the block for playing fields, erect a small

shelter in the park to serve primarily as a warming house for skating, and install

blacktopping and hard-surface play areas. Perhaps the park board overdid the

blacktopping, because in 1959 the Holmes School PTA requested that the blacktop be

replaced with grass and a softball field. A softball field, complete with hooded backstop

to keep balls from flying into houses across the street, was completed in 1959.

In 1983 the park board acquired an additional two acres of land for the park, bringing the

total to about 4½ acres. The land was purchased from the school board for just under

$200,000. Another $250,000 was spent to improve the expanded area.

The final boundaries of the park were established in 1991 when the school board and

park board rearranged their ownership of the two blocks to accommodate the construction

of Marcy Open School. At that time the last privately owned lot on the parcel of land was

purchased by the school board and turned over to the park board as part of the deal.

In 2014 the basketball court was resurfaced.

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Humboldt Triangle

Location: 6

Avenue North and Elwood Avenue

Size: 0.31 acres

Name: The property was named for Humboldt Avenue, which runs alongside the park.

The avenue was named for German scientist and author Freidrich von Humboldt. Prior to

its acquisition in 1897 the parcel was referred to as Oak Park Triangle, a name that lasted

until 1901 when the name of the park was officially changed to Humboldt Place. The

property was, however, never referred to as Humboldt “Place” in park board records,

only as Humboldt Triangle.

Acquisition and Development

William Folwell noted in his 1897 annual report as president of the park board that the

board had purchased the triangle “upon motion of residents of the vicinity.” Residents of

the area had “in large number united” to sign a petition agreeing to be assessed for the

cost of the purchase, about $1,500. Folwell also noted that the triangle had once been

“urged upon the city for park purposes at a value more than three times that of the present

acquirement.”

After considerable debate, the park board approved the drilling of a well in the triangle in

1911. Other improvements were made in 1912.

The original acquisition was for 0.35 acres. The size of the triangle was reduced by 0.05

acres in 1939 when Olson Memorial Highway was widened. Park superintendent

Christian Bossen noted that the widening of the highway at the time required moving the

old well, which he claimed was heavily used by the neighborhood, at the highway

department’s expense.

Bossen wrote in the annual report of 1940 that the highway encroachment on the triangle

was “in itself of small consequence.” But he went on to note that future similar highway

developments “might seriously interfere” with parks. He recommended at the time that

the park board prepare to address what would become one of the most serious challenges

to parks over the next thirty years. “A decision as to what is more important to the public

welfare, the highway or the recreation area,” Bossen wrote, “Is a question which will

soon need definite determination.”

Little Humboldt Triangle was therefore one of the first small skirmishes in what would

become a war between the park board and the highway department over the taking of

park land for highways.

It wasn’t until 1966 that the park board took a determined stand against losing park land

to other development, especially highways. That year the park board issued its “land

policy,” which read in part:

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Those who seek park lands for their own particular ends must

look

elsewhere to satiate their land hunger. Minneapolis park lands should not

be looked upon as land banks upon which others may draw to satisfy

lack of foresightedness in properly anticipating their land

requirements.

The park system is still expanding and acquisitions will and must go on.

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Irving Triangle

Location: Irving and 22

Avenue North

Size: 0.09 acres

Name: The triangle took the name of Irving Avenue.

Acquisition and Development

The triangle was donated to the park board when it was dedicated as a park in the plat of

Forest Heights, July 31, 1883 along with Cottage Park, Glen Gale and Oliver Triangle.

The triangle was officially accepted as a park in 1893.

Improvements were made to the triangle in 1909 according to a plan included in the 1909

annual report.

Little is recorded of improvements at Irving Triangle over the next century, but in 2011

the triangle was given a makeover with native plants to improve habitat for birds and to

decrease mowing costs.

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Jackson Square

Location: 23rd Avenue and Jackson Street NE

Size: 2.60 acres

Name: The square is named for Jackson Street that runs past the park. The street was

named for President Andrew Jackson. Prior to acquisition the area was known as Long

John Pond. It was referred to in early park records as Ninth Ward Park.

Acquisition and Development

A petition for the acquisition of the land was submitted by Portius Deming and others in

1905. Deming was not a park commissioner at the time, but had served on the board

1895-1899 and would return to the park board for another nine-plus years 1909-1919.

The board paid $4,463 for the land in 1906.

The land was not developed immediately into a playground as demonstrated by park

superintendent Theodore Wirth’s request in May, 1907 for permission to erect a fence

around the property to prevent residents from dumping garbage there.

Jackson Square and North Commons were among the board’s top priorities in seeking

bond funds for 1909, and in 1910 a small “fieldhouse,” more accurately a warming

shelter, was constructed there at a cost of about $12,500. However, because the land was

not yet graded, no playground equipment was installed. A request for $800 in bond funds

in 1911 was used to create playing fields and plant trees in the park.

In the 1917 annual report the park board stated that one of its goals in the future was to

enlarge Jackson Square, especially to the west where the land was largely vacant. That

enlargement never happened.

Eighteen years later enlargement of Jackson Square was again recommended by Wirth,

who also presented plans to build a swimming pool at the park. Coming at the height of

the Depression when the park board couldn’t afford routine maintenance, let alone new

construction, the suggestion once again was not acted on. In 1939, Superintendent

Christian Bossen proposed a rearrangement of the park and noted that the old shelter was

settling.

Finally, beginning in 1952, Jackson Square was rehabilitated. The land was filled to

grade (requiring 17,000 yards of fill) and the old shelter was razed. Two hard surface

play areas, one for a basketball/volleyball court and the other for a children’s play area

were created. A new shelter with a unique design was built in 1953. The new shelter

featured overhead doors that could be pulled down to enclose the building in winter,

when it was used as a warming house, but raised for open-air summer programs. A new

wading pool was also built in Jackson Square in 1953.

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A totlot was constructed at Jackson Square in 1974 and the tennis courts were also

renovated. The playground was upgraded in 2004. An innovative musical

playground,

consisting of sever percussion instruments, was installed at Jackson

Square in 2010 and its basketball court was resurfaced in 2015. A youth-sized hoop

was also added in 2015.

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James I. Rice Parkway

Location: Along the west bank of the Mississippi River from Plymouth Avenue to

Portland Avenue, where the name of the parkway changes to West River Parkway.

Size: 26.36 acres

Name: The parkway was named in 1997 for James Rice, a state legislator from northeast

Minneapolis from 1971 to 1996. Rice’s long tenure in the state legislature made him a

powerful force there. He was influential in securing state financing for “regional” parks,

those that served more than the residents of one neighborhood or one city. He promoted

the view that some Minneapolis parks were not just a city resource, but provided

recreational and economic benefits to many people in the wider metropolitan area and all

of Minnesota. Rice worked with two other legislators from Minneapolis, John Sarna and

Carl Kroening, to secure state participation in the development of the Central Riverfront

Regional Park in Minneapolis.

Acquisition and Development

To create a park and parkway on the banks of the Mississippi River above St. Anthony

Falls the park board relied on a time-tested tactic. Just like the land for the park board’s

first parkway beside water, Lake Harriet Parkway, the land for Rice Parkway was

acquired at no cost. It was donated.

One of the first mentions of creating a park on the banks of the Mississippi River

upstream from St. Anthony Falls was in 1911 when park board president Wilbur Decker

recommended that “at some future time” it would be advisable to establish parkways

north of downtown along the river.

The idea was picked up and developed by park superintendent Theodore Wirth in the

park board’s annual report in 1916 when he suggested that the river banks north of St.

Anthony Falls could be made as attractive as the river banks downstream from the falls

with plantings and “shore parks.”

In the 1918 annual report and in a plan presented to the park board in January 1919,

Wirth suggested the acquisition of both shores of the river throughout the city. If the land

couldn’t be acquired, he said, the park board should at least plant and landscape the river

banks owned by the railroads. The park board directed Wirth to make a survey of the

river banks from the falls to the northern city limits in 1922 so the board could determine

what land should be acquired to prevent “encroachment” on the river by property owners

and “to preserve such attractive features along the banks as remain.”

Although the board followed up that survey by asking park board staff to submit a plan

for acquiring all the river banks from Union Station to the mouth of Shingle Creek in

1923, the plan was not pursued.

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It wasn’t until nearly 50 years later that the park board turned its attention once again to

the river banks beside and above St. Anthony Falls. City manager Tommy Thompson

produced the first plan for the central riverfront in 1972 in a document entitled

Missisippi/Minneapolis. That was followed by the creation of the Riverfront

Development Coordinating Board (RDCB) in 1976, a board consisting of representatives

from the park board, the city council and the city housing authority. The RCDB, chaired

by park commissioner Ole Olson, produced a final report in 1978 that contained

recommendations for the development of the central riverfront. Among the components

of that development plan was a parkway along the west river bank.

As other components of that plan were being implemented, including the acquisition of

land on Nicollet Island, Boom Island, Main Street in old St. Anthony, and Father

Hennepin Bluffs on the east bank, the park board developed a plan for the west bank

parkway from Plymouth Avenue to Riverside Park downstream from the falls. The final

plan for that parkway was approved in 1984, but the challenge of the plan was how to

acquire the land.

The answer came in the form of a donation. The Burlington Northern railroad owned

most of the land along the river from below the falls at the Stone Arch Bridge to

Plymouth Avenue. Its tracks over the Stone Arch Bridge into Union Station and then

north had once carried up to 80 passenger trains a day, but with the demolition of the

train station in 1978, that track, and the land surrounding it, was no longer needed for

railroad purposes.

The real estate subsidiary of the railroad company, Glacier Park, was trying to develop

the railroad land as commercial and residential property. It had one development planned,

a new printing plant for the StarTribune newspaper, that required a change in zoning to

be feasible. To get that change in zoning from the city and to enhance the value of its

land for redevelopment, Glacier Park offered to donate to the city 22 acres of riverfront.

The donation, valued at $11 million, was accepted in 1985.

The donation came with a condition, however, which was similar to the conditions

attached to many land donations to the park board in its first century: a parkway had to be

built along the river within two years. To meet that condition the park board borrowed

more than $7 million from the Minneapolis Community Development Agency to build

the road and create a park.

The park and parkway were dedicated in October, 1987 on the same day that the

Minnesota Twins opened the World Series against the St. Louis Cardinals only blocks

away at the Metrodome.

Earlier that summer Boom Island Park across the river had been dedicated. The creation

of the parkway was a key factor in the development of residential real estate along the

west bank of the river near downtown. It also provided a foothold on the west side of the

river that eventually led to connecting Rice Parkway with West River Parkway.

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The $7 million construction loan from the MCDA was originally intended to be paid back

to the city through grants from the state legislature. However, state legislators James

Rice, John Sarna and Carl Kroening sided with the park board in the position that the

money for parkway construction had been repaid to the city many times in property taxes

on the residential developments that followed the creation of the park. The loan was not

repaid.

Later developments along James Rice Parkway, including Mill Ruins Park, First Bridge

Park and the conversion of the Stone Arch Bridge into a pedestrian and bike path were

made possible by the parkway. See separate entries on those facilities for more details.

The first playground in the North Loop area of Minneapolis was created along Rice

Parkway at 4

Avenue North in 2010. The playground has a saw mill theme inspired by

the mills that once occupied the river banks in the area. The final touches at the

playground, including accessible play surfaces, were added in 2011. The playground was

developed with contributions by many businesses and foundations.

Beginning in 2013, the trail was repaved and realigned to improve safety. The project

was completed in 2014.

Additional Sources

Minutes of the Riverfront Development Coordinating Board, 1976-1978

Interviews with Michael Schmidt and Brian Rice, Minneapolis Park and Recreation

Board, 2007

Albert Wittman, Writing in Progress: The Minneapolis Park and Recreation System

1945-2000, unpublished manuscript, 2000

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Jordan Park

Location: Irving Avenue North and 29

Avenue North

Size: 3.63 acres

Name: The park was named for Jordan Junior High School which previously occupied

the site. The school was named when it was constructed in 1922 for Charles M. Jordan,

former superintendent of Minneapolis schools. Jordan’s role in park history goes back to

the late 1890s when he promoted the development of playgrounds and athletic fields in

city parks. He worked with Charles Loring and William Folwell to encourage the

development of the first playgrounds. He also urged the park board to develop The

Parade as an athletic ground that could be used by school athletic teams from across the

city.

Acquisition and Development

The neighborhood had been targeted since the late 1930s as one that was underserved by

playgrounds and neighborhood parks. Given the park board’s lack of funds during the

Depression and World War II, however, little could be done to address the problem.

Beginning in 1946 the park board and school board operated joint recreation programs

between Folwell Park and Jordan Junior High School.

The acquisition of the first land for a park at Cleveland School, several blocks northwest

of Jordan, in 1951 helped address the shortage of playing spaces in neighborhood. That

acquisition had the active support of the Jordan Junior High PTA.

The land for Jordan Park was acquired by the park board in 1983 when a new Jordan

Junior High School was built on the eastern portion of the school board’s property. The

land west of the school became Jordan Park. A small shelter and wading pool were built

in 1984 and the creation of the park was completed in 1986 at a total cost of more than

$500,000.

In 1997 the park board added a combination soccer and football field for use by the park

and school.

In 2002 the park board began a series of community meetings to improve the park.

Renovations of the park, including new play equipment, picnic area, more shade trees,

regrading of the berms around the park, and improved lighting, were completed in 2007.

Jordan Park was the site of the annual Arbor Day celebration in 2010, when 140 new

trees were planted in the park by volunteers aided by park board staff.

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Keewaydin Field Park

Location: Nokomis Avenue and East 52

Street

Size: 4.05 acres

Name: The name comes from Henry Wadsworth Longfellow’s The Song of Hiawatha.

Keewaydin was the “Northwest Wind, the Home Wind.” Before the name was formally

adopted on May 2, 1928, the park was known as Alexander Ramsey Playground, because

it was adjacent to what was then Alexander Ramsey School.

Acquisition and Development

Keewaydin Field Park came into being as the result of votes by the school board and park

board in 1927 to cooperate on the purchase and use of a new school and playground,

which would generate a “substantial saving” to the city. The school would provide a gym

and shelter while the park board would develop outdoor playground and recreation

facilities. A plan for the development of the property was included in the 1927 annual

report of the park board. The 1928 annual report called this the first instance of close

cooperation between the two boards, although earlier efforts to develop Audubon and

Stewart parks also involved collaboration between the two boards.

The 1928 report announced that acquisition of land east of the recently built school was

nearly completed. The land was purchased through condemnation procedures at a total

cost of just under $2,400. After the acquisition, Nokomis Avenue between the park and

school was vacated.

Improvements began in late 1928 and continued into 1929 when 38,600 cubic yards of

fill were used to create a level playing field. The park board noted in its 1929 report that

the park had the best-equipped shelter for skating and hockey rinks due to the “well-

appointed” basement room provided by the new school. By the summer of 1930, the park

board provided recreation instructors for the new park after playground equipment was

installed and two tennis courts—with backstops— were built.

In 1930 and 1931 the park board continued to haul in fill in a fight to keep the land at a

level grade. Because the park was built on a former swamp, fill kept settling. Finally in

1932, the fields were regraded and the tennis courts and a concrete wading pool were

finished.

It wasn’t until 1959 that the park had year-round recreation programming.

The park board redeveloped the park and built a recreation center there in 1971-1972. At

that time the park board and school board considered making the recreation center part of

the school, but ultimately decided to build a free-standing facility.

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A new playground for small children was developed at the park in 2000. A computer

lab was opened in the rec center in

2007.

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Kenny Park

Location: Humboldt Avenue South and West 57

Street between Kenny Elementary

School and Susan B. Anthony Middle School

Size: 9.23 acres

Name: The park was named for Sister Elizabeth Kenny, renowned polio fighter and

founder of the Sister Kenny Institute in Minneapolis. Polio was a dreaded disease in the

late 1940s when the park was named and Kenny was a revered fighter of the devastating

effects of the disease. In 1946 and 1949 polio scares practically emptied Minneapolis

playgrounds of children; parents were afraid that their children would contract the disease

if they played on public grounds or swam in city lakes.

Acquisition and Development

The land for Kenny Park was acquired in 1948. Half of it was purchased for $11,642 and

the other half was acquired free from the state, which had acquired it for failure of the

previous owners to pay taxes. (At around the same time the park board acquired Bossen

Field and Perkins Hill parks and parts of McRae and Hi-View parks from the state’s list

of tax-forfeited property, a practice that had begun in 1941with partial acquisitions of

Northeast Park and Peavey Park from the state.)

Kenny Park lies between Kenny Elementary School and Susan B. Anthony Middle

School. Kenny School was developed about the same time as the park, but the middle

school was built ten years after the park was acquired.

The first attempts to acquire the land for a park came in 1928, a year after Minneapolis

annexed about a mile of northern Richfield from Fort Snelling to Edina. Shortly after the

annexation, faced with the challenge of providing parks and schools for the newest parts

of Minneapolis, the park board and school board worked together on planning shared

facilities.

One of three sites the park board and the school board considered was the planned site of

the Carl Schurz school, which was to be built at Girard and 57

th.

(It never was.) The other

two sites were east of Mother Lake on land that is now part of the airport, near what is

now Bossen Field, and Nicollet and 58

, a few blocks west of Diamond Lake, near

today’s Windom School and Windom South Park.

Kenny Park was the one site among those that came nearest to being acquired. In 1929,

park superintendent Theodore Wirth submitted plans for those sites and in 1931 the park

board requested $75,000 in bond funds from the city to acquire five park sites in the

former Richfield areas. The board at that time designated for acquisition the block

between Emerson and Dupont and 57

and 58

streets, a block east of the present Kenny

School. The park board abandoned that plan and the site in 1932 when property owners in

the area objected to being assessed for the acquisition. The board acquiesced to

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neighborhood wishes, which were understandable given the economic hardships and

uncertainty of the early years of the Great Depression.

The Carl Schurz School site was singled out again in a 1938 park board study of which

neighborhoods in the city needed parks. It was put not in the category of neighborhoods

that faced an acute need, but as an area that should get a playground in the future.

With the economic recovery and population growth following World War II, the board

again looked to add parks in the southernmost city neighborhoods in conjunction with the

school board. In 1948 the board acquired Kenny Park with plans to make it a children’s

playground that would serve Kenny School and a possible junior high school that the

school board was considering building on the other end of the park. (Park commissioner

Maude Armatage, for whom Armatage park and school were named, had been the driving

force behind cooperation between the park board and the school board since the 1920s.

For more on Armatage see “Armatage Park.”)

When residents in the area petitioned to have the park developed in 1951, the park board

prepared initial plans and estimates of cost to better judge the neighborhood’s

commitment to the improvements. Until the late 1960s, almost all neighborhood park

improvements were made only if property owners in the neighborhood agreed to be

assessed the cost of those improvements. That’s one reason that newer and more affluent

neighborhoods often had nicer parks. Property owners in the neighborhood agreed to the

assessments in 1952, and in 1953 a start was made in grading the land for the park. Fill

was hauled in to level the fields; some of it was excess material from Armatage Park

several blocks to the west.

By 1955 the construction was largely completed, with playing fields, playground

equipment and a park shelter. Only two tennis courts and a hard-surfaced play area

remained to be done. In October, 1955 the new park was dedicated and named for Sister

Kenny. Final grading of the site and sodding were completed in 1958 after Susan B.

Anthony Junior High School was built west of the park.

It wasn’t long, however, before plans were being made to enlarge the shelter and improve

the play facilities. Due to funding problems, renovation plans were dropped in 1964, but

picked up again in 1967, when the shelter was enlarged and general repairs were made.

The shelter was remodeled again in 1982. Extensive rehabilitation of the playing fields

and playground took place in 1997.

The park board experimented with 18-inch high pond hockey boards on the Kenny Park

skating rink in 2007. In 2009, the tennis courts in the park were resurfaced with funds

from grants and the neighborhood. In 2012 the neighborhood raised funds to help pay for

three new shade structures installed near the playground and pool.

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Kenwood Park

Location: Logan Avenue South and Mt. Curve Boulevard

Size: 32.94 acres

Name: The park was named for its location in the Kenwood district.

Acquisition and Development

The land for Kenwood Park was designated for purchase on March 4, 1907. The

acquisition came in response to a request from the Kenwood and Greenview

Improvement Association that the board acquire the low land north of Lake of the Isles

for a park. Upon the recommendation of the superintendent of parks, Theodore Wirth, the

board acquired more than just the low lands. The land acquired extended up the hill north

of the lake to Mt. Curve Boulevard. The purchase price of the land was nearly $162,000,

with the entire amount assessed to property in the district around the park.

One reason for Wirth’s recommendation was evident in the plan he published for the park

in the 1907 annual report. The most important feature of that plan was a promenade at the

upper end of the park that would overlook the lakes in the distance. Wirth called the view

“simply superb” and said it would form “a very agreeable and fascinating surprise” to

anyone coming up the Kenwood Parkway hill from the north. He said no recent

acquisition was of greater value to the park system than Kenwood Park and that such

scenery in the “very heart of a beautiful residential district is indeed a rare gift.” Wirth

wrote that the aim of his plan was to preserve all natural features of the park “which so

well harmonize with the scenic lake below.”

In addition to the concourse at the top of the park, which would project out into the park

and be built of heavy masonry, Wirth’s plan included basketball and croquet courts in the

low land near the lake, tennis courts on the relatively flat ground just south of Douglas

Avenue and roque courts north of Douglas below the proposed promenade and

concourse.

Wirth presented his plan, he wrote, without expectation to have it carried out in the near

future, but with the hope that it would be “in the main adopted and adhered to when

improvements are possible.” More than one hundred years later, the park remains largely

as it was when Wirth created his first plan for the park. With the exception of tennis

courts, a small playground and a small baseball field the “natural features” of the park

have been preserved much as they were.

Five years after Wirth presented his plan, the park board paid more than $4,000 to haul in

nearly 13,000 cubic yards of fill for the low land between Franklin and Douglas. Part of

that fill near Douglas Avenue permitted the construction of tennis courts in 1913. At the

time Wirth noted a “persistent” demand for improvement of the park and added that the

“valuable tract” could not be left much longer in its “unimproved and very much torn up

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condition.” Wirth would repeat his call for improvements constantly in his annual reports

for nearly two decades largely because the park was an eyesore in one of the “finest

residential districts.”

A bridle path through the park was created in 1914, but Wirth’s call for a ball field in the

park that year went unheeded. Part of the problem in developing the park was water: the

city sewer line ran under the park and heavy rains popped manhole covers and flooded

the low lands in the park. Even when the park board added four tennis courts near

Franklin Avenue in 1916, Wirth wrote in the annual report that the priority should be to

build a storm sewer to carry water out of the park into Lake of the Isles. The flooding

problem might have been particularly nasty because in most of the city at the time

sanitary and storm sewers were not separated.

Finally in 1919, with the assessments to purchase the land already paid off, the park

board considered new plans and estimates to develop the park. That year the park board

denied a request from the Kenwood School PTA for playgrounds and ballfields across

Franklin Avenue from the school because they would be part of a new overall plan to

improve the park that was being prepared. That plan went nowhere and Wirth revised his

plan for the park again in 1921. That plan included a shelter building in the center of the

park. Minor improvements were made in 1922 when the bridle path was repaired and in

1923 when the park board accepted $200 from the Kenwood PTA to level the park land

across from the school so it could be used as a “recess playground.”

In 1924 Wirth repeated his suggestion for improving the park and wrote once again that

the “unserviceable condition” of the park was “more noticeable and offensive for being in

a fine residential district.” With the presentation of another plan for the park in the 1925

annual report, Wirth urged that if the people of the neighborhood didn’t petition for the

improvements, the board should improve the park on its own initiative. (A new wrinkle in

Wirth’s 1925 report indicated the success of the four golf courses the park board had built

at that time. He suggested a small, circular or “clock” golf course along Franklin

Avenue.)

One reason for the lack of improvements to the park over the years was revealed in the

1926 annual report, in which Wirth wrote that the residents of the area had been

convinced finally that the plans for the park were conducive to the preservation, rather

than the destruction, of the natural features of the property. Improvement of the park was

ordered that year by the park board at an estimated cost of $117,000, but Wirth noted

that, after conferring with residents, the plans were slightly modified. The next year he

modified the plans again and his exasperation showed when he wrote that the changes

were made to meet objections to the introduction of playground features and other

accommodations in the park that were, in Wirth’s words, “universally considered

necessary and desirable” for a neighborhood park in a residential district.

Finally in 1928, Wirth’s greatly reduced plan for the park, at a cost of $55,000 instead of

the $117,000 of a few years earlier, was implemented. Property owners in the area were

assessed the cost. Most of the cost was to build six new tennis courts and to grade and

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plant trees and shrubs in parts of the park. No recreation shelter and no ball fields were

built. And Wirth’s plan for a concourse at the top of the park, although included in every

plan he produced for the park over the years, was apparently never seriously considered.

These were the last improvements to the park until 1960, when three tennis courts were

replaced due to poor subsoil conditions, as the board’s annual report put it.

The next park board investment in the park was in the early 1980s. When the school

board decided to renovate and expand Kenwood School, the park board was invited to

look at the project and decide if it wanted to add space to the plans for park activities. (In

1971 the park board and school board had agreed to develop two projects together. The

park board agreed to build a gym attached to Burroughs School across from Lynnhurst

Park, which the school could use in return for park use of a gym that the school board

would build at Kenwood School. The school board shelved its part of the bargain for

many years until it decided it needed more space at Kenwood School anyway.)

The park board recommended adding a multi-purpose room, a game room and arts and

craft space, arranged in such a way that park programs would also have access to the

gym. The catch was that adding park board space to the school plans required a slight

redirection of Franklin Avenue in front of the school. After lengthy discussion, lawsuits

and continuing opposition from some in the neighborhood, the plans went forward and

the park board finally had a building for activities at Kenwood Park, although not on park

property. The center at Kenwood was the last, most-embattled project in more than a

decade of park construction throughout the city

In 1996 a new playground was installed in the park across from the school and in 2006

the small ball field nearby was improved. In 2007 the tennis courts in the park were

redeveloped through the efforts and fundraising of Save the Courts, a non-profit

organization committed to upgrading tennis facilities in several city parks.

The “totlot” in the corner of the park was renovated in 2010 and the community center at

was upgraded in 2014. When the community center was upgraded the park board also

extended its agreement with the school board for continued joint use of the building.

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Kenwood Parkway

Location: Hennepin Avenue to Lake of the Isles Parkway through Kenwood.

Size: 14.7 acres

Name: Kenwood Parkway was named for the Kenwood Addition though which it passes.

The name was officially adopted December 27, 1890.

Acquisition and Development

The first land for the parkway was donated by the developers of the Kenwood Addition in

1886 on the condition that it be incorporated into the park system. The original offer was

made in June 1886 by Baker Potter and Company and I. C. Seeley and Company and was

immediately accepted by the park board on the condition that improvements could be

made within certain dollar limits. By September superintendent William Berry was

instructed to proceed with construction of the boulevard. Later that fall, plans for the

boulevard were created by Horace Cleveland, the landscape architect who designed most

of the early parks in Minneapolis.

The original Kenwood Boulevard extended north from Lake of the Isles only to about Mt.

Curve and had a length of 0.68 miles. Charles Loring speculated in the 1886 annual

report that the parkway would become a site for the finest residences in the city.

The extension of Kenwood Parkway from its original point north of Lake of the Isles to

Central (Loring) Park was made possible in 1888 when the owners of adjacent property

donated land to connect Kenwood Boulevard via Groveland, Fremont and Superior

avenues to Lyndale Avenue across from Central Park. The donors of the land, including

Thomas Lowry, also offered to pay for construction of the boulevard under the “direction

and control” of the park board. (A similar offer of the same land the previous year had

been refused by the park board, because a condition of the donation was that the park

board immediately construct the roadway. The offer was accepted only after the donors

of the land agreed to pay for the road and allow the park board to build it on its own

schedule and terms.) Charles Loring, the president of the park board at the time, reported

in the 1888 annual report that the park board had thus acquired another mile of parkway

at no cost to the city.

With the completion of Kenwood Parkway, earlier plans to connect Central Park to Lake

of the Isles via Mt. Curve and Douglas Avenue were abandoned. The extension of

Kenwood Parkway occurred several years before The Parade and Spring Lake were

acquired as parks.

In 1891, in response to a request from a property owner long the parkway to build a

driveway, the board rejected the request noting that landowners had agreed at the time the

parkway was acquired not to build driveways, but that alleys should be established in the

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rear of residences “inasmuch as a number of driveways across the planting space would

very much disfigure the same.”

In 1891 Frank Peavey donated to the park board Peavey Fountain which still sits at the

intersection of Kenwood Parkway and Lake of the Isles Parkway.

Kenwood Parkway soon came to be a popular route to the lakes from downtown. In 1895,

during a national bicycle craze, the park board constructed a bike path separate from the

carriage paths along Kenwood Parkway and around the lakes to Lake Harriet.

Few changes or improvements were made to Kenwood Parkway for many years, with the

exception of adding some concrete sidewalks in 1921, but in 1923 park superintendent

Theodore Wirth recommended a rerouting of Kenwood Parkway from Spring Lake to

Douglas Avenue to eliminate the steep grade and what he termed “dangerous” curves.

The plan would have shifted the parkway slightly north and west. The changes were

never made and the parkway today still offers a steep climb up Kenwood Hill.

Neither was Kenwood Parkway paved. In 1924 Wirth noted that the paving of parkways

had attracted positive attention and recommended that Kenwood Parkway, among several

others, should be given priority for paving. Of the park board’s 58 miles of parkways,

more than 25 miles remained unpaved. Even though the park board had given permission

for buses to run on Kenwood parkway in the 1920s and 1930s, the road was little

improved. It wasn’t until 1957 that Kenwood Parkway was paved for the first time from

Mt. Curve to the lake, and the first curbs and gutters were installed.

The parkway was repaved beginning in 1991.

Trivia

The steep hill on Kenwood Parkway was considered by Theodore Wirth to be dangerous,

but it was an adventure for others. In 1903, the Automobile Club requested permission to

conduct a hill-climbing contest with their newfangled conveyances on the parkway. The

request was made on behalf of the fledgling Automobile Club by Edmund J. Phelps who

would later serve more than 18 years as a park commissioner—and who would have

Phelps Field in south Minneapolis named for him. Perhaps because Phelps invited the

commissioners to attend the competition—and then be given a drive around the

parkways—the request was approved.

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King Park (Rev. Dr. Martin Luther, Jr.)

Location: Nicollet Avenue and 40

Street

Size: 18.51 acres

Name: The park was named Dr. Martin Luther King Park on October 9, 1968 to honor

the civil rights leader who was assassinated earlier that year. Until then the park was

named Nicollet Field for the street that forms the park’s western boundary. The name of

the park was officially changed to Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. Park in 2011.

Acquisition and Development

The land for what eventually became King Park was eyed for park development in the

earliest days of the park board. The first petition to acquire land at Nicollet and 42

for a

park was received by the park board in 1889. It was the first request for a neighborhood

park south of downtown that wasn’t based on its proximity to water. At that time only

Logan and Farview parks were not formed around or next to a body of water. All other

properties—from Powderhorn Park with its lake, to Loring Park with its pond, and on to

the Chain of Lakes, Minnehaha Creek and Minnehaha Falls, and Riverside Park on the

Mississippi—were acquired for the scenic appeal of adjacent water. Preserving places of

natural beauty was clearly the priority of the park board in its earliest years.

In 1889 the park board’s acquisition priorities were still other water-based properties,

from the east and west river banks downstream from St. Anthony Falls, to Lake Nokomis

(Lake Amelia then), and Wirth Lake (then Keegan’s Lake). Moreover, with the beginning

of a deep economic recession in the early 1890s, the park board wouldn’t have money to

buy more land for the next ten years, although it would acquire Columbia Park, which

included Sandy Lake, in 1892.

The first neighborhood parks acquired in south Minneapolis not adjacent to water were

Bryant Square in 1904 and Stewart Park in 1911, much of which was donated. Both were

much nearer downtown than King Park.

The park board first designated for acquisition the land that became King Park in 1915.

(At the same time, the board designated land for Bottineau Park in northeast

Minneapolis.) Just over 21 acres of land were purchased for a little more than $70,000 on

March 15, 1916, at which time the new park was named Nicollet Field. The cost of the

land was assessed to property in the neighborhood.

The purchase was not without controversy. Even though Bottineau Field in northeast

Minneapolis was purchased about the same time, the Northside Improvement Association

protested the acquisition of Nicollet Field, believing that the park board had already

devoted too much of its resources over the years to acquiring parks in the southern half of

the city.

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A plan for the development of the field was included in the 1916 annual report. That plan

included a field house, grandstand, huge wading pool, terrace seating for a baseball field,

and twelve tennis courts on the north edge of the park.

Development of the land began gradually. In 1917, some of the houses on the property

were sold, which paid for small improvements, including some grading, a tennis court

and a skating rink. Park superintendent Theodore Wirth noted that the rink was well-

attended that winter, in part because it was in a district “not previously accommodated”

with a rink. One house in the park, on the corner of 42

Street and Nicollet, was not sold,

but “put in good condition” and rented to the man hired to be the park keeper.

The next spring a small temporary ball field was built near 40

Street and in 1919 the

park board filled the low northern end of the park with nearly 15,000 cubic yards of fill.

That fill enabled the park board to build a better baseball field, with a backstop and

benches for players, for the summer of 1920. But the park still had not been developed

according to Wirth’s 1916 plan and a recreation center had not been built.

In late 1922 the park board received a petition from residents near the park for further

improvements, asking the board to create a new plan for the park that included a shelter

and toilet building of “moderate cost.” Property owners in the neighborhood would have

to pay the costs of park improvements through property assessments, and they apparently

were unwilling to foot the bill for the more elaborate plans that Wirth had originally

created.

Wirth’s new plan for the park met with the approval of the neighborhood and the park

board in early 1923, but the price tag was then still in excess of $200,000, the most

expensive neighborhood park improvements up to that time in Minneapolis park history.

Part of the reason for the cost became apparent later that year when the park board

approved draining the park of water and purchasing fill to bring the park up to grade.

Like most property acquired for neighborhood parks, the land was low-lying and often

flooded. In short, Wirth called it a swamp.

A shelter was built in 1924, but even then Wirth warned that additional grading and

filling may be needed as the original fill settled. He also noted that at a cost of $25,000,

the shelter built in the park was the most expensive ever in a Minneapolis park. The

expense was due to difficulty building a foundation for the shelter on wet soil. Ultimately

the shelter had to be built on piles to keep it stable. Although many features of the park

Wirth had first envisaged, such as a field house and grandstand, were scrapped as too

expensive, the park did get the huge wading—and fly-casting—pool that were in Wirth’s

first plan.

The first playground equipment was installed in the park in 1926.

Baseball was always popular at King Park, perhaps due to the park’s proximity to the

city’s professional baseball stadium one mile north at Lake Street and Nicollet. During

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the height of the Great Depression, when the park board had almost no money to

maintain parks, General Mills donated money to keep the baseball field at King Park in

playable condition, an indication that the baseball field there was one of the most

important in the city.

By the end of World War II, Nicollet Field Park was one of the premier recreation parks

in the city. When the park board began its first year-round recreation programs in 1945,

Nicollet Park was one of four city parks chosen for expanded programs, along with

Logan Park in northeast, Loring Park near downtown, and North Commons in north

Minneapolis. And the next year it was one of five parks to be equipped with lights for

after-dark play on playing fields and playgrounds. The others were Logan, Loring,

Folwell and Sibley.

A major addition to Nicollet Park occurred in 1950 when construction was being planned

for a new 17,000-seat stadium at The Parade. The new stadium required the space

occupied by the tennis center there, so the park board decided to move it to Nicollet Park

where the twelve existing tennis courts were heavily used. The building that had housed

the tennis center at The Parade was moved to King Park in the fall of 1950. The existing

concrete courts were repaved with a bituminous material and bleachers were built around

two courts to serve as “exhibition” courts. The new tennis center hosted the National

Public Park Tennis Tournament in 1953 and again in 1961.

Throughout the 1950s, summer playground programs at Nicollet Park were among the

most heavily-attended in the city’s parks.

By the early 1960s, the popularity of Nicollet Park designated it for renovation and the

addition of a new community center. The funding for those improvements came from an

unusual source and at a steep price. In 1962 the Minnesota Department of Transportation

paid the park board $372,000 for about 2.6 acres of Nicollet Park that were needed for the

construction of I-35W.

At the request of the neighborhood, those funds were applied to the construction of a new

recreation center at the park and the renovation of the city-wide tennis center. Both

projects were completed in 1968 about the time that the name of the park was changed to

honor Dr. King.

In 1970 New York sculptor Daniel LaRue Johnson donated a sculpture “Freedom Form

#2” to the park board for placement in the park in honor of Dr. King.

The recreation center, playing fields and playgrounds were all updated and a gym was

added to the center in 1992. The playing fields were upgraded and new tennis courts were

constructed in 2002. The baseball field in the park received special attention in 2007,

when, with the support of the Minnesota Twins Community Fund, the field was rebuilt.

In 2011, to celebrate the 48

anniversary of Dr. King’s “I Have a Dream” speech,

Johnson’s sculpture was relocated and the area was landscaped to highlight the sculpture.

The sculpture was repaired and fortified in 2016.

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In 2012, the basketball court was resurfaced in blue and green and new hoops, poles,

backboards and benches were installed. The project was paid for with a donation from

Arizona Cardinals wide receiver Larry Fitzgerald, Jr., who grew up in Minneapolis.

In 2015 a new playground opened. It tells the story of Dr. King’s struggle, the civil rights

movement, and highlights numerous African-American inventors and their contributions

to modern society. In 2016 solar panels were installed on the roof of the multipurpose

room.

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King’s Highway

Location: Dupont Avenue from West 36

Street to West 46

Street, and West 46

from

Dupont Avenue to Lake Harriet Parkway.

Size: 17.88 acres, 1.46 miles long

Name: The parkway was named for William King, who donated most of the land for the

parkway and whose farmhouse once sat near the parkway across from Lakewood

Cemetery in today’s Lyndale Farmstead Park. King’s farm was named Lyndale Farm.

(See Lyndale Park and Lyndale Farmstead Park for more information on the creation of

the parks and on William King.) The name was officially adopted on May 15, 1893.

Before then, the road was referred to informally as King’s Lane.

Acquisition and Development

The land for King’s Highway from 38

Street to 46

Street and from there to the lake

was donated by William and Caroline King in 1891. The land was part of the King’s

Lyndale Farm and ran west of the farm house and barns. (See Lyndale Park.)

The first King’s Lane was laid out later in 1891 and work on the lane continued into

1892. A plan for the planting of the boulevard spaces was created by Horace Cleveland.

The first section of King’s Highway from 46

Street and Dupont Avenue to Lake Harriet

was paved in 1908 at the petition of property owners, who were assessed the costs of all

the improvements, except for curbing and planting the center boulevard. This section of

road was one of the first experimental paving projects of the park board and park

superintendent Theodore Wirth.

King’s Highway was extended north to 36

Street in 1913. Extending the boulevard

required the widening of what was then Dupont Avenue from sixty to one hundred feet.

The land to accommodate the widened street was acquired from Lakewood Cemetery in

1912 for $450. The work to widen the boulevard was completed in 1916, at which time

the park board officially asked the city council to turn over control of the northerly two

blocks of King’s Highway to the park board as a parkway.

A portion of King’s Highway on the west side of Lyndale Farmstead was paved with a

concrete base in 1916. The parkway has been completely repaved twice, both times

following construction of new service facilities at Lyndale Farmstead, once in the early

1920s and again in the late 1980s.

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Lake Calhoun

Location: Around and including Lake Calhoun

Size: 518.86 acres, including 422.05 acres of water

Name and derivation: The lake was named for John Caldwell Calhoun, U.S. Senator,

vice president of the United States, and Secretary of War under James Monroe. As

Secretary of War, Calhoun ordered Colonel Leavenworth to establish a fort in the region,

which became Fort Snelling.

On Sept. 2, 2015, Park Board Commissioners discussed a report about the name Lake

Calhoun which stated the Park Board has historically never taken any actions related to

the naming of Lake Calhoun and the Board does not have the authority to re-name it.

Following discussion, the Board did not take any action to change the name of the lake

but Commissioners voted to add the Dakota name “Bde Maka Ska” to the brown Lake

Calhoun entry signs as a way to honor the Dakota people and educate the public about the

Dakota name, which means White Earth Lake. The entry signs were updated Oct. 2,

2015.

Acquisition

One of the primary reasons the park board was created in 1883 was to create parks at

Lake Calhoun and Lake Harriet. In 1880, three years before the park board was created

by the state legislature and approved by the voters of Minneapolis, Charles Loring, who

would come to be known as the “Father of Minneapolis Parks,” lobbied successfully with

a railroad company not to place its new track too near the north shore of Lake Calhoun.

“The cordon of beautiful lakes encircling our city,” he said at the time, “has long been a

pride of the city and our people have for many years cherished a hope…that in the near

future they would establish in the vicinity of the lakes…a grand system of parks with

wide connecting boulevards extending around those lakes.”

The importance of the lake to park plans was highlighted at the time the voters of

Minneapolis were asked to make a decision on the creation of a park board. During the

debate over the proposed “Park Act” in 1883 the Minneapolis city council passed a

resolution that the city needed many things more than “spending money around Lake

Calhoun.”

Despite the council’s objection to an independent park authority, Minneapolis voters

approved the Park Act in April 1883. One of the new park board’s first actions was to

hire landscape architect Horace Cleveland to create a plan for the new park system. His

plan, which proposed parkways to connect points of natural beauty, included a parkway

all the way around Lake Harriet, then along the south and west shores of Lake Calhoun

connecting to Lake Street, and running along the north shore of the lake. The only part of

the Lake Calhoun shore not included in Cleveland’s proposed system of parkways was

the shoreline on the east side of the lake from Lake Street to Lakewood Cemetery.

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Ironically, that eastern shore was the first land the park board acquired at Lake Calhoun.

It wouldn’t acquire the south and west shores for another 25 years. It wasn’t that the new

park commissioners, with Charles Loring as president, didn’t try to follow Cleveland’s

plan; they did. In late 1883 the board designated the entire shore of Lake Harriet and the

south and west shores of Lake Calhoun for acquisition—as well as a parkway on Lake

Street from Lake Calhoun to the Mississippi River. But many of the park board’s early

plans were blocked by the high cost of the land it wanted.

The first land the park board purchased was for neighborhood parks—Loring, Farview,

Logan and Riverside parks—and little money was left to buy lake shores and river banks.

It bought some land on the east bank of the Mississippi River near the University of

Minnesota campus, but couldn’t afford to buy more and eventually sold some of those

lots. The land it wanted around Lake Harriet was valued at nearly $300,000, way beyond

its budget, and the board abandoned that acquisition until Henry Beard, James Merritt

and Charles Reeve came forward with an offer to donate that land. (The courts later

decided that William King owned some of that land, but King honored their offer of the

lake shore to the park system. See Lake Harriet for more of that story.) The park board

also found the price tag for land for a parkway on Lake Street from Lake Calhoun to the

river too high and abandoned that plan.

In the face of those failures, in 1885, the park board determined to buy a shorter stretch of

the Lake Calhoun shore, the shortest connection from Lake of Isles to Lake Harriet. Lake

of the Isles, largely a swamp, hadn’t figured in early park planning at all, but following

Charles Loring’s success in getting most of Lake Harriet donated to the park system, he

found that many landowners around Lake of the Isles were also willing to donate

lakeshore for a parkway. With Lake Harriet and Lake of the Isles incorporated into the

park system at little cost, the park board needed a way to connect those lake shore

parkways by establishing a parkway around Lake Calhoun. The east shore was the logical

way to connect them; it was the shortest route.

Even then it was a difficult acquisition, but in December 1885 the park board designated a

strip of land along the lake for purchase by condemnation. The land was appraised at

nearly $30,000, which Loring wrote was “in the opinion of the Board quite beyond the

actual damages.” Yet Loring and others considered the land essential to acquiring a

parkway that would run from Loring Park to Lake of the Isles, then to Lake Harriet.

Loring wrote in his diary of the effort to convince other park commissioners to spend the

money. Loring wrote that he and fellow park commissioner, Eugene Wilson, took another

commissioner, John Oswald, out on Lake Calhoun in a rowboat to show him the beauty

of the lake and its vital connection to the other lakes. Oswald was won over and voted to

pay the price for the first park land at Lake Calhoun. The cost of the acquisition was

levied against property in the area.

The park board took another step toward acquiring Lake Calhoun in 1887. The park

board reported then that it had secured a 1200-foot strip of the northwest shore of Lake

Calhoun through a donation by Joseph Dean and others of land extending from the west

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side of Lake of the Isles to Lake Calhoun. Most of that land became Dean Parkway, but

included part of the shore of Lake Calhoun. That donation was not completed until 1892,

when the park board finally complied with the terms of the donation by constructing

Dean Parkway through that land.

Joseph Dean’s heirs had made possible another important development at Lake Calhoun

when, in 1891, they sold to the park board for $22,000 the land that connected the east

sides of Lake of the Isles and Lake Calhoun. This was at the time the “missing link” in

the parkway system, the only gap in the Loring Park-to-Minnehaha Creek parkway

around the lakes.

Despite owning only two stretches of shoreline at Lake Calhoun, the idea of acquiring the

rest of the lake as a park didn’t go away. Two of the great visionaries in Minneapolis park

history continued to campaign for acquiring all of the lake. Charles Loring in 1893 and

William Folwell in 1898 urged the park board to acquire the entire lakeshore. The

completion of a parkway all the way around Lake Calhoun, Folwell wrote, “commends

itself to everyone.”

In 1907 the park board took another important step in securing title to the entire lake

shore; it purchased most of the land between Lake of the Isles and Lake Calhoun. The

purchase completed park board ownership of the north shore of Lake Calhoun. An

additional benefit of the purchase was that it enabled the park board to get rid of the ice

houses on the north shore of the lake, which were considered to be an eye sore. The ice

houses were used to store ice cut from Lake Calhoun in winter for sale throughout the

year.

The issue of acquiring the south and west shores of the lake remained open and many

landowners along the shore offered to donate strips of shoreline to make possible a drive

around the entire lake. In the 1907 annual report the board advocated the acquisition of

the remaining shore of Lake Calhoun, in part, out of consideration for those land owners

who already had offered to deed shore rights to the park board for a parkway. In 1907 and

1908 the park board accepted deeds from at least seven property owners on the south and

west sides of the lake. In June of 1908 the park board designated for purchase the

remaining land that had not been donated. The entire shore of the lake was finally

acquired in 1908, and in its 1909 annual report the park board for the first time added the

461 acres of the lake to its inventory.

Curiously, in the inventories of park lands the park board published in its annual reports

into the 1960s, the board never included the estimated value of the donations of land

around Lake Calhoun—from Joseph Dean in 1887 to the Minikahda Club and others in

1908—as it did for other park properties. The total cash cost of acquiring Lake Calhoun

over more than 20 years was just under $130,000, a pittance compared to the inestimable

value of the lake to the people of the city over the years, but nearly double the price of

any other lake acquired by the park board.

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Development

Less than two years after acquiring Lake Calhoun’s eastern shore and building a parkway

along the area it referred to as Calhoun Terrace, the park board began making provisions

for recreational use of the lake. In 1887 the park board provided recreation at the lake by

creating a skating rink, a racetrack on the lake for horses, which was later moved to Lake

of the Isles, and a toboggan slide. In the summer of 1887, the board also sold a

concession to rent boats from park property on the east side of the lake.

Public demand led the park board to erect a temporary bath house on Lake Calhoun in

1890, the first recreation building of any kind operated by the park board. The first bath

house was for men and boys only, but the next summer the park board added a separate

bath house for women and girls. 1891 was also the first year that the Minnesota Fish

Commission stocked fish in city lakes and proposed maintaining the lakes as fish

hatcheries.

The first electric lights were installed at the lake in 1892, at the same time they were

installed at Minnehaha Park and in Interlachen (William Berry) Park between Lake

Harriet and Lake Calhoun. (Electric lights had already been in use at Loring Park for

several years.)

The bath house at Lake Calhoun was the first building the park board ever operated, even

though it was removed from the beach in winter. It was also the site of the first recreation

instruction on park property. In 1895 the board granted permission to Mabel Clark and

Harry Feagles to give swimming lessons at the bathhouse. At the same time the park

board approved the purchase of swimming suits—10 for women, 25 for men—for rental

at the beach. The board also accepted the offer of Dr. Avery to teach bath house

employees how to resuscitate drowning persons.

A new, but still portable, bath house was built on Lake Calhoun in 1901 to designs by

architect and park commissioner Harry Jones. The cost of building the bath house was

paid by the city council. (The council also paid for the construction of a bathhouse on the

Mississippi River at Riverside Park.)

A Marriage of the Lakes

In July 1911 Lake Calhoun was “married” to Lake of the Isles with the opening of a

channel between the lakes. The opening of the water connection between the lakes on

July 5 was the focus of a week-long celebration in the city. The celebration featured

canoe races, fireworks at Lake Harriet and a play about the city’s history that ran for

three nights at Loring Park to crowds of 25,000 each night. A cartoon in a Minneapolis

newspaper depicted the event as a wedding of the lakes, and indeed water from both lakes

were mixed in a “loving cup” and poured into the canal to symbolize the union of the

lakes.

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The event was the culmination of years of planning. The idea of connecting the lakes

with a canal was at least twenty years old. From the time the park board first began

negotiations with the Dean family to acquire the land between the eastern shores of the

lakes in the 1880s, the possibility of linking the lakes had been mentioned. When the

acquisition of that land was finalized, the park board’s 1892 annual report celebrated the

purchase not only for it being the last link in the parkway system from Loring Park to

Minnehaha Creek, but for its possible use as a “desired water connection between the

lakes.”

When noted landscape architect Warren Manning was hired to review plans for the entire

park system in 1899, he treated the connection of the two lakes as a given in his report.

But it wasn’t until 1905, in response to petitions from citizens to connect the lakes at a

depth that boats could pass between them, that the board made its first commitment to

proceed with the project.

Park superintendent Theodore Wirth, who was hired in 1906, presented the first plans for

a Lake of the Isles-Lake Calhoun water connection in the 1907 annual report. As Wirth

began improving the often-flooded parkway on the west side of Lake of the Isles in 1907,

which eventually led to the reshaping of the lake and elimination of wetlands and swamp

there, the board approved plans and cost estimates—about $100,000—to create the

channel between the lakes. Wirth’s original plan was eventually modified considerably,

eliminating a harbor he had proposed between the lakes.

The plan to link the lakes was followed in 1908 by a detailed plan for the development of

all the newly acquired land between Lake of the Isles and Lake Calhoun. That plan

included separate roadways for Lake Street and a parkway next to the lake. Park board

president Jesse Northrup noted that the parkway was made possible due to the street

railway company “cheerfully” moving its track further from the lake, at a cost of $25,000

to the company, to make space for a parkway. The street railway tracks had previously

run along the edge of the water between Lake Street and the lake.

One of the great challenges—and expenses—of the water link between the lakes was

building the bridges over the canal for railroads and streets. A design competition, with a

first prize of $800, was held for those bridges, which drew entries from around the

country.

Calhoun Beach House and North Shore Development

The park board had employed a dredging company from 1907 to 1911 to dredge and

reshape Lake of the Isles, especially the western shore. In 1911 the dredges were moved

across Lake of the Isles to dig the channel between the lakes and when that work was

completed they moved into Lake Calhoun to work on the north and west shores. ( The

dredges would return to Lake of the Isles two years later to begin work on the Kenilworth

Lagoon connecting Lake of the Isles to Cedar Lake.) The goal was to create a beach on

the strip of land originally donated by the Deans in the northwest corner of the lake and

to construct a firm road bed for a parkway along the west shore.

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In 1910, the year before the channel between the lakes was completed, Theodore Wirth

had presented plans for the development of much of the rest of the land around Lake

Calhoun. It was a project he had opposed when he had arrived in Minneapolis four years

earlier.

Wirth had initially taken the position in 1906 that a drive on the west shore of Lake

Calhoun was “not very pressing,” and “simply a repetition of what we already have

several miles of—a shore drive.” Wirth wrote that he thought it was better to improve

existing parkways to reduce the cost of maintaining them, than to add parkways. Wirth

also suggested that a better location for a West Calhoun parkway would be on the hill

through the lawn in front of the Minikahda Club, should that club ever relocate. That

drive, he wrote, would provide a view of the lake and the city of “such scenic beauty that

it is almost a crime to pass it unnoticed.”

With the acquisition of the west shore of the lake in 1908-1909, however, the creation of

a parkway there became a given, partly because a condition for the donation of some of

the shore was that a parkway be built. And it didn’t appear that the Minikahda Club

would be relocating anytime soon.

Wirth’s 1910 plan proposed filling in the shore near Xerxes Avenue and the wetlands

west of Xerxes to create a meadow. His plan for the northwest corner of the lake included

a boat harbor dug into the lowlands. That plan was modified in 1911 and the area

eventually was filled instead of dredged creating what is now used as a soccer field, the

only playing field near the lake. (Contrary to popular belief, the park board never owned

the land at the southwest corner of the West Calhoun Parkway and Lake Street

intersection. In 1916 the park reported that the purchase of 93 acres there was pending,

but the deal was never completed.)

With plans in hand for the northern and western shores of the lake, and the channel to

Lake of the Isles completed, the park board began construction of a modern beach house,

a changing room for swimmers, in 1911. The old temporary beach house on the northeast

corner of the lake was divided into two sections; one was moved to Lake Nokomis and

the other to Glenwood (Wirth) Lake. A boathouse was built on the old bath house

location.

The new house on a new beach, which was created by dredging sand from the lake

bottom, was completed in 1912 and was an immediate success. Demand for the use of the

changing rooms at the beach house was so great that swimmers were limited to leaving

their clothes in a changing room for only an hour, despite the capacity to accommodate

1,250 people. Soon, the park board replaced many of the larger changing rooms with

lockers to accommodate more people. Lines of swimmers waiting to use changing rooms

and lockers stretched for blocks on hot summer days.

The beach house was so popular that many people, Charles Loring and Theodore Wirth

among them, advised the park board to acquire the land across Lake Street from the

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beach to prevent commercial development there. It was the only piece of land between

Lake of the Isles and Lake Calhoun that the park board didn’t own. Unfortunately, the

park board never did acquire that land, which would lead nearly 80 years later to a battle

to prevent the development of high-rise residential buildings across the street from the

lake. That fight eventually produced a new city ordinance limiting the height of buildings

near the lakes.

The story of the early development of Lake Calhoun underscores the challenges of

creating parks, especially in an urban setting, with streets and railroad tracks to contend

with. The cost of development far exceeded the cost of the land—an experience repeated

many times in the history of Minneapolis parks. The cash cost of acquiring Lake

Calhoun, without the value of donated land, was less than $130,000. But the park board

spent more than $300,000 developing only the northern shore to uses the public wanted,

from canal to parkway to bathhouse. And that was before the park board incurred the

continuing costs of operating and maintaining the land and facilities.

West and South Shore Development: Dry Land, Deep Water and No Swamps

As development of the north and west shore parkways and facilities were still being

planned, the park board also focused on the southern shore of the lake. As part of the

consideration of linking all the southwestern lakes, the park board also looked at creating

a water connection between Lake Harriet and Lake Calhoun. In 1909, Wirth presented

options for that connection. The challenge was that Lake Harriet was seven feet lower in

elevation than Lake Calhoun. Any connection between those lakes would have required

the construction of locks. One option Wirth presented was a canal that would have run

south from Calhoun along what is now Washburn Avenue through Linden Hills, turning

east at 43

Street to roughly Thomas Avenue, then following Thomas through Dell Park

to meet Lake Harriet at 45

Street. The best option for the canal, Wirth noted, was

through Lakewood Cemetery. Wirth considered none of the plans very practical and they

were never apparently given serious consideration.

But the plan for a canal through the wetlands south of Lake Calhoun perhaps did give an

idea to the Lake Harriet Commercial Club. In 1909 the city council had refused a request

from the group to fill the wetlands lying along what is now Washburn Avenue, so in 1910

the club asked the park board to acquire that land from Lake Calhoun to 43

Street

between Xerxes and Washburn avenues as a park. The park board declined, after

surveying the area, due to a shortage of funds.

But the issue came up again a few years later as the park board considered building

permanent parkways around the south and west shores of Calhoun and improving

Interlachen (William Berry) Park nearby.

In January 1916 the park board designated for acquisition 65 acres of land south of Lake

Calhoun for a “lagoon”—also called “South Bay”—from Lake Calhoun to 42

Street

between Xerxes and Upton avenues. The proposed acquisition and development of

“South Bay Drive” was one of the most contentious issues for the park board for many

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years. Over the objections of some commissioners, who felt the cost of the project was

too high and ignored other priorities, especially playgrounds, in other parts of the city, the

park board stuck with its plans to add substantially to the size of Lake Calhoun by

dredging a bay.

The sticking point finally was the cost of the project and how it would be paid for. The

park board proposed to assess the cost to property owners: two-thirds to property in the

area and one-third to property throughout the city. The total estimated cost of the lagoon

and parkway around it was $242,000 out of a total of nearly $700,000 proposed for all the

improvements recommended at Lake Calhoun and Lake of the Isles and William Berry

Park.

The landowners in the vicinity filed a law suit challenging the park board’s authority to

assess their land for the cost of the improvements. Before the suit was determined in

court, the park board annulled all previous proceedings on the project due to a rapid rise

in estimated costs during the inflationary time following World War I. It wasn’t until

1922 that the Minnesota Supreme Court ruled in favor of the park board and its authority

to assess the costs of improvements on property owners. By then “South Bay” had

become too expensive and the park board never reconsidered that part of the project.

However with the favorable court ruling the park board did begin the dredging and

reshaping of the southern shore of the lake in 1923. In his 1923 annual report Wirth wrote

that the weedy, shallow, unnavigable and unsanitary water on the southern shore of the

lake had been eliminated. The area of water was reduced by ten acres, but all of it was

then navigable, according to Wirth. The reason for the dredging was not just to eliminate

swamp, however. Solid ground was needed to construct a permanent parkway and that

ground was built up, as it had been at Lake of the Isles years before, with fill dredged

from the lake.

The dredging and filling along the shore was not welcomed by all. Park board president

William Bovey acknowledged complaints in the 1924 annual report, when he noted the

natural beauty of swamp and shallow water, but claimed that from a standpoint of

“sanitation and utility” the landscape had been improved. Of the wetlands that were

filled, Bovey wrote that “such natural conditions cannot be maintained on park properties

in residential districts.” (The shores of Lake Calhoun were not the only land converted to

drier conditions in the vicinity at the time. Also in 1923 a 3,600-foot pipeline was built

from Linden Hills Park to Lake Calhoun to drain that land for park development.)

The next year, as work continued at Lake Calhoun, Wirth reported another 26 acres of

land were claimed from water leaving “no shallow, weed-blocked, mosquito-breeding

water areas.” Water was dredged to a navigable depth or filled to create lawns, ball fields

and parkway. The dredging and filling and road construction were completed in 1925.

The improvements included the addition of beaches on the south and east shores of the

lake. These additional beaches addressed a growing concern by Wirth and the park board

as more people acquired cars. As cars became more commonplace, people tended to drive

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to the lakes already in their swimming suits and therefore didn’t need to use the beach

house changing rooms—nor limit their swimming to the beach there. The problem was

that the park board couldn’t provide for the safety of swimmers everywhere on the lake.

In 1921 Wirth proposed permitting swimming at other places on the lake in addition to

the beach house. Where swimming was not authorized, Wirth suggested covering the

shore with gravel and stones that would make walking and bathing in those areas nearly

impossible. Adding a beach on the south side of the lake and another on the east side,

ultimately addressed the issue in a more hospitable way.

Adding attractions to the designated beaches also may have helped reduce illicit

swimming. In 1924 water toboggans were constructed on the beaches at both Lake

Calhoun and Lake Nokomis. They were precursors to today’s water parks. There is no

record in park board proceedings of when or why the water toboggan slides—or the

diving platforms—were taken down.

Maintenance, Management and New Amenities

Since 1925 few changes have been made to the basic shape of the lake and the road bed

of the encircling parkway.

In 1930 a new shelter, toilet building and refreshment stand were built at the northeast

corner of the lake near Lake Street and in 1940 the Works Progress Administration built

shore protection walls along portions of the eastern shore.

Low water levels in the lakes in the 1950s–nearly two-and-a-half feet below normal–led

to additional dredging of the channel between Lake of the Isles and Lake Calhoun and

eventually to dramatic measures to maintain water levels in the lakes.

In 1957 a pumping station was installed at Bassett’s Creek to pump water from that creek

through a pipeline to Brownie Lake to raise water levels in the Chain of Lakes. But water

levels remained low and the channel to Lake Calhoun was too shallow even for canoes to

pass through in the late 1950s.

The low water levels in the lake led to problems other than a reduction in canoeing. Weed

growth accelerated with low water levels and in 1959 the park lakes, including Lake

Calhoun, were treated with sodium arsenite to control weeds. Efforts to raise lake levels

by pumping water from Bassett’s Creek proved inadequate and in the 1960s a pipeline

was built all the way to the Mississippi River to pump water into the lakes. The problem

with that solution, however, was that the river water contained higher levels of

phosphates than were considered healthy for the lakes. While pumping continued

intermittently through the 1970s and 1980s, pumping from the river was not discontinued

until the 1990s.

Attendance at the Lake Calhoun beach house continued to decline from its peak in the

1920s. Attendance dropped dramatically during the Great Depression and was further

hurt in the 1940s by polio scares. The aging facility was renovated in 1955 to make the

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outdated dressing rooms more appealing. Even with renovation, however, the era of

changing into swimming suits at the beach was near an end.

Automobile traffic around the Chain of Lakes became a major issue in 1970 when a

landscape architect hired by the park board to address the use of the lakes recommended

closing the lake parkways to car traffic—and also proposed creating islands in Lake

Calhoun to add recreation space and visual appeal. The furor that followed put an end to

discussions of changing the basic use of the lake and its encircling parkway, although

subsequent changes were made to reduce traffic around the lakes. The parkway around

Lake Calhoun continued to carry two-way traffic.

The addition of recreation amenities on the lake shore has continued in more recent

times. In 1979 two sand volleyball courts were built near the southwest shore of the lake

and in 1985 a playground for small children was built on the east shore. A year later a

walkway was created along the channel between Lake Calhoun and Lake of the Isles to

divert pedestrian and bicycle traffic under Lake Street.

The quality of the water in the lakes became an increasing concern in the 1970s. The first

study of lake water quality was conducted in 1973. A second study in 1991 led to the

creation of the Chain of Lakes Clean Water Partnership in 1994. Central to the issue of

water quality in the lakes was storm water runoff from the lakes’ watershed. Exacerbating

the problem was the removal seventy years earlier of the wetlands near the lake. In an

effort to restore the filtering capacity of those wetlands, in 1998 the park board initiated a

project to return the once-filled lawns southwest of Lake Calhoun to wetland. Similar

projects were also undertaken at Cedar Lake and Lake Nokomis.

New playground equipment was installed at the renovated north beach in 2009. On the

opposite shore, the parking lot was renovated to improve circulation and water

management. Permeable pavers and rain gardens helped prevent water run off. New

lighting and signage also improved the experience of the park.

The year 2011 marked the return of a swimming dock or diving platform to the north

beach, although the three-level platforms of the 1920s are unlikely to ever return.

In June 2012 the park board adopted emergency measures to prevent the spread of

aquatic invasive species (AIS) to Minneapolis lakes. Since those measures were enacted,

all boats entering Lake Calhoun on a public launch are required to pass an AIS

inspection.

In 2013, a Nice Ride bicycle rental kiosk was installed near the northwest shore of the

lake.

Trivia

Lake Calhoun was never connected by a channel to Lake Harriet because its surface is

seven feet higher in elevation than Lake Harriet. Connecting the lakes would have

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required constructing locks between the lakes. The other lakes in the Chain of Lakes did

not have as great a difference in elevation, although the waterline in Cedar Lake and

Brownie Lake dropped five feet when those lakes were connected to Lake of the Isles and

Lake Calhoun. The drop in water level created a peninsula out of an earlier island on the

west shore of Cedar Lake.

The first female park police officer was hired in 1915 specifically to help patrol the beach

at Lake Calhoun and enforce appropriate conduct. Some Minneapolis citizens were

offended by the too-revealing women’s swimsuits at the beach, so the park board

proposed an ordinance that would have required women’s swimming suits to extend at

least four inches below the knee. Theodore Wirth put an end to consideration of the

ordinance when he asked if he was supposed to take a tape measure onto the beach.

Instead the board hired its first policewoman to help maintain decorum at the beach.

Fishing docks were first installed at Lake Calhoun in 1966. A new fishing dock was

installed at the northwest corner of the lake in 2012 and the dock near 36th Street – the

oldest in Minneapolis – was replaced in 2013 after a storm left it irreparably damaged.

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Lake Harriet

Location: Around and including Lake Harriet

Size: 470.07 acres, including Beard Plaisance, Lyndale Park and 343.75 acres of water

Name: Lake Harriet was named for Harriet Lovejoy, wife of Colonel Henry

Leavenworth, who founded Fort Snelling in 1819.

Acquisition and Development

Lake Harriet was at the center of park plans from the time the park board was created in

1883. Less than two months after Minneapolis voters approved the legislation that

created the park board for the city, the board voted to acquire a strip of land 200-feet

wide encircling Lake Harriet. The only park plans that were given a higher priority by the

first park board were the acquisition of a park for each section of the city: Farview Park

in north Minneapolis, Logan Park in northeast, Loring Park in south Minneapolis, and

Riverside Park along the Mississippi River downstream from St. Anthony Falls. Once the

board had set in motion the purchase of those lands—a politically shrewd move to

distribute parks throughout the city—it turned its attention to the lakes.

Preservation of the city’s lake shores and river banks had been a primary motive of

Chicago-based landscape architect Horace Cleveland, who had campaigned for years for

Minneapolis to establish parks. The desire to create a park around Lake Harriet was

evident in the state legislature when it passed a bill in February 1883 to create the park

board; the same day the legislature extended the boundaries of the city to include Lake

Harriet. Lake Harriet was perceived to be the gem of the city’s lakes, largely because of

its well-established shoreline. Surrounded by hills, the lake had much less swampy shore

line than other bodies of water in the city.

In the first overall plan created for Minneapolis parks in June 1883, Horace Cleveland’s

“Suggestions for a System of Parks and Parkways,” commissioned by the park board,

showed a parkway completely encircling Lake Harriet. In contrast, he proposed a

parkway only along the west shore of Lake Calhoun. He didn’t mention Lake of the Isles

at all.

On June 2, 1883, the day Cleveland submitted his plan to the park board, the board voted

to acquire all the land around Lake Harriet. It would take a couple years, and generous

donations, however, before the lake became park property. When the appraisers

appointed by the park board to determine the value of the land around the lake came back

with a total of nearly $300,000 the park board was disheartened. In the 1884 annual

report park board president Charles Loring wrote, “the cost of the right of way (around

the lake) rendered it impractical for the Board to acquire it, and it was abandoned.”

Near the end of 1884, however, three property owners around the lake, Henry Beard,

James Merritt and Charles Reeve, came to Loring with an offer to donate most of the

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Lake Harriet shore to the park board. The park board accepted the offer, which left only

about a quarter-mile of shore on the south side of the lake to acquire by condemnation.

But very little in the early days of the park board ended up being easy. In 1885 a court

ruled that some of the land around the lake didn’t belong to Beard and the others, that the

rightful owner was William King.

This was the same William King who had been instrumental in creating and passing the

legislation that had created the park board. (See Lyndale Park and King’s Highway for

more on King.) Years earlier he had offered to sell part of his farm encompassing Lake

Harriet to the city as a park—an offer that was declined. With the title to the land

returned to King (Beard and the others were not implicated in the expropriation of the

land from King), King confirmed the donation of the other men. “Thus the board had

become possessed, without cost,” Loring wrote in the 1885 annual report, “as to the

greater part of the land of the entire area of Lake Harriet.” By late 1885, the park board

began construction of Lake Harriet Parkway, which was completed in 1886.

With the acquisition of Lake Harriet, the park board, and Charles Loring in particular,

began a campaign to convert the other nearby lakes in southwest Minneapolis into parks

and to extend park property down Minnehaha Creek from Lake Harriet to Minnehaha

Falls. Lake Harriet proved to be the anchor for the growth of the Minneapolis park

system, and for the transformation of Minneapolis’s identity into the “City of Lakes.”

The acquisition of Lake Harriet, largely by donation, also established a precedent that

was followed in the acquisition of Lake of the Isles, and much of Lake Calhoun and

Minnehaha Creek.

Curiously, however, despite reporting at the time of the donation by Henry Beard of some

of the land near the lake, in 1888 the park board paid Beard about $8,000 for some of his

property. It is not clear if that payment was for the land that became known as Beard

Plaisance west of the lake, or for the land that became Linden Hills Parkway, all of which

Beard had owned.

Upon finally wrapping up the deal with Beard, the park board held title to all the land

around the lake. The registering of the deeds to all of the lake shore prompted Charles

Loring to write in his diary on October 2, 1888, “I have spent much time during the past

three years bringing about this result and today I feel fully repaid. I hope future

generations will feel as happy over the possession of this park as I do today in feeling that

I have been instrumental in getting it for them.”

Lake Harriet became a popular boating and picnicking spot almost immediately, aided by

the Minneapolis Street Railway Company. The company’s track extended to Lake Harriet

and to increase ridership the company built an entertainment pavilion in 1888 on private

land adjacent to park property west of the lake where the company offered concerts. At

that time the board leased a concession to rent boats on the lake, but in 1889 took over

boat rentals itself.

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The next year, 1890, park land in the Lake Harriet area expanded significantly with the

donation by the Lakewood Cemetery Association and William King of Lyndale Park and

the purchase of Interlachen (William Berry) Park between Lake Calhoun and Lake

Harriet.

When the street railway’s private pavilion burned down in 1891, the park board and the

company agreed to build a new pavilion on the shore of the lake on park property. The

railway company would pay for the pavilion, and provide entertainment, in exchange for

a portion of the park board’s boat rental income. Both sides benefitted from the

arrangement: the park board provided entertainment on one of its premier properties and

earned more in boat rentals if people came to the lake for concerts; the railway company

increased its ridership by offering concerts. (The park board had more than 170 rowboats

and three sailboats in its rental fleet at Lake Harriet in 1892. In 1894 the park board

issued its first permits—for $2.00 a year—for people to keep their own boats at the lake,

a practice that continues today for sailboats.) The new pagoda-style pavilion, designed by

Minneapolis architect and park commissioner Harry Jones, opened in 1892.

The park board had a ten-year agreement with the street railway company to provide

concerts at the pavilion and that contract was extended for five years in 1901.

Unfortunately in 1903 the pavilion burned down. By this time, with more residential

development near the lake, the street railway company didn’t need the inducement of

concerts to get people to ride the streetcars and the company contributed the $15,000 it

received in an insurance settlement on the old pavilion to the park board to build its own

pavilion. With another $15,000 loaned to the park board by an association of Minneapolis

retailers, the park board built a new pavilion, also designed by Harry Jones, in 1904. The

new pavilion extended out over the water and its roof provided an open-air concert

venue.

Lake Harriet was known as much more than a boating and concert lake, however. During

the bicycle craze of the 1890s, the park board built a bicycle path around the lake. The

configuration of the paths around the lake in 1896 was almost identical to today: a

walking path nearest the shore, then a bicycle path and finally the parkway, which of

course at that time was built only for horses and carriages. Bicycles were so popular that

when the park board built an enclosure for people to check their bikes at the lake while

they boated, or attended concerts, the facility was built to hold 800 bicycles.

When Theodore Wirth was hired to be the new park superintendent in 1906, replacing

William Berry, who had held the job for 20 years, one of his first major proposals was to

redesign the lake. The shorelines of Lake Harriet, he wrote in the 1906 annual report,

were “regular and monotonous.” To make the lake more interesting, he proposed building

a peninsula into the lake near Beard Plaisance on the west shore and filling in the lake in

front of the pavilion to put it on dry land and reduce maintenance costs. (The water into

which the pavilion projected had to be kept free of ice in winter to prevent the ice from

crushing the pilings on which it was built.)

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Shortly after the publication of his plan, however, Wirth told the board in January 1907

that reshaping the Lake Harriet shore would be difficult. More difficult, he said, than the

dredging he had proposed at Lake of the Isles to fill in the wetlands on the west side of

that lake. Part of the plan for Lake of the Isles was also to open a channel to Lake

Calhoun, which had been desired for many years. Wirth later also presented plans for a

possible channel from Lake Calhoun to Lake Harriet, but those plans were never pursued,

in part because the surface of Lake Harriet was seven feet lower in elevation than Lake

Calhoun and a channel would have required locks to make it navigable. Thus the park

board shifted its focus from Lake Harriet to Lake of the Isles and then Lake Calhoun.

Wirth never was satisfied with the pavilion at Lake Harriet, however. He proposed

replacing the pavilion many times over the next two decades, even after the pavilion’s

pilings in the lake were replaced in 1912 and the pavilion was renovated and rearranged

by Harry Jones in 1913. In 1912 the park board also built a waiting station at the platform

for the street railway at 42

Street. The waiting station was designed by Harry Jones to

resemble a Swiss chalet.

Finally in 1923, the park board approved building a new pavilion at Lake Harriet, but

with many other projects then in progress, construction of the new pavilion was delayed.

A severe storm in 1925 forced the park board’s hand. What some called a tornado leveled

the old pavilion and two people died in the wreckage that summer. The next year a

temporary bandstand was built to the east of the old pavilion, at a cost of $4,000, so the

park board could continue to provide concerts at the lake. That temporary facility lasted

60 years, until it was replaced with the current bandstand and stage in 1986. Designed by

Milo Thompson, the 1986 bandstand was the first oriented to provide the audience views

of the lake while it listened. Costs had risen dramatically in the intervening years. The

price tag for the new bandstand, a vast improvement over the one that had lasted so long,

was $5.5 million.

During the Great Depression and Word War II few improvements were made to the park

at Lake Harriet. The only work done was by federal work relief crews, most notably the

construction of a shorewall on the northwest shore of the lake in 1939.

Street cars, such an important part of the lake’s history as a park, were reintroduced to the

Lake Harriet landscape when, in 1969, the park board approved a request by the

Minnesota Transportation Museum to restore the rails and street car service at Lake

Harriet. The street cars still operate from the site of the old street car station near the

bandstand through William Berry Park.

Lake Harriet Parkway was given a permanent pavement, for the first time, in 1977.

The Lake Harriet Winter Kite Festival was first celebrated in January 2002. The event

includes kites of all shapes, sizes and colors and a number a family-focused winter

activities. A picnic shelter was built near the band shell and concession stand in 2007. In

2008-2009, with financial assistance from People for Parks, the band shell sound system

and seating were upgraded, and permeable pavers were installed in the seating area.

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In 2011 floating swimming docks returned to the lake and Bread and Pickle, a privately

operated eco-friendly restaurant, began serving customers at the pavilion. A complete

redesign and replacement of the playgrounds near the northwest shore was completed in

2012. (See Beard Plaisance.)

In June 2012 the park board adopted emergency measures to prevent the spread of

aquatic invasive species (AIS) to Minneapolis lakes. Since those measures were enacted,

all boats entering Lake Harriet on a public launch are required to pass an AIS inspection.

In 2013, a Nice Ride bicycle rental kiosk was installed near the band shell.

President Barack Obama gave a speech to an audience numbering in the thousands at the

Lake Harriet Bandshell on June 27, 2014. He also hosted an invitation-only town hall

meeting at Minnehaha Falls during his visit to Minneapolis.

Trivia

The first mention of a park hockey league was in 1914 when the board reported that the

league played on a lighted rink on Lake Harriet. In that year the park board also

questioned whether it was wise to continue to operate the toboggan slide it had built in

1912 from the west bank of the lake at Queen Avenue out onto the lake. Despite

precautions, Wirth wrote, several injuries had been incurred at the slide resulting in

lawsuits. Also in 1914 the park board replaced the bicycle path around the lake with a

bridle path. Several park commissioners were avid horsemen and the popularity of

bicycling had declined dramatically.

For a few years in the early 1960’s the park board’s speed skating track, which had been

operated for decades at Powderhorn Lake, was moved to Lake Harriet. In 1963 the

United States Olympic speed skating trials were held at Lake Harriet, and local skaters

Tom Gray and Marie Lawler were selected for the Olympic team. A few years later the

track was moved to Lake Nokomis.

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Lake Hiawatha

Location: Minnehaha Parkway and Longfellow Avenue South

Size: 241.08 acres, including 54.53 acres of water and 140 acres of golf course

Name: Lake Hiawatha was named for the hero of Henry Wadsworth Longfellow’s epic

poem The Song of Hiawatha. The park was officially named Hiawatha Park and the lake,

Lake Hiawatha, on November 4, 1925. Previously the lake was referred to as Rice Lake

for the wild rice that grew there. In some earlier accounts, particularly in the writing of

Charles Loring, the lake was called Mud Lake.

Acquisition and Development

The park board’s first interest in this lake was to get rid of it. In 1891 the park board was

intent on ensuring the flow of water in Minnehaha Creek so there would be water over

Minnehaha Falls during the 1892 Republican Party Convention to be held in the city. The

consensus was that the best way to accomplish that goal was to divert Minnehaha Creek

into Lake Nokomis (then known as Lake Amelia) and dam the outlet, using the lake as a

reservoir.

Charles Loring, who was the first president of the park board from its creation in 1883 to

1890, wrote in early 1892 that landowners around what he called Mud Lake, but was

more commonly referred to as Rice Lake, “would be glad to pay the expense of turning

the creek directly into Lake Amelia as they wish to drain their property.”

The park board did authorize park superintendent William Berry to build a dam at the

outlet of Rice Lake to control the flow of water in the creek in 1892, but there is no

record that the dam was built. (Damming a creek it didn’t own likely would have

generated some opposition.)

No action was taken at the time to ensure water in the creek, and with economic

depression following the Panic of 1893, the park board would acquire very little property

and make very few improvements to land it already owned for the next ten years. When

interest increased in obtaining park property in the area in the first years of the 20

century, the focus was on Lake Amelia.

The park board finally completed the acquisition of the land around Lake Amelia in 1908

at a cost of $63,500. The park superintendent at that time, Theodore Wirth, later wrote in

his history of the park system that Rice Lake could have been acquired at the same time

as Lake Nokomis for an additional $25,000. Objections to that purchase included the

argument that the patch of swamp could be bought at any time.

In 1910, as plans were presented for a massive dredging and filling operation to reshape

Lake Nokomis, Wirth recommended acquiring the land around Rice Lake, redirecting

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Minnehaha Creek into Lake Nokomis, and filling Rice Lake. A dry meadow, he wrote,

would look better than the swampy lake.

Over the next few years, Wirth continued to urge the acquisition of Rice Lake. At that

time, he thought all the land that was needed was enough to encompass the water to

reduce its size. The board delayed acquisition of the lake because property owners in the

area were already paying assessments for the conversion of Lake Amelia into a park—at

that time the most expensive single project in the park board’s history.

But another development in Minneapolis parks at that time began to change perceptions

of how the land around Rice Lake could be used. In 1916 the park board opened its first

golf course at Glenwood (Wirth) Park. The nine-hole course was an immediate success

even though it had only sand greens. The course was such a success, and revenue-

generator, for the park board that in 1919 the Glenwood course was expanded to eighteen

holes and new six-hole course was built at Columbia Park. By 1920 it was evident that

the park board needed more golf courses, especially one in the southern section of the

city, because both existing courses were in north Minneapolis.

In the 1920 annual report, Wirth suggested that perhaps the only available and affordable

land in south Minneapolis that would provide the minimum of 150 acres needed for a

golf course was between Rice Lake and Cedar Avenue. The idea caught on. In the next

year’s report, board president William Bovey “strongly” advised the board to acquire the

land around Rice Lake—but only what was ”absolutely necessary” to provide a suitable

golf course and playground. He repeated the advice the following year.

In 1922 the park board followed that advice and designated for acquisition not just Rice

Lake, but the land to the west of the lake for a golf course, and the entire valley of

Minnehaha Creek from the lake to Minnehaha Falls. While the final acquisition was

much larger than contemplated years earlier, so was the price tag. With increasing

development of southern Minneapolis, certainly aided by the creation of Lake Nokomis

and the surrounding park, Rice Lake was no longer priced as just a swamp. The park

board paid $550,000 for the lake, surrounding land and creek bed. Rice Lake had been

acquired not to provide a reservoir for Minnehaha Falls, or to be filled in as meadow; it

had been acquired in large part to become a golf course. The cost of the acquisition was

assessed 100% against “benefited” property over five years, the steepest assessment in

park board history not spread in part over property city-wide.

The method of financing the acquisition by local assessment essentially prevented

development of the property until it was paid for. The park board didn’t feel it could add

an assessment for developing the property on top of the assessment to acquire it.

Nonetheless, Wirth submitted his first plan for the property in 1924, which showed the

basic layout of the golf course and a playground southeast of the lake. The plan also

included a man-made island in the southwest corner of the lake.

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In an effort to provide some use of the new parkland that the neighborhood was paying

for, in December 1924 the park board responded favorably to petitions from the

neighborhood and established the first skating rink on the lake.

Construction of the golf course and dredging of the lake began in 1929 after the

assessments for acquiring the property had been paid. Wirth noted that he believed the

optimal depth of the lake should be 14 feet and that was approved by the board. His plan

to create the island was abandoned, he reported in 1930, when dredging revealed a lack

of sand deposits that were needed to build an island. The material dredged from the lake

was used primarily to construct rolling terrain needed for a more interesting golf course

—more “sporty” was Wirth’s description. Dredging of the lake was completed in 1931

and work began in earnest on the golf course. With the completion of dredging, the beach

on the east shore of the lake also opened in 1931.

The final touch to the new golf course was a clubhouse with the appearance of a “very

cozy cottage,” according to Wirth, which was constructed in 1932. The same year the

golf clubhouse was built a shelter was also built in the northeast corner of the park to

serve the playground. Playground equipment was installed in 1931-1932. The tennis

courts along Minnehaha Parkway were also built in 1932.

The golf course was finally in playable condition and the first nine holes opened for play

July 30, 1934. The charge for playing nine holes was set at $0.35. The full course opened

the next summer. Almost immediately, the new course was the only profitable course

operated by the park board. While waiting to build the Hiawatha course, the park board

had also created two more golf courses, Armour (Gross) and Meadowbrook in the mid-

1920s. Both courses enjoyed initial popularity, but with the coming of the Great

Depression golf play everywhere dropped off dramatically. Throughout the 1930s,

Hiawatha was the only profitable golf course.

The course was heavily used despite repairs several years where fill from dredging had

settled and required new fill. In 1939, a federal work relief project added shore walls to

prevent erosion at Lake Hiawatha, as had been done at most other city lakes. Park

superintendent Christian Bossen explained that shores created by dredging were

especially susceptible to erosion from wave action.

One of the only major changes to the layout of the park since it was created was the

addition of a second ball field made by filling land north of the lake in 1968. In 1977, the

original recreation center was demolished and replaced.

The park did not have full time recreation supervision until 1999, the same year that a

Learning Center was added to the golf course northwest of the clubhouse and Tiger

Woods made an appearance at the course for the Fairway Foundation and the Minnesota

Minority Junior Golf Foundation.

A new accessible playground was built in the park in 2001. The rec center was renovated

in 2007, when a computer lab was also opened in the center. Another improvement that

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year was a new vegetative buffer planted on much of the east shore of the lake. In 2009

the Listening Vessel sculpture was installed. The large granite parabola amplifies sounds

from the lake.

In 2010, a new wading pool and splash park were created on the site of the original pool

and the four old tennis courts were replaced by five new ones. The new courts were built

with assistance from Save the Courts, a non-profit dedicated to rebuilding tennis courts

throughout the city.

A new fishing dock was installed on the southeast shore of the lake in 2012, and in 2013

zebra mussels were first detected as a result of the invasive species’ introduction to

Minnehaha Creek in prior years.

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Lake Nokomis

Location: Cedar Avenue and Minnehaha Parkway

Size: 405.6 acres, including 210.26 acres of water

Name: The lake was named for the grandmother of Hiawatha in Henry Wadsworth

Longfellow’s epic poem The Song of Hiawatha. The lake was known as Lake Amelia

from 1819 until it was renamed on December 5, 1910. The lake was originally named for

the daughter of Captain George Gooding. The name change was proposed in 1909 by the

Hiawatha Improvement Association, an organization of neighborhood residents.

Acquisition and Development

The change in the name of the lake in 1910 was appropriate. Naming the lake for a

character in Longfellow’s poem, which had made Minnehaha Falls known around the

world, was fitting given that the lake’s only role in early park thinking was as a reservoir

to ensure an impressive flow over the famous falls.

One of the first mentions of the lake in park board proceedings was December 7, 1891,

the day the board designated for acquisition the land for Minnehaha Boulevard from

Lyndale Avenue to Minnehaha Falls, crossing Minnehaha Creek between Lake Amelia

(Nokomis) and Rice Lake (Hiawatha). The board discussed at that time controlling the

flow of the creek to ensure there would be water over Minnehaha Falls the next summer

when the city would host the Republican Party’s national convention. Getting the

convention for Minneapolis was a huge coup for the city; it was the first national political

convention held in the “west,” and provided the city a chance to show off its heralded

new park system.

In early 1892 Charles Loring, who had been the first president of the park board from

1883 to 1890, wrote that he hoped the board would secure Lake Amelia as a reservoir. “I

have given the subject a great deal of thought the past two months,” he wrote to William

Folwell, “and I feel sure that storing water there is the only way we can secure a flow

over the Minnehaha Falls…By holding the water in Lake Amelia and only permitting a

flow of say eight hours a day I believe we could keep the falls in very respectable

condition.”

He went on to write that he thought the “parties interested in Mud Lake (also called Rice

Lake, and later Lake Hiawatha) would be glad to pay the expense of turning the creek

directly into Lake Amelia as they wish to drain their property.”

Board action pertaining to the lake itself is a bit confusing from there. In March 1892 the

board authorized superintendent of parks William Berry to deepen the channel from Lake

Amelia to the creek. Under what authority it acted is unclear as the board owned neither

the shore of Lake Nokomis, nor the creek bed east of the point the creek passed through

the newly acquired property for Minnehaha Boulevard. At the same time, however,

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William Folwell urged the board to acquire the creek and its banks from that point east to

the falls, and the board did approve a survey and plat of the creek to the east. The board

didn’t acquire the creek bed east of Lake Nokomis until 1923.

Despite the fact it didn’t own the land, the board also approved the construction of a dam

at the outlet of Minnehaha Creek from Rice Lake (Hiawatha) to control the flow of the

creek. There is no record that the dam was ever built. The problem of maintaining a flow

of water over the falls remained an issue. Charles Loring wrote in 1900 that when he took

President Benjamin Harrison to see the falls Harrison remarked that “Minnehaha Falls

would undoubtedly be very beautiful if there was water in the stream.”

While concerns over keeping “water in the stream” continued to dominate thinking on

Lake Amelia, Loring also noted in 1893 that park board control of the lake would prevent

contamination of the lake by runoff from nearby barns and stables.

In 1894 the park board voted for the first time to examine the shores of Lake Amelia

itself to determine the land needed for a parkway around the lake and to control the

waters of the lake. In 1895 the board voted to acquire Lake Amelia, but took no further

action to add the lake to the park system. The inaction was due primarily to the difficult

financial circumstances of the board during the national economic depression following

the Panic of 1893.

Dreams of a larger park system were kept alive through difficult times largely by William

Folwell, who was president of the board during most of the 1890s. In the 1899 annual

report Folwell wrote that incorporating Lake Calhoun, Cedar Lake and Lake Amelia in

the “lake parkway system” were actions that “at all times should interest the board.”

Landscape architect Warren Manning added his voice in favor of the acquisition of Lake

Amelia and Rice Lake as parks when he reviewed the park system for the park board in

1899.

With the completion of Minnehaha Boulevard to Minnehaha Falls in 1899, and a

recovering economy, the board became more serious about adding Lake Nokomis to the

park system, prompting a Minneapolis newspaper to report in a headline on August 19,

1900, “Park Board flirts with Lake Amelia.”

That flirtation prompted several property owners to offer to donate land for a parkway

around the lake in 1901. With those offers in hand the park board took the unusual step of

discussing its plans to acquire the lake with the board of health to ensure there would be

no objections. In late 1901, when the board discovered that after years of frugality and

paying down the debt on its earlier land purchases with city bonds it had the capacity to

issue more bonds for land acquisitions, it requested the issuance of bonds to purchase the

west bank of the Mississippi River, the west shore of Lake Calhoun, and Lake Amelia.

The river banks were promptly purchased in early 1902 with new bond funds, but the

lake shores proved a bigger challenge. For the next five years the board continued to

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express its desire to acquire the lake and some landowners continued to offer a strip of

lake shore for a parkway.

When Theodore Wirth was hired in 1906 as the new superintendent of parks, he was not

enthusiastic about acquiring another shore drive. “For scenery alone the lake is not

needed,” he wrote in the 1906 annual report. The acquisition would make sense, he

added, if it were to be used as a reservoir for the falls, or if enough additional land were

acquired to make a picnic and recreation ground around the lake.

It wasn’t until the summer of 1907 that the board officially designated the land around

the lake for acquisition and appointed appraisers to determine the value of the land. When

landowners in the area agreed to have their land assessed for the cost of buying the land—

we don’t know what happened to the offers to donate land—the board agreed in July 1908

to pay $63,500 for 409 acres of property, including nearly 300 acres of water.

Little was done at first to develop the new property into a park, although a rudimentary

bath house and some playground equipment were placed at the lake in 1909.

In the 1910 annual report Wirth presented his plan for the improvement of the lake. It was

the most ambitious lake-shaping plan in the history of Minneapolis parks. Perhaps

influenced by the success of reshaping the shores of Lake of the Isles by dredging and

filling, Wirth proposed a radical alteration of the landscape around Lake Nokomis. He

would reduce the water area of the lake from 300 acres to 200 acres and deepen the lake

to an average depth of fifteen feet from its natural average depth of five to twelve feet.

Wirth also proposed creating an island near the northwest shore of the lake to add visual

interest. At the same time, Wirth recommended straightening Minnehaha Creek to reduce

the amount of water needed to provide sufficient flow over Minnehaha Falls and

diverting the creek into Lake Nokomis. He also recommended eventually filling Rice

Lake (Hiawatha), noting that a dry meadow there would look better than that swampy

lake. While Wirth’s basic plan to reshape the lake was eventually implemented, plans for

an island in the lake, the diversion of the creek, and the filling of Lake Hiawatha were all

scrapped.

Wirth’s first plan for the lake included a swimming beach on the east shore, which was

later changed to the west shore so it was closer to the Cedar Avenue street car stop.

Wirth later recounted that the park board had considered acquiring Lake Hiawatha (then

Rice Lake) at the same time it acquired Lake Nokomis, but the additional estimated cost

of $25,000 caused the board to postpone that purchase, assuming it could acquire the

additional swamp whenever it wanted. When the park board did buy Lake Hiawatha,

fifteen years later, it paid more than $500,000 for what was still a swamp, but a much

more attractive swamp with a park around Lake Nokomis nearby. In fairness, the half

million dollars eventually paid for Lake Hiawatha, included more land to accommodate a

golf course and the entire creek bed of Minnehaha Creek from Hiawatha to Minnehaha

Park as well as the lake.

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Even with Wirth’s plan for the lake in hand, Lake Nokomis was well down on the board’s

list of priorities at the time. More pressing projects were connecting Lake Calhoun, Lake

of the Isles and Cedar Lake with canals, creating a parkway around Cedar Lake, building

a parkway north and east from Wirth Park to Camden Park and then east across the river

to Columbia Park, building a bath house at Lake Calhoun, adding playgrounds in

“congested” parts of the city, and developing athletic fields at The Parade.

Although the park board did move half of the Lake Calhoun bath house to Lake Nokomis

in 1911 when a new bath house was being built at Lake Calhoun (the other half of the old

Calhoun bath house was moved to Wirth Lake), it also rented the pastureland it owned on

the southwest corner of Lake Nokomis to a farmer for $25 for the summer of 1911.

It wasn’t until 1914 that work began in earnest at Lake Nokomis when the first dredges

set to work scooping muck form the lake bottom to deposit in the northwest corner of the

park. The dredges worked nearly continuously for four years, completing the shaping of

the lake in 1917. A total of 2.5 million cubic yards of earth were moved to reduce the

water area from 300 acres to just over 200 acres and achieve an average depth of fifteen

feet in the lake that remained.

When dredging was done the park board allowed the fill to settle for five years before it

began grading the area. Even with that wait, the fill continued to settle over the years and

additional grading work was done through federal work relief programs in the 1930s.

In the end the lake was on average somewhat deeper than planned because when the

dredges found sand on the bottom of the lake, they dug deeper to collect that sand for the

beach being created on the northwestern shore of the lake.

With the dredging completed, the park board proceeded with plans to build a new bath

house at the Lake Nokomis beach. Construction of the bath house was begun in 1919 and

finished in 1920. From the time it was built, Lake Nokomis surpassed Lake Calhoun as

the most popular swimming beach on city lakes. In 1924 attendance at the Lake Nokomis

bath house was nearly triple the attendance at the Lake Calhoun bath house.

The finishing touches were put on the park in 1924 when walkways were laid out and the

filled land northwest of the lake was prepared to serve as baseball and football fields. The

final addition was an enormous water-toboggan slide at the beach that must have been a

marvel in its day.

The reshaping of Lake Nokomis was called by Wirth years later the biggest single piece

of work ever undertaken by the park board. The lake that had once been envisaged as a

reservoir for Minnehaha Falls was transformed into a navigable lake and a dry park at a

cost of nearly $800,000. The land and lake had cost only $63,500 to purchase. Curiously,

despite so much earth being moved to create a possible reservoir for Minnehaha Falls,

Minnehaha Creek never was diverted into Lake Nokomis.

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By the time the last improvements were made to Lake Nokomis, the park board had

finally acquired Rice Lake and Minnehaha Creek to the falls. Instead of creating a

reservoir of either lake, in 1924 Theodore Wirth proposed digging a deep well near

Longfellow Garden and creating a lagoon there to store water for the falls.

In 1929 the park board began construction of a picnic shelter on the north shore and

added a refectory to the west shore. Construction was completed in 1930, one of the park

board’s last construction projects approved before the Great Depression. Very few

improvements were made to any city parks from then until after World War II, except for

work done by various federal work relief agencies. Even the installation of new

playground equipment during those years, such as at Lake Nokomis in 1936, was done

under the federal programs. Another federal project was the installation of a shore wall

on a portion of the east shore of the lake.

The last changes to the dimensions of the park around Lake Nokomis occurred in 1946

and 1947 when the park board sold a few lots, 0.8 acre, of land it owned east of the lake.

The quality of the water in the lake became a concern for the first time in 1945 when the

Minneapolis health department closed an inlet to the lake from Mother Lake to the

southwest. A garbage dump at that lake was polluting the water that flowed into

Nokomis. The level of Lake Nokomis dropped about a foot for a year until the health

department allowed the inlet to be reopened after the dump was shut down. Low water

plagued all city lakes in the 1950s, which led to a weed problem. Lake Nokomis was one

of seven city lakes treated with sodium arsenite to control weed growth in the late 1950s.

With a rapidly growing economy in the early 1960s, the park board began again to look at

improvements to many city parks that had been neglected for decades. Lake Nokomis was

among the park properties where projects were undertaken to address years of “deferred

maintenance.” Low areas in the park created by fill were refilled, the beach was rebuilt

with more sand, and a shoreline wall built in the 1930s on the east shore was removed.

The park board also initiated a study in 1963 to consider replacing the original bath house

at the beach. The Lake Nokomis beach still led all city beaches in attendance.

In 1966 the bath house at the beach was declared unsafe and a smaller bath house was

built to replace it in 1967. The next year a new playlot was installed next to the beach.

The next major construction project by the lake took place in 1977 as the park board

neared the end of a major construction program that resulted in new recreation and

community centers being built in more than 40 city parks. The park board had hoped to

build a community center with a gym on the former site of Minnehaha School at East 51

Street and 35

Avenue South, but the neighborhood preferred to have the site used for

housing and eventually a seven-story housing cooperative for senior citizens was built on

the site.

Rebuffed in its efforts to acquire the old school site for a new recreation center, as had

been done at four other school board properties, the park board opted to build the

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community center on the hillside overlooking the lake’s northeastern shore. The new

community center was completed in 1977, making Lake Nokomis the only city lake park

with a community center.

Concerns with water quality in all city lakes led to the first study of lake-water quality

throughout the city in 1973. One of the problems identified with water quality was the

elimination years earlier of the wetlands and marshes that had once existed on the shores

of many city lakes. With increased development of surrounding property over the years—

once a primary objective of park development—storm water runoff into the lakes became

a concern. Not only were the watersheds of the lakes fully developed, but the marshes

that had once filtered water into the lakes were long gone. In an effort to restore the

capacity of surrounding land to filter storm water runoff, the park board looked to re-

establish the wetlands and native grasses that once existed in places on lakeshores. That

led to the creation of the Lake Nokomis wet prairie, eight acres of cattail marsh on the

southwest bay of the lake in 1996. Similar wetland restoration projects were completed at

Lake Calhoun and Cedar Lake.

Amelia Pond, at the center of the wet prairie, was dredged in 2011 to remove built-up

sediment, part of regular maintenance of the pond. Work was also done on the shore line

to remove invasive plant species.

Partly due to a desire to restore native vegetation to some parkland, as well as to cut

maintenance costs on manicured lawns, a portion of the hillside northeast of the lake was

turned into the Nokomis Naturescape Garden, following a 1999 Nokomis vegetation

concept plan. The project was conducted in conjunction with the Nokomis East

Neighborhood Association. The garden features native grasses and wildflowers.

Improvements were made to the Nokomis Community Center in 2002 and in 2010

upgrades improved energy-efficiency at the center. The beach house was also upgraded

in 2006 and in 2009 new playground equipment was installed at the main beach. The

entrance to the park from Minnehaha Avenue was re-landscaped in 2010 and in 2011 the

floating swimming dock returned.

In June 2012 the park board adopted emergency measures to prevent the spread of

aquatic invasive species (AIS) to Minneapolis lakes. Since those measures were enacted,

all boats entering Lake Nokomis on a public launch are required to pass an AIS

inspection. Also in 2012 the park board began using scuba divers to remove aquatic

invasive species inaccessible to mechanical harvesters.

In 2013, a Nice Ride bicycle rental kiosk was installed near a parking lot on the north

side of the park. Sturdy, three-speed, lime-green bikes are available to rent from the non-

profit “bike share” company for short-term trips April through October each year,

weather permitting.

Also in 2013, Sandcastle, a concessions stand offering a variety of quick snacks, candy,

ice cream, larger entrees and beer and wine, opened next to Lake Nokomis Main Beach.

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Trivia

Theodore Wirth recommended in 1913 that the park police add officers in the fall. The

reasons? Hunting and football. Additional officers were needed to help control rowdy

crowds attending football games at North Commons and Longfellow Field. And officers

were needed to patrol Glenwood (Wirth) Park and Lake Nokomis to prevent hunting in

those parks. Park police confiscated 30 guns from hunters on park property in 1913.

Before dredging began at Lake Nokomis, the park board tried to get the city of Richfield

to agree to reroute Cedar Avenue to the west of the lake so a bridge wouldn’t be needed

over the water. At that time the boundary between Minneapolis and Richfield was at 54

Street and part of the lake was in Richfield. At first the Richfield city council agreed, but

in 1914 decided Cedar Avenue should not be moved. That section of Richfield was

annexed by Minneapolis in 1926.

Additional Sources

The correspondence of Charles Loring to William Folwell is from William Watts Folwell

and Family Papers, Minnesota Historical Society, St. Paul

Theodore Wirth, Minneapolis Park System 1883-1944: Retrospective Glimpses into the

History of the Board of Park Commissioners of Minneapolis, Minnesota and the City’s

ark, Parkway and Playground System, Minneapolis, 1945

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Lake of the Isles

Location: The land around and including Lake of the Isles

Size: 208.36 acres, including Kenilworth and 118.14 acres of water

Name: The name of the lake, referring to the islands in the lake, was used from the

earliest days of the settlement of Minneapolis. At one time the lake contained four

islands. Two islands near the south shore of the lake were converted to land as the lake

was developed.

Acquisition and Development

Lake of the Isles did not figure in plans for Minneapolis parks when the park board was

created by the state legislature and approved by Minneapolis voters in 1883. The lake,

surrounded by wetlands, was not mentioned in any of the discussions leading up to those

events. Lake Calhoun and Lake Harriet, with much better-defined shorelines, and the

Mississippi River gorge were considered to be the future gems of the park system.

When landscape architect Horace Cleveland delivered his famous “Suggestions for a

System of Parks and Parkways for the City of Minneapolis” to the park board on June 2,

1883, which became the philosophical blueprint for Minneapolis park development, he

proposed no developments at Lake of the Isles.

The first mention of Lake of the Isles in park board documents in any context was in

October 1884 when Joseph Dean and others offered to donate to the park board a right of

way from Hennepin Avenue to Lake Calhoun, part of the northwest shore of Lake

Calhoun and land for a parkway, now Dean Parkway, from Lake Calhoun to Lake of the

Isles.

The campaign to add Lake of the Isles to the park system was led by Charles Loring, the

first president of the park board. Loring, for whom Loring Park is named, was referred to

as early as 1886 as the “Father of the Parks.” Loring had been the pivotal figure in

securing the shores of Lake Harriet at almost no cost to the park board and he led the

effort to replicate that success at Lake of the Isles. He was motivated in part by his desire

to create a parkway from Central (Loring) Park out to Lake Harriet by a route other than

Hennepin Avenue, which had at that time been designated as a parkway.

In January 1885 Loring wrote in his diary that he would not take his annual winter trip to

warmer climes because he was needed in Minneapolis to secure Lake Harriet and Lake of

the Isles for the park system. Loring’s vision for a Lake of the Isles boulevard was that it

would begin at Hennepin Avenue and Summit Avenue, and follow Summit until it cut

southwest to Franklin Avenue, then continue along both sides of the lake to the south.

Even before the park board had designated the shores of the lake for acquisition as a park,

Loring wrote in the 1885 annual report that property owners had already agreed to

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contribute the greater part of the land for the boulevard and that if the rest of the land

could be acquired by donation “the Board will feel justified in undertaking its

improvement.” Loring had a vision for the land that many others did not. He wrote that

improvements could include a “considerable tract of the marsh land on the north side of

the Lake, which in time by dredging from the shallow parts of the lake and filling from

surplus earth on the banks, may be converted in park areas.” Loring’s experience in

supervising the dredging of the pond in Loring Park may have contributed to that vision.

With donations of most of the land arranged personally by Loring, on November 6, 1886

the park board officially designated the lands around Lake of the Isles as a park. With the

exception of two tracts of land, the entire shore of the lake was donated, creating a

parkway 3.6 miles long.

The finishing touch came in 1887 when the park board purchased the two islands in the

lake for $35,000. The board took that action when it learned that the owner of the islands

was contemplating building a bridge to the islands and selling lots on them. By that time

the park board had already begun work on a parkway along the north end of the lake,

which was marsh, and had begun grading the east shore of the lake for a parkway.

The first attempts to improve the shores of the lake came in 1889 when dredging began

on the northern arm of the lake. Dredging continued there and on the east shore of the

lake until 1893. The improvements to Lake of the Isles were not without controversy.

While the dredging was underway in 1892, some commissioners proposed to reduce park

board expenditures at Lake of the Isles in favor of improvements to other parks. Those

proposals were very narrowly defeated.

Even as the work at Isles generated some opposition, ideas for a grander chain-of-lakes

park were being proposed. In the park board’s 1893 annual report, Loring suggested that

all of Lake Calhoun should be acquired by the park board and the outlet from Lake of the

Isles to Lake Calhoun “should be enlarged to permit the passage of boats.” At that time

the park board had very limited resources owing to a national economic depression and

the idea was not pursued for many years. In 1905, however, the park board received

petitions requesting a channel connecting the lakes.

Late in 1905, the park board took a step that would dramatically alter the landscape

around Lake of the Isles. The park board hired a new superintendent to replace the

retiring William Berry who had been superintendent since 1885. The new superintendent,

Theodore Wirth, would promote the radical reshaping of Lake of the Isles. Only two

months into his hiring Wirth made several proposals on which he requested immediate

action by the park board. One of them seemed innocuous at the time, but was the first

step in reshaping Lake of the Isles and Lake Calhoun, and created the foundation for

turning two more swampy lakes, Lake Nokomis and Lake Hiawatha, into new lakes and

parks. Wirth’s suggestion in March 1906 was that he be authorized to remove some

dangerous curves from the parkway on the west side of the lake. Once he began work on

that parkway, he didn’t stop until he had transformed 100 acres of water, 67 acres of

swamp and 33 acres of dry land into 120 acres of water and 80 acres of dry land. Wirth

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also dredged the lake to an average depth of eight feet and significantly expanded the size

of the southern island.

As Wirth began supervising the dredging of Lake of the Isles in 1907, a project that he

admitted was much more difficult than he expected, the park board acquired more of the

land between Lake of the Isles and Lake Calhoun as well as Kenwood Park north of the

lake. In his 1907 annual report Wirth reported on the success of the dredging efforts,

mostly on the west and south shores of the lake, noting in particular that the efforts were

raising real estate values near the lake. He urged that the dredging of the lake should be

the park board’s priority until the project was completed. In 1907 the park board also

approved initial plans and estimates for the channel connecting Lake of the Isles with

Lake Calhoun.

Plans were also in the works for a channel between Lake of the Isles and Cedar Lake. In

1909 Anna Lewis donated the land between Cedar and Isles specifically for that

connection. Problems with the bridge built to cross that proposed channel however

delayed plans for the connection of those two lakes. Unable to complete the connection to

meet a condition of Lewis’s donation, the park board paid her $1,000 for the land.

In 1911 the first of the lake connections—to Lake Calhoun—was completed and led to a

week-long civic celebration. In five years the park board had spent $152,000 on dredging,

filling and constructing parkways across the new fill at Lake of the Isles. That total did

not include the costs of dredging the channel to Lake Calhoun and building the necessary

bridges over the channel.

Once the problems with the bridge over the proposed Kenilworth Lagoon connecting to

Cedar Lake were resolved, the dredges returned to Lake of the Isles to make the

connection to Cedar Lake. That channel was completed in 1913. The opening of that

channel caused the water level in Cedar Lake to drop five feet.

With the completion of the channel, work at Lake of the Isles was substantially done. The

board’s 1914 annual report boasted that what had once been a “miasmatic swamp” had

become an attractive residential district. The total cost of the transformation had been

about $400,000.

It was only a few years, however, before Wirth and the park board determined that

significant new investments were needed at Lake of the Isles, especially to repair the

parkways. The problem at Lake of the Isles, then and now, is that ground created by

dredge fill is often unstable, subject to settling and erosion. Wirth wrote in 1916, that

Lake of the Isles had been “sadly neglected” and suffered from “unsightly appearance.”

Improvements to the parkway didn’t get underway until 1923 when work began to pave

and curb the parkway for the first time.

The problem of settling fill around the lake remained however. In 1928 Wirth

recommended lowering the water level in all lakes by six inches because of shoreline

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problems at Lake of the Isles. That was finally done in 1935, despite problems of low

water in the lakes in intervening years. To even maintain the lakes at the lowered level,

however, the park board pumped city water into the lakes to keep them from being too

low in the late 1930s. Writing of the problem years later, park superintendent Charles

Doell speculated that the lake levels Wirth considered “normal” at the time of the

dredging, were probably actually above historical norms. In 1950 the park board dredged

the channel between Isles and Calhoun to make it deeper to keep it open to boats, but by

the late 1950s not even canoes could pass through the channel.

During those low-water years many city lakes saw a great growth in aquatic plants,

leading in 1959 to sodium arsenite treatments of the lakes, including Lake of the Isles.

The problem of aquatic plants re-emerged in 1987 when the first Eurasian milfoil was

identified in Lake of the Isles. By 1996 the invasive plant had spread to all other lakes in

the chain of lakes, which has led to harvesting of the plant in several lakes under license

from the Minnesota Department of Natural Resources.

In the late 1960s another concern emerged about the city’s lakes: water quality. One of

the unanticipated results of eliminating wetlands around the lakes, and the full

development of surrounding property, was a decrease in lake water quality. There were

no wetlands to serve as natural filters for storm water runoff from surrounding land. Of

course in Wirth’s time the goal was to make sections of the city more appealing to attract

development. Decades later, people realized one of the problems, for water quality at

least, was too much development.

The combination of a concern for water quality along with unusually wet weather in the

1990s that flooded parts of the shore of Lake of the Isles prompted the park board to

develop a master plan to stabilize the shore line, restore some wetlands and fill others

created by high water. The master plan was completed in 1998 and some components of

the plan were not completed until 2008. The total cost of completing the master plan

exceeded $10 million. Much of the funding for the improvements came from the state

legislature through the Metropolitan Council.

Following the extensive work to stabilize the shoreline, in 2008 the park board also

performed extensive restoration on the wildlife refuges on Mike’s and Raspberry Islands.

Arbor Day was celebrated at Lake of the Isles in 2008 and 125 trees were planted near

the north shore of the lake.

Lake of the Isles Parkway was resurfaced in 2009.

Beginning in 2010, the park board was involved in complex discussions over a plan to

run passenger trains from the proposed Southwest Light Rail Transit line across the

Kenilworth Channel between Cedar Lake and Lake of the Isles. In 2010 it formed a

Community Advisory Committee to advise the park board regarding the project’s impact

on park land. In 2012 the park board first formally stated its opposition to the proposed

route traveling over Kenilworth Channel.

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In 2014 engineers were hired to take a closer look at alternatives to the proposed bridge

needed to cross the channel. After careful examination of the report issued by the

engineers and consulting with its legal team, the park board determined an alternative

option – tunneling under the channel – was feasible but it added construction time and

cost to the project that rendered it not prudent.

In February 2015 the park board reached an understanding with the Metropolitan

Council, the public agency overseeing the project, and in September the design of new

bridges over the channel was approved.

Trivia

In 1910 the park board accepted the offer of John Bradstreet, a park commissioner 1901-

1907 and influential interior designer, to build a Japanese temple on one of the islands in

Lake of the Isles. Bradstreet’s work for many of Minneapolis’s elite families had been

strongly influenced by Japanese design. Plans for the project never materialized.

The first park board ordinance to prevent canoe landings on the islands in Lake of the

Isles was passed in 1919.

During the Great Depression when nearly all maintenance work in the city’s parks was

done under federal work relief programs, a masonry shoreline retaining wall was built at

Evergreen Point on the lake by the Works Progress Administration. The WPA also built

shoreline retaining walls on sections of Lake Calhoun, Lake Harriet and Lake Nokomis.

The wall at Lake of the Isles was replaced in 2003.

Additional Sources

Charles Doell Papers, Hennepin History Museum, Minneapolis

Theodore Wirth, Minneapolis park System 1883-1945: Retrospective Glimpses into the

History of the Board of Park Commissioners of Minneapolis, Minnesota and the City’s

Park, Parkway and Playground System, Minneapolis, 1945

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Laurel Triangle

Location: Laurel Avenue and Cedar Lake Road

Size: 0.01 acres

Name: The tiny park was named Laurel Triangle December 18, 1911 for the street on

which it is located.

Acquisition and Development

The park was purchased for unknown reasons and from an unknown owner on January

21, 1911 for $700. The resolution to purchase the small piece of land noted that out of

the $700 appraised value of the land, the park board would first pay all sums due for

taxes and assessments. It seems as though this was an ugly duckling of a triangle that no

one apparently owned, wanted or cared for. Thus, it became a park.

It was included among most other small triangles which were given minor improvements

in 1912, mostly planting grass.

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Levin Triangle

Location: Euclid Place and West 26

Street

Size: 0.3 acres

Name: The small park was originally named Euclid Triangle for the street on which it is

located. The name was adopted December 23, 1907. The name was changed in 1988 to

honor Joanne R. Levin who had organized the neighborhood to have the triangle

improved. Joanne Levin died in 1987 at the age of 43.

Acquisition and Development

Residents of the area petitioned for the park board to acquire the land by condemnation or

by the certificate plan, which provided for payment for the land over ten years. The board

agreed to the purchase on April 1, 1907 if the petitioners would advance the money to

pay for the park or arrange with the owner to accept certificates of payment. On July 1 of

that year the park board agreed to pay M. M. Marcy and his wife $2,650 for the property

and assessed property owners in the neighborhood for the full amount.

Curbs and gutters were installed around the park in 1909, and the next year, after the land

had been filled to grade at the expense of residents in the area, the park was seeded and

planted with shrubs and a large flower bed was created. Park superintendent Theodore

Wirth noted that the grounds had been transformed “from an ugly-looking dumping place

into a neat little park.” The park was re-seeded with grass in 1911 causing park

superintendent Theodore Wirth to write that “splendid results have been obtained” and

that it was a “much appreciated betterment of that attractive residential district.” That is

the last mention of the park in board proceedings and annual reports for years.

The park was renovated in 1977, when a small playground for children, or totlot, was

added to the park thanks to Joanne Levin and her efforts to organize community support

for the improvements. Initial plans for the playground were drawn by an architect in the

neighborhood recruited by Levin. She made her first presentation to the board in the

spring of 1972. In 1974, the park board staff agreed that a playground for small children

was needed in the vicinity, and the park board consequently amended its 1976 bond

request to include funds for a playground in the triangle.

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Linden Hills Park

Location: Xerxes Avenue South and West 42

Street

Size: 7.85 acres

Name: The park was named March 2, 1921 for the neighborhood, which features many

linden trees. Before the name was adopted, it was referred to as Oliver Park after the

subdivision in which it was located. The Linden Hills name had already been in use since

the late 1800s. In 1912, the park board had chosen that name for Linden Hills Boulevard.

Acquisition and Development

The land for the park was officially designated for purchase on November 5, 1919. The

land cost $32,549. The proposal for a park at the site was initially an addition to a much

grander plan for a park in the vicinity. The grand plan did not survive, but the proposal to

establish a play ground and athletic field did.

Land in the vicinity of the park first appeared in park board documents in the 1909 annual

report when park superintendent Theodore Wirth outlined various options for connecting

Lake Calhoun and Lake Harriet. Plans were already made for the fairly straightforward

connection of Lake of the Isles and Lake Calhoun, which would be completed in 1911.

Many in the city were interested in establishing a connection from the other lakes to Lake

Harriet too. One problem was that Lake Harriet was seven feet lower than Lake Calhoun,

so locks would be needed to navigate between the lakes.

One possibility Wirth presented was to create a canal through the wetlands on the

southwest corner of Lake Calhoun, going south between Xerxes and Washburn to 43

east along 43

, then south again at Thomas through Dell Park to connect with Lake

Harriet at about 45

Street. Wirth admitted that the plan would be difficult and

expensive, and it was never pursued. But perhaps the possibility of doing something with

the swamp encouraged the Lake Harriet Commercial Club to consider other options for

the land. They went to the city council and asked that the swamp land be filled. Denied

by the city council, area residents next went to the park board with a bold suggestion:

create a lagoon off of Lake Calhoun by dredging the area between Upton and Xerxes

from the lake to 43rd Street. The park board declined as well, claiming that no funds were

available or “in sight” for the acquisition of the land and the expense of creating a

parkway-rimmed lagoon.

But the park board changed its mind in 1914 and voted to build the lagoon. Wirth

submitted plans and cost estimates for the project and some residents agreed to bear the

hefty cost of the project: $450,000. The design of the project and its cost set off a battle

that wasn’t resolved in the courts for eight years. It was the most contentious issue for

many years for the park board, at a time when most park board decisions were unanimous

or close to it. Some commissioners opposed the plan because it committed more park

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resources to a section of the city that had for years commanded the majority of the park

board’s money and time.

In 1916, as area residents weighed in on the issue, both for and against, an organization

called the Lake Harriet Taxpayers League wrote a letter to the board saying they would

rather have an athletic field and playground than a lagoon for the neighborhood—and it

would cost much less to acquire and build. Perhaps seeing a way to mollify the group and

get their support for “South Bay,” when the park board designated the land for the lagoon

it also designated the land adjacent to the proposed lagoon for a playground—what

would eventually become Linden Hills Field.

In the midst of a court battle over whether the park board had the authority to assess the

costs of South Bay, as well as parkways around the west shore of Lake Calhoun and

through William Berry Park between Calhoun and Harriet, the park board annulled all

previous resolutions for the acquisition and improvement of the lagoon in 1918. The

primary reason, the board reported, was that spiraling costs near the end of World War I

made it impossible to estimate the costs of such a development. When the board asked for

new plans for the development of William Berry Park and Lake Calhoun in 1919, South

Bay was not included.

The death of plans for South Bay, however, did not mark the end of requests for the

playground. On August 6, 1919 the board designated the same land it had in 1916 for

acquisition and improvement as a playing field. The designation of the land only had to

be done one more time to make it official. In November of 1919, the park board once

again approved the designation of the park, but this time left off a resolution to improve

the land immediately, leaving that for “some future time.”

The first plan for the development of Linden Hills Field, as the park was officially named

in 1921, was published in the annual report of that year. It provided for athletic fields,

playgrounds, gymnastic equipment for men and women, tennis courts and a fieldhouse.

With the vacation of York Avenue through the park in 1921 everything was ready for

building a park. All that remained was to drain the land to make it useable.

In one of the most ambitious plans to create a neighborhood park anywhere in the city,

park crews built a 3,600-foot pipeline from the park site to Lake Calhoun to drain the

water. At the request of the city council, which chipped in three-quarters of the money for

the drain, the park board also drained the surrounding neighborhood, a neighborhood that

once was to be converted into lake. To this day a large drain sits in the center of the

park’s playing fields, but it is now connected to the city storm sewer.

The draining of the land was completed for construction of the park to begin in 1924. The

only modification from the original plan published in 1921 was a change in the park

building. Plans were scaled back from a field house to a much smaller shelter. The

change was at the request of property owners in the area who were to be assessed 100%

of the cost of the park’s development. Wirth called the new shelter, which cost $14,000 to

build, one of the most attractive in the city.

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From 1930, when the finishing touches had been placed on the park, through the 1960s,

the park board spent only a few thousand dollars on minor repairs and improvements to

the park and shelter. However, the park, like most others in the city, benefited from

federal programs to provide jobs. Federal work relief crews removed the concrete tennis

courts in the park in 1938. With the construction of storm sewer drains in the

neighborhood, the peat bed on which the courts had been built dried out, causing severe

cracking of the concrete. A work relief crew removed the courts and about ten feet of

peat and replaced it with sand and gravel. The courts were replaced in 1939 after the fill

had settled. The board developed plans for renovation of the park, along with nearby

Waveland Triangle in the mid-1960s, but those plans were not implemented.

It wasn’t until 1972, as the park board was engaged in an ambitious building program in

parks throughout the city, that Linden Hills Field got a new recreation center. Some

improvements were made to the park and playground equipment in 1993. The wading

pool was repaired and the parking lot was resurfaced in 2010.

Fundraising from the neighborhood, United States Tennis Association and Hennepin

County helped pay for new tennis courts, which were finished in 2013.

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Linden Hills Parkway

Location: Russell Avenue, W. 40

Street to Lake Harriet

Size: 5.71 acres

Name: The land was referred to as Park Boulevard for about 25 years until it was

officially named Linden Hills Boulevard, after the surrounding neighborhood, in 1912.

Acquisition and Development: From the first time that Linden Hills Boulevard was

included as a separate item in the park board’s inventory in 1914, it was described as

having been donated by Henry Beard in 1888. However in 1888, the board paid $8,342

for “satisfaction of Beard contract” which included two years and three months worth of

interest on an original amount of $7,200 that the park board owed. It is unclear what land

is referred to in the “Beard contract.” It could include portions of the Lake Harriet shore

as well as Beard Plaisance or Linden Hills Boulevard. Beard was one of the original

donors of the land around Lake Harriet for park purposes.

Park Boulevard was created to link Lake Calhoun to Lake Harriet. It was intended to be

the primary connection between the two lakes until the block of land between the lakes,

eventually named William Berry Park, was acquired in 1889.

The boulevard was originally graded and planted in 1889. In his description of the land in

the 1889 annual report, Charles Loring describes it as the “high land west of the Motor

track, overlooking the lake.” The Motor track he referred to was the street railway track.

The initial layout of the boulevard was a 40-foot-wide driveway flanked by 10-foot-wide

walkways and 20-foot-wide planting spaces, which were covered with loam and seeded.

Original improvements also included a 70-foot viaduct over the street railway tracks at

Queen Avenue. The total cost of the improvements was nearly $7,000.

The street railway rebuilt the bridge in 1905 following extensive negotiations with the

park board over who was responsible for it. The park board refused to repair the bridge,

because it believed the street railway was responsible.

The boulevard was improved significantly in 1912 at a cost of nearly $5,000 and with the

improvements came pressure for a more suitable name. The board chose the name Linden

Hills Boulevard.

The boulevard was paved for the first time in 1921.

The entire length of the parkway was repaved in 1993.

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Logan Park

Location: Broadway Avenue and Monroe Street Northeast

Size: 10.04 acres

Name: Before it was officially named, the park was known simply as First Ward Park. B.

F. Nelson proposed in 1883 to name the park for Henry Sibley, the first governor of

Minnesota, but the park board did not take action on the suggestion.

In 1887, with a reorganization of the political wards of the city, the park became known

as Ninth Ward Park. In May of that year the Dudley Chase Post of the Grand Army of the

Republic (Civil War veterans) proposed naming the park Logan Park, for John A. Logan,

major general of Union Army volunteers during the Civil War. But the park board instead

chose to name the park for the late General Cadwallader C. Washburn in July, 1887.

Washburn was the primary force behind the Washburn Crosby Company, the predecessor

company of General Mills, and an innovator in wheat milling that led to Minneapolis

becoming the flour capital of the world. Cadwallader Washburn had donated considerable

money for the establishment of an orphanage in south Minneapolis near Minnehaha

Creek. Cadwallader Washburn was himself a resident of Wisconsin, and once governor of

Wisconsin, whose business interests in Minneapolis were managed in part by his brother

William D. Washburn. William was a Congressman from Minneapolis 1879-1885 and a

close friend of park commissioners Charles Loring and George Brackett. After the park

was named for his brother, William Washburn was elected to the U. S. Senate and served

from 1889 to 1895.

During his senatorial term, in 1893, the park board decided that Logan Park was a better

name after all. The name was changed at the insistence of northeast Minneapolis resident

and park commissioner Patrick Ryan. Ryan, a Democrat, had defeated Charles Loring for

a park board seat in the election of 1890 and apparently didn’t like having the park in his

neighborhood named for someone in the family of a sitting Republican Senator.

John A. Logan had been much more than the major-general of Union Army Volunteers

during the Civil War. Prior to the war Logan had represented Illinois in Congress as a

Democrat, but after the war he was elected as a Republican to the U.S. House of

Representatives, where he was one of the managers in the impeachment of President

Andrew Johnson. He was later elected to two terms as a U.S. Senator from Illinois. He

was also the Republican nominee for vice president in 1884. He is credited with the idea

of celebrating Memorial Day. Logan died in 1886.

Curiously, or perhaps shrewdly, Ryan preferred naming the park for a man who had been

elected from both political parties in Illinois instead of the brother of the incumbent

Republican senator from Minnesota. Whether having his family’s name removed from a

Minneapolis park played a role, William Washburn was defeated in his senatorial re-

election bid in 1894. Years later, Washburn High School was named for William D.

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Washburn. Washburn sold his eight-acre estate, now Washburn Fair Oaks Park, to the

park board in 1911 for the appraised value of the land, or about $225,000. He threw in his

mansion—one of the city’s largest—along with his stables and greenhouse, which were

valued at an additional $400,000 at the time. The park board eventually demolished all of

those buildings.

Acquisition and Development

Logan Park was one of the first three parks, along with Central (Loring) Park and Third

Ward (Farview) Park, acquired by the park board after it was created in April 1883. The

land was designated as a park May 12, 1883 upon the recommendation of a committee of

B. F. Nelson, Samuel Chute and John S. Pillsbury who had been appointed to select a

park in the “East Division” of the city. The decision to acquire First Ward Park was made

even before landscape architect Horace Cleveland submitted his “Suggestions for a

System of Parks and Parkways for the City of Minneapolis,” which provided the general

blueprint for development of Minneapolis parks.

In the 1883 Annual Report, Charles Loring reported that $34,232 had been set aside to

purchase the property, but noted that some landowners had appealed the condemnation

awards that had been determined by appraisers. The board assessed nearby property

owners a total of $52,422 for the purchase and initial improvement of the park.

Horace Cleveland was commissioned to create a plan for the new park in 1883—for

which he was paid $150. Although Cleveland was generally opposed to “ornamental

decorations” in parks—he said it was like a people buying expensive jewelry before they

had nice clothes—preferring instead that money be spent on acquiring land, he did

propose a fountain for First Ward Park. Cleveland likely proposed the fountain for First

Ward Park because it was the only one of the original parks that did not have a special

topographical appeal, neither hill nor lake nor river bank. Cleveland did not consider the

fountain an urgent need, but thought it wise to account for the possibility of a fountain

from the beginning. The fountain was not built until 1897 and was later converted into a

wading pool.

Logan Park was the most developed of the first parks; it already contained several

houses. In November 1883 the park board approved disposal or sale of the houses that

already existed on the new park property.

In 1885, Logan Park became the first city park to have an ice-skating rink created on dry

land. The only other skating rink in a park was on Johnson’s Pond in Central (Loring)

Park. When the park board installed its first playground equipment in city parks in 1906,

Logan was on its way to becoming the center of recreation programming in the city, a

position it would retain into the 1950s. Logan and Riverside parks were chosen to receive

the first equipment through an appropriation of $2,500 recommended by new

superintendent Theodore Wirth. Clifford Booth, the physical director at the Minneapolis

YMCA, volunteered to provide instruction and supervision on the new apparatus. With

the installation of playground equipment in three more parks the following year, and

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supervision and instruction at all five parks by Booth, city parks had their first recreation

programming. It was the beginning of a dramatic change in city parks over the next

decades from passive to active recreational use.

In 1908 Wirth first recommended the construction of park fieldhouses and playing fields

using Chicago parks as a model. He recommended Logan Park for the first fieldhouse. It

took the park board a few years to act on Wirth’s suggestions, but in 1912 the board built

a fieldhouse there. The total cost of the fieldhouse was $40,000, of which the library

board paid $8,000 so it could use part of the building as a branch library. The building

was intended to be a social center for the neighborhood, a goal aided by the donation of a

piano in 1913 from a neighborhood organization. Wirth noted in his 1913 report that the

building was heavily used in its first year. He wrote that the showers in the building were

used by many men on their way home from work.

With the fieldhouse, Logan Park offered the first year-round recreation activities in the

park system. Despite the tremendous popularity and success of the Logan Park

fieldhouse, it was the only one built by the park board until the 1950s.

By 1921, the board’s annual report noted that the recreation program at Logan was run by

Alice Dietz. Dietz would be a central figure in the development of recreation

programming throughout the park system. The success of the recreation programs under

Dietz led the board to convert the “social” room at the fieldhouse to a gymnasium for

indoor games in 1922. It was the park board’s first indoor athletic facility. By 1927 Dietz

had three assistants but the Depression that followed soon after led to significant cuts in

park spending. By 1933, she was the only park employee at Logan Park and she had no

supplies or equipment to work with. Wirth noted in his report of 1933 that due to

unemployment the park was “overrun” with people. With the advent of the WPA, a

depression era program to provide employment, the park board received scores of

recreation supervisors to work throughout the system. They were trained and managed by

Alice Dietz.

At the end of World War II, after the WPA program ended, Logan was one of only four

parks in Minneapolis that offered recreation programs other than from June 15 to August

15. In 1946, Logan was one of five parks designated as community centers with a district

supervisor to manage recreation activities.

Following a successful experiment at Loring Park in 1960, Logan was one of nine parks

in Minneapolis that began a seniors club in 1963. The clubs sponsored activities one

morning or afternoon each week.

By 1970, the venerable fieldhouse at Logan Park had become obsolete. New recreation

centers had been built elsewhere in the park system by then. As the park board was

beginning a dramatic building phase that created or renovated recreation centers

throughout the city, it authorized demolition of the old fieldhouse and construction of a

new one. What was probably the most successful building in the history of Minneapolis

parks was torn down after fifty-eight years of distinguished service. The new building

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was one of nine “community” centers built in the 1970s and early 1980s. The park

board’s designation of a “community” center meant that it had a gymnasium intended to

serve a larger community than its immediate neighborhood.

Logan Park got a major makeover in 1997. In 2010 the parking lot was resurfaced and the

community center was given several upgrades, including a high-efficiency boiler to

improve energy-efficiency.

A Nice Ride bicycle rental kiosk was installed at the park in 2011.

A revamped, expanded Arbor Day Celebration was hosted at the park in 2016. More than

130 trees comprising 39 different species were planted during a community festival that

featured live music, tree-themed games and activities and a beer garden.

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Longfellow Park

Location: 36

Avenue South and East 34

Street

Size: 8.13 acres

Name: The park is unofficially named for Henry Wadsworth Longfellow, an American

poet who wrote The Song of Hiawatha in 1854. The poem made Minnehaha Falls famous

around the world, although Longfellow had never visited the falls. The current

Longfellow Field was never officially named after it was acquired in 1918. The park has

been called Longfellow Field since it was acquired because it replaced an earlier park by

that name located about a mile closer to downtown on Minnehaha Avenue between East

and East 28

streets. The first Longfellow Field was sold by the park board in 1917.

Acquisition and Development

The park board has owned two different parks called Longfellow Field. The first was

purchased for $7,000 in 1911. It was a little more than four acres. At the time, that land

had already been used as a playing field and was considered to be ideally situated to

accommodate a great many people. The board at the time considered the purchase terms

to be very favorable. The park was adjacent to an elementary school, Longfellow School.

At a cost of about $8,000 football and baseball fields, and tennis, volleyball and

basketball courts were installed, as well as playground apparatus. In 1912 park

superintendent Theodore Wirth wrote that it was one of the most active playfields in the

city. Along with North Commons it was the site of many citywide football and baseball

games, because the fields at The Parade were out of commission for two years as they

were regraded and seeded.

Despite the park’s popularity, and its accessibility by street car, it was sold in 1917. The

Minneapolis Steel and Machinery Company, which was located east of the park, asked

the park board in late 1917 to name its price for the land. A week later the park board said

it wanted $35,000 for the land and within a month the deal was done. The park board

explained that it made the deal because the area was no longer suitable for a park because

of the growth of manufacturing businesses in the area. The board also cited the fact that

the school board had closed Longfellow School next to the park. Moreover, the board

said the park was going to require expenditures for improvements anyway. (That

explanation may not have held weight if the park board had proceeded with plans to build

a shelter and toilets at the park in 1916. Bids for the construction of the shelter, which an

architect had been hired to design, came in at more than $10,000, twice what the park

board had allocated. Consequently, all bids were rejected and the shelter wasn’t built.)

As part of the resolution to sell the park, the board included its intention to find a “more

suitable area” for a park and playground nearby in south Minneapolis. Less than two

weeks after the sale of the first Longfellow Field was completed, the board designated

land for a second Longfellow Field, the three blocks from 35

to 38

Avenues South

between East 34

and East 35

Streets. The new park was in a thinly settled section of

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the city. Due to its location farther from downtown, and farther from streetcar lines, the

new park would never replace the old Longfellow Field as a city-wide sports destination.

Appraisers were immediately appointed to determine the value of the new site for

purchase by condemnation. When the appraisers made their report on February 6, 1918,

park commissioners had second thoughts. The two blocks from 36

to 38

avenues had

no buildings on them and were appraised at just over $16,000. The block to the west,

however, between 35

and 36

, included three new houses. The appraisal for that block

alone was more than $17,000. And there were appeals to the appraisals from property

owners on both blocks.

Ultimately, the board chose to defer purchase of the westerly block, and reached

agreement with the single owner of the two blocks where the park now stands to pay him

$16,000 plus $758 he owed in back taxes and assessments on the land. The deal was

approved by the board on May 1, 1918.

The 1918 annual report of the board includes park superintendent Theodore Wirth’s

initial plan for the park, which proposed a field house that formed the back of a

grandstand overlooking a combined football and baseball field and track. The board

appropriated $12,500 for grading the field that year, but Wirth noted that grading had

begun too late in the year to provide a skating rink that winter. The next year Wirth

reported that the grading was completed and that playground apparatus would be installed

in the spring of 1920. He also noted that when the “district is more settled,” the park

board could build a modern field house there.

In December 1920 Wirth submitted a revised plan for a small wood-frame shelter in the

park, which he admitted was not much more than a toilet building. He said it would serve

the needs “for now” of what he called one of the most active playgrounds in the city. He

thought the shelter would stimulate demand in the neighborhood for “more adequate

accommodations” in the near future. The shelter, which was built in 1921, was designed

and constructed so it could easily be moved to another park when a larger field house was

built at Longfellow.

In 1929, Wirth submitted a new plan for the park. Gone were his visions of a field house.

Instead he recommended a “standard” shelter to replace the wood building, which he

called “entirely inadequate.” Although Wirth’s plan was revised in 1930, after input from

the neighborhood, to include croquet and basketball courts and eliminate the running

track, neither of the plans were ever implemented. The Great Depression put an end to

those plans and the temporary shelter built in 1921 was not replaced until the 1960s.

Although the wood shelter at Longfellow was quite modest, it was one of few

improvements in neighborhood parks in that era that wasn’t paid for through property

assessments. Because of the profit on the sale of the original Longfellow Field in 1917,

the board bought the new land and paid for all improvements with those funds. The

neighborhood around Longfellow Field is one of the only ones in the city that did not pay

for its neighborhood park through property assessments.

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That changed in 1961 when the park board approved spending $125,000 in bond funds

and a $125,000 assessment on area property to renovate the field and replace the old

wood shelter. By 1963 the whole park was rebuilt, with new playground equipment, new

tennis courts, enlarged athletic areas, and a “modern” brick building.

The modern brick building at Longfellow was one of the first new recreation centers built

in the 1960s, and was the showcase recreation building in the city before the building

boom in recreation and community centers in parks in the 1970s. Even Longfellow Field

participated in the citywide upgrade of recreation buildings when construction on a new

community center with a gym was begun in 1975. Longfellow was one of eight parks in

the city that got a larger community center with a gym designed to serve more than just

the surrounding neighborhood.

Several playground renovations were carried out in 1990. The Community Center has

undergone several improvements in recent years including new HVAC systems and a

redesigned entry way in 2007 and a remodeled community center and updated kitchen in

2008.

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Longfellow Gardens

Location: Minnehaha Parkway from 39

Avenue South to Minnehaha Avenue.

Size: 13.46 acres

Name: The park is named for the zoo and gardens that once existed on the site, which

were owned and operated by Robert “Fish” Jones. He named his attraction for Henry

Wadsworth Longfellow whose poem The Song of Hiawatha made nearby Minnehaha

Falls world famous.

Acquisition and Development

The park board acquired title to the land of Longfellow Garden in 1924, but it didn’t take

undisputed possession of the land until 1936. The terms of the acquisition by the park

board had led to a dispute over ownership.

The story of the property and the dispute really goes back to the early 1890s, shortly after

Minnehaha Falls was acquired by the park board in 1889. In the years after the

acquisition, the park board accepted the donation of several animals that were put in pens

in the lower glen east of the falls. Throughout the 1890s the park board accepted as gifts,

or purchased for small sums, many animals for what became an unofficial zoo. In the

words of William Folwell, who was president of the park board through most of the

1890s, the policy of operating a zoo had developed “silently.” More pens were built,

including a bear pit, and a wide variety of animals and birds were accepted for the zoo,

including some, such as sea lions and an alligator, that were not native species. Many of

the animals were housed in winter in the park board’s barns at Lyndale Farmstead. The

alligator spent its winters at Richard Mendenhall’s greenhouse. By the late 1890s the zoo

had grown to the point that Folwell speculated that more people went to Minnehaha Park

to see the animals than the falls.

The issue of operating a zoo came to a head in 1906 when long-time park superintendent

William Berry retired and was replaced by Theodore Wirth. Wirth was not a fan of

animals in his parks or his warehouse in winter. He also expressed his sympathy for

animals that were caged in too-small spaces. Fortunately for Wirth, a Minneapolis fish

seller, Robert “Fish” Jones, who had collected a menagerie of animals at his shop on the

site of the present basilica, had acquired land next to Minnehaha Park to house his

animals and open a zoo. His collection was no longer welcome in his old neighborhood.

Jones agreed to take many of the park board’s animals in 1907 and add them to his own.

The park board gave all its animals to Jones except the deer, elk and bear which could

live year round in the park—and did until 1923. One condition of the park board’s deal

with Jones was that he had to offer free admission to his zoo one day a week.

Jones created Longfellow Zoological Gardens where people could wander about his

gardens accompanied by sea lions, ride a camel and attend lion-taming shows in a an

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arena. To add to the attraction Jones built for himself a house on the property, a replica of

Henry Longfellow’s house in Cambridge, Massachusetts. He even raised money to

commission a statue of Longfellow that adorned his garden.

Despite complaints from neighbors about the sounds and smells of a zoo, the first

mention of the park board’s desire to get rid of the zoo came in Wirth’s annual report of

1922. Noting the demands of the neighborhood for a playground, Wirth urged the board

to acquire the property of the zoo, suggesting that the park board make an offer on the

property and allow Jones to remain on the property for life. One reason for the lack of

urgency in the proposal, according to Wirth, was the shortage of funds to create and

maintain another playground. That could be done later. Wirth also suggested that the city

needed a zoo and proposed finding another spot in the parks— perhaps the southwest

portion of Glenwood (Wirth) Park—for a zoo if a private zoological society could be

formed to raise funds to develop and maintain the zoo. Wirth believed that operating a

zoo was beyond the means of the park board.

In 1924, a year after it disposed of the remaining animals in Minnehaha Park to create a

new picnic ground, the park board voted to condemn the land of Longfellow Gardens.

Appraisers were appointed—twice—to determine the value of Jones’s land, but neither

appraisal was satisfactory to both parties. A compromise was reached. Jones would

donate his land to the park board, at a value of $75,000, which would make his land tax

exempt. In return he would retain the right to occupy the property for ten years.

The same year Wirth proposed sinking a deep well in Longfellow Garden to generate

water for a pleasing flow over Minnehaha Falls. The next year he took his proposal a step

further, suggesting the creation of a 4.5 acre “lakelet” along Minnehaha Creek next to

Longfellow Garden by damming the creek at Hiawatha Avenue. In the plan he presented

for the project the land of Longfellow Garden is designated as “future playground.” The

deep well was dug and the creek was dammed in 1926. Wirth credited the reservoir with

creating a “fairly good” supply of water to the falls.

In 1930 the great showman and entrepreneur Robert “Fish” Jones died and his property

was inherited by his daughter. The park board’s annual report of 1930 contained a photo

of Jones wearing his signature top hat and Wirth suggested that the land be renamed R. F.

Jones Park to honor him. Upon the expiration of the ten years Jones had rights to the

property, his daughter contested his donation of the land. Although the courts denied her

claims, it wasn’t until more than a year later, in early 1936 that the park board actually

took possession of the land.

Almost as soon as it did, it leased Jones’s former home, Longfellow House, to the

Minneapolis Library Board for use as a branch library. With a thirty year lease on the

building, the library board opened the Longfellow Branch Library in 1937. The statue of

Longfellow remained where it stood and a playground was never built on the land.

The land became the center of one of the great controversies in park history in the 1960s

when the state proposed to build a freeway on Hiawatha Avenue from downtown to the

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airport. State plans called for an elevated freeway to cross over the creek, although a

tunnel under the creek was also considered. The park board objected strenuously to the

plan and hired its own consultants, who proposed instead that the freeway be built to loop

around the western edge of Longfellow Garden. The problem with that plan, which

generated heated opposition in the neighborhood, was that it would have required the

condemnation of many more homes and businesses. The park board sued to stop the

state’s highway plan, but lost its case in both district court and the state supreme court. In

1968 the park board appealed its case to the United States Supreme Court, but before the

case could be heard the Supreme Court ruled in a related case from Nashville that park

land could not be taken for highways. That decision established a precedent and the state

dropped its elevated freeway plan.

When plans were revived for a highway on Hiawatha Avenue in the 1990s, the highway

department and the park board agreed on a modified tunnel plan for the road. The

highway would pass above the creek to avoid disturbing the creek bed, but a land bridge

would be created over the highway. The result is the present Longfellow Gardens, which

was created over the highway tunnel in 2003. The steep slope created by the land bridge

over the tunnel was seeded with native flowers and grasses.

The construction of the highway required, however, that the Longfellow House be

moved. The library board had stopped using the house as a branch library when its lease

expired in 1968. To accommodate the new highway, the house was moved east of

Hiawatha Avenue and restored. It is now an information center for the Grand Rounds and

is used as offices by the Minneapolis Parks Foundation.

The statue of Longfellow remains in its original location.

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Loring Park

Location: Hennepin Avenue and Harmon Place

Size: 33.94 acres, including 7.08 acres of water

Name: The first name for the park was Central Park when it was purchased in 1883. For

a little less than a month in 1885, the park was renamed Spring Grove Park, but park

commissioners changed their minds and the name reverted to Central Park. In 1890, at

the suggestion of William Folwell, the park was renamed in honor of the first president of

the park board, Charles Loring. Loring objected, asking instead that the park be named

Hennepin Park. The park board voted in favor of Folwell’s suggestion.

Charles M. Loring

Charles Loring has been known since the 1880s as the “Father of Minneapolis Parks.” He

was appointed as a park commissioner in the legislation in February 1883 that created the

park board and was elected by the other appointed commissioners to be the president of

the new board. Loring was already well-known for his work planting trees and supporting

various efforts to create parks. Since the early 1860s he had promoted park efforts and is

credited with planting the first trees in Minneapolis west of the Mississippi River, which

at the time was mostly prairie.

Loring had been a successful merchant running a dry goods store with his partner, Loren

Fletcher. Fletcher became the speaker of the Minnesota House of Representatives that

passed the act that created the Board of Park Commissioners for Minneapolis. By the

time the park board was created, Loring and Fletcher had sold their store and bought flour

mills, and invested in railroads and other burgeoning businesses that were springing up in

the city. Loring was also an investor in real estate in the city.

As a city council member in the early 1870s he had promoted planting trees, especially at

the city’s only park at the time, Murphy Square. When the daughters of Franklin Steele,

one of the first settlers in the area, donated land for Franklin Steele Square to the city in

1882, a condition of their donation was that Loring supervise planting and improvements

in the park, a condition to which he readily agreed.

Loring devoted considerable time to park matters during his presidency of the board from

1883 to 1890. He personally supervised the development of Central Park to Horace

Cleveland’s plans and the conversion of Hennepin Avenue into a parkway. The

acquisition by the park board of Lake Harriet, Lake of the Isles and Lake Calhoun for

parks was largely Loring’s doing. He convinced many landowners to donate their land

around the lakes and persuaded other park commissioners to purchase the remaining

parcels of land that weren’t donated. He was the moving force behind the creation of the

lake parks. The other commissioners had such confidence in Loring’s leadership that

when they met to elect officers after the first public election of park commissioners in

1884, they once again voted him president. When they realized they couldn’t elect him

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president because he wasn’t in town and hadn’t yet taken the oath of office (he had been

out of town during the election too and hadn’t campaigned for the post), the board

postponed the election ofofficers until he returned a few weeks later. Then they elected

him president.

Loring was an early proponent of establishing playgrounds for children in parks. He was

the first to make the case, in 1893, that playgrounds were needed for children in the city.

His passion for playgrounds likely played a role in his hiring Theodore Wirth as the new

superintendent of parks in 1905, when Loring was once again a park commissioner.

Loring chaired the special committee to hire a replacement for the retiring

superintendent, William Berry, and he went to Hartford, Connecticut to interview Wirth.

Loring likely hired Wirth, in part, because he shared Loring’s commitment to establishing

playgrounds.

Loring made several significant donations to the park board after his time as a park

commissioner. In 1906 he donated the shelter and warming house beside the pond in

Loring Park, which still stands. In 1916 he contributed the funds to build an artificial

waterfall into what is now Wirth Lake in Wirth Park (then Glenwood Park). Finally, he

contributed $50,000 for a permanent trust to plant and maintain the trees along Victory

Memorial Drive that honored American soldiers killed in battle. Loring died in 1922,

nearly 89 years old, and was interred at Lakewood Cemetery, a cemetery he helped

create. His monument reads “Father of the Parks.”

Acquisition and Development

Central Park was the first land purchased by the park board when it was created in April

1883. In the 1883 annual report, Loring described the appeal of the land for a park. “It

embraces,” he wrote, “Johnson’s Lake, fed by unfailing springs of pure water, a

surrounding area of level land, and on its north and east side an undulating declivity

covered with a fine growth of native deciduous trees and carpeted with an emerald turf

which have long designated it in the public estimation for a park.”

Many years earlier Loring said he had considered building his home across from

Johnson’s Lake before it was a park, but decided that it was too far from the city. But by

1883 Loring noted that the park had become easily accessible by surrounding streets and

could be reached by “horse cars and motor line.”

That the land had been considered an ideal spot for a park was demonstrated by the park

board’s fast action in acquiring the land. The park board met for the first time on April

17, 1883 and only eleven days later it designated the land it wanted for Loring Park. The

initial acquisition comprised about thirty acres at a cost of about $150,000. The park was

expanded several times over the next few years, including extending the park to Willow

Street on the east in 1890 and purchasing the lot on the southwest corner of the park

along Hennepin Avenue in 1902. The total cost of acquiring the land in several stages

amounted to nearly $350,000.

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Loring and fellow commissioner and friend George Brackett were assigned by the park

board to contract for the excavation of Johnson’s Lake to remove the bog in the lake and

fill the surrounding marsh. The park board also vacated streets that ran through the newly

acquired land and decided from the beginning that the park would be for pedestrians

only.

Landscape architect Horace Cleveland was hired to create the initial plan for the park.

His layout of the park was intended for rapid development and fast growth of trees and

shrubs that were transplanted mostly from nearby woods. The success of Cleveland’s

design was noted in an influential magazine, Garden and Forest, in October 1888. “The

rapidity with which the artist’s idea has grown into an interesting picture,” the magazine

wrote in a feature article on Central Park, “is certainly unusual.”

The first winter after the lake was enlarged, 1884, the park board created a skating rink

on the pond, the park board’s first provision for active recreation in parks. The ice was

cleared and planed by horse-drawn implements. The following year, electric lights were

installed to illuminate the rink.

The excavation of the lake and other construction in the area interrupted the flow of

springs into the lake, so in 1887 the park board sank an artesian well next to the lake to

provide an uninterrupted flow of fresh water.

Central Park was the center of park activity from the beginning with not only ice skating,

but a bandstand built in 1886 and tennis courts in 1887. (By 1911 Loring had two tennis

courts, and that year the park board built a pipe-and-wire backstop for one of them.)

In 1889 the board placed ten row boats on the lake which were available for rent, and also

accepted a gift of a pelican for the lake. When the board first approached the state’s game

and fish commission about stocking the lake with fish, the commission reported in 1890

that the lake was so full of bullheads, it might have to dynamite the lake to get rid of

them. Although there is no record of whether the bullheads were dynamited, the lake’s

environment for fishing must have changed over time, because in 1918 the Minneapolis

Angling Club constructed a casting platform on the shores of the lake. Many years later,

in 1943, the lake was stocked with pan fish to provide a dietary supplement to rationed

food during World War II.

That Central Park was viewed as the hub of the park system was evident in the

construction of parkways in the city. Initially, Hennepin Avenue was viewed as a

parkway to connect Central Park to the parkway being built around Lake Harriet. Lyndale

Avenue was selected as a parkway north to connect with Farview Park. With heavy

traffic along Hennepin Avenue and the inability of the park board to purchase as wide a

strip of land along Hennepin as it desired, an alternative route to the lakes was found in

Kenwood Parkway. The parkway was built on land donated to the park board, creating a

new more parkway-like connection to Lake of the Isles and then to Lake Calhoun and on

to Lake Harriet. This connection of Central Park to the lakes via Kenwood Parkway,

which was Loring’s idea, likely led to Loring’s commitment to securing, mostly by

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donation, the entire shore of Lake of the Isles—and shifted park board attention for many

years to developing the “chain of lakes” as a park. When Minnehaha Park was acquired

in 1889, the goal expanded to connecting Central Park with the new park surrounding

Minnehaha Falls, which led to the acquisition of the land along Minnehaha Creek from

Lake Harriet east toward the Falls.

Minneapolis came close to losing Loring Park in 1895 when the park board voted to give

the park to the state for the site of a new state capitol building in hopes of luring state

government from St. Paul. Instead, the state chose the present site for the capitol in St.

Paul. The only building in the park at the time was a shed used by park superintendent

William Berry as his office. Although as early as 1887, at Loring’s suggestion, the park

board considered moving the original home of settler John Stevens, the first permanent

house built in Minneapolis, to Loring Park. Ultimately the board decided to place the

house in Riverside Park. The Stevens House was eventually moved to Minnehaha Park,

where it still stands. Loring Park has always been coveted by others for civic buildings.

In 1909, a group of citizens, including T. B. Walker, petitioned the park board to build a

library in the park. In 1923, Loring Park was considered as the site of a new municipal

auditorium.

Loring’s wish for playgrounds for children in parks was partially granted when the park

board erected its first swings, teeter-totters and sand boxes in Loring Park in 1904. The

first permanent recreation center in Minneapolis parks was erected in 1906, when Charles

Loring donated a heated two-story building next to the lake to serve as a recreation

center, kindergarten and warming house for skaters. Following Theodore Wirth’s arrival

as park superintendent in 1906, Loring Park was one of five parks in which the park

board installed more elaborate playground and gymnastic equipment.

In early years Loring Park was also the center of floral displays in parks. Even after

Wirth arrived and created the Rose Garden at Lyndale Park, and the Armory Gardens

were planted across Hennepin and Lyndale avenues from Loring Park, Loring Park

continued to have more flowers planted each year than any other park. In 1919, for

example, the park board’s horticulturist, Louis Boeglin, planted more than 19,000 flowers

and bedding plants in the park.

Loring Park was the site of an Arbor Day celebration in 1916, called Loring Day, at

which time an elm tree was planted in Charles Loring’s honor. Many of the original elms

planted in the park had been grown from seedlings by Loring at his Lake Minnetonka

property.

Early in its history Loring Park also became the center for pitching horseshoes in the city

and in 1921 the national horseshoe tournament was held there. Loring Park still has an

active horseshoe league, the only one in the city. Shuffleboard was also once popular in

the park. When four lighted shuffleboard courts were built in the park in 1939, they were

so popular that reservations were necessary to use them in the evenings.

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Loring Park has been the site of dramatic and musical performances since its earliest days.

It was not only the site of the first bandstand in a park, but it was the site of theatrical

performances since the early 1900s. When the city celebrated the linking of Lake of the

Isles and Lake Calhoun in 1911, a historical play was offered at Loring Park that attracted

an estimated 25,000 for each performance over three nights. In 1914, the park board

approved a petition by a group of University of Minnesota students to perform

Shakespeare in the park. Loring Park was also an important venue for the community

singing competitions staged in various parks from 1919 to 1958. In fact, as the once

hugely popular mass singing competitions dwindled in popularity, Loring was one of

only three parks still participating at the end. Loring Park’s viability for continuing

musical performances was enhanced in 1951 with the construction of a new bandstand.

Loring is still a venue for public performances, from concerts to movies.

Among Loring’s many other notable firsts in park history, it was the first park to have a

wading pool installed in 1940 to meet new state requirements that wading pools have

continuously circulating water. In 1960, Loring Park was the first to provide programs

specifically for senior citizens. The shelter donated by Charles Loring was renovated that

year to provide space for the seniors programs. The initial success of those programs led

to expanding the senior program to eight other parks in 1963.

Loring Park was also one of the first places where the park board experimented with

leasing a private concession when in 1980 it leased space for Loring Picnic Place to sell

sandwiches and refreshments. (The park board had at one time sold the concession for

food service at the Lake Harriet Pavilion, but that practice was ended by Theodore Wirth

who believed the park board should provide all services in parks.) The Loring Picnic

Place was the precursor of leases to private concessionaires at Lake Calhoun and

Minnehaha Park in the early 2000s.

Loring Park today is slightly smaller than it once was. The first encroachment on Loring

Park occurred in 1891 when Hennepin Avenue was widened resulting in 23 trees being

transplanted to what is now Windom Park in northeast Minneapolis. In 1939, Loring Park

lost more land when 15

Street was widened. But the largest loss of land at the park took

place when I-94 was built in the 1960s, which required the further widening of Hennepin

and Lyndale avenues on the west side of the park near the I-94 Lowry Hill Tunnel.

The two most prominent landmarks within the park were added nearly eighty years apart.

The statue of Ole Bull, a Norwegian composer, was erected in the park in 1897. The

Berger “Dandelion” Fountain, a gift from park commissioner Ben Berger, was erected in

1975.

Loring Park has undergone important renovations in the last thirty years. In 1977, the

northern arm of Loring Lake was dredged, the footbridge over the neck of the lake was

repaired and the original shelter was renovated. In 1979 the park board reiterated its

approval for a pedestrian and bicycle bridge from Loring Park to The Parade over the

freeway that had first been approved about 1970. The concept finally took shape nine

years later when, with the development of the Minneapolis Sculpture Garden on park

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property at the Parade, the Irene Hixon Whitney Bridge was built to link the two parks.

The bridge, a work of art in itself, was designed by Minneapolis designer Siah Armajani.

The bridge was paid for by a gift from the family of Irene Hixon Whitney and state and

federal funds.

Loring Park got a complete makeover beginning in 1998 through a combination of funds

from the park board, the city’s Neighborhood Revitalization Program and the non-profit

Friends of Loring Park. The lake bottom was lined to prevent water loss, the Loring

Shelter was expanded dramatically into an art center and the Loring Garden of the

Seasons was developed, among other improvements.

The north bay of Loring Pond was dredged in 2007 to remove sediment and the wading

pool in the park was upgraded a year later to meet new safety guidelines.

One of the first Nice Ride bicycle rental kiosks was installed at the north side of the park

in 2010.

The hard courts in the park were resurfaced in 2011 and a 1,000-square-foot rain garden

was planted by Friends of Loring Park along the north and west sides of the Loring Park

Community Center in 2012.

In 2014 the park board embarked on a multiyear plan to reduce the number invasive

cattails blanketing Loring Pond and in 2015 the annual Holidazzle festival shifted to

Loring Park due to construction on Nicollet Mall.

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Lovell Square

Location: Irving and 10

Avenue North

Size: 1.29 acres

Name: The park was named for C. P. Lovell, who, along with Elwood Corser and

William Barnes, donated the land for the park. The name Lovell Square was officially

adopted in 1890.

Acquisition and Development

The land for Lovell Square was tendered to the park board by Corser, Barnes and Lovell

in June 1887 and was designated as a park by the board in July of that year. Although the

park is mentioned with other small parks in the 1888 annual report, it first shows up on its

own in the park board inventory in 1889. The annual report of that year noted that Corser

et al had deeded the park to the park board in April 1889. At that time the park was listed

as 3.67 acres, but in the 1893 inventory the size of the park was reduced to 1.35 acres

without any mention of the disposition of any land.

A request to dig a well in the park was approved in 1916 after earlier attempts to have a

well placed there were denied.

Active recreation in the park was discouraged when the park board agreed with requests

from neighbors who objected to “big, rough boys” playing football and baseball in the

park and endangering small children. The board instructed the superintendent to post

signs in 1917 prohibiting baseball and football games in the park.

A concrete tennis court was built at Lovell Square in 1938 by a federal work relief crew,

one of 43 built around the city that year.

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Lowry Park (Thomas)

Location: Douglas Avenue South, Bryant Avenue South and Mt. Curve.

Size: 1.46 acres

Name: The park was originally named Douglas Triangle for the street on which it is

located. The name was officially changed to Mt. Curve Triangles (plural), on November

4, 1925, when the previous Mt. Curve Triangle was renamed Fremont Triangle. The park

was officially named in honor of Thomas Lowry in 1984.

Lowry is best known for developing the street railway system in Minneapolis. The Lowry

Hill neighborhood, in which the park is located, was named because he owned most of

the land and built his imposing mansion on the hill.

Lowry was a generous contributor to the park system. He donated to the park board about

half of the land that is now The Parade, as well as some land at Lyndale Farmstead Park.

He also contributed more than $20,000 in cash for the improvement of The Parade.

Through his company, the Minneapolis Street Railway Company, Lowry was an

important figure in the development of Lake Harriet. To attract riders on the railway line

to the lake, the company built the first entertainment pavilion near the lake on private

property in 1888. When that pavilion burned down, the company built a new pavilion on

park property on the shore of the lake in 1891. In an agreement with the park board, the

company paid for entertainment at the pavilion. When that pavilion also burned down in

1901, the company chose not to build a new pavilion but contributed the $15,000

insurance settlement on the destroyed pavilion so the park board could build its own

pavilion at the same location. The company also relocated its track at its own expense,

reported to have been $25,000, to create sufficient space for a parkway along the north

shore of Lake Calhoun in 1910.

Lowry’s company benefitted from a controversial park board decision in 1892 to allow

the company to lay track down the center of Hennepin Avenue south from Loring Park,

which was a parkway at the time. The decision prompted park board member and later

park board president, William Folwell, to propose that the park board relinquish control

of Hennepin Avenue as a parkway due to its ”abandonment to the street railway.” The

park board returned control of Hennepin Avenue to the city in 1905.

Acquisition and Development

The first mention of the land in park board documents was in the summer of 1899 when

Thomas Lowry and others petitioned the park board to improve and maintain the triangle

as a park. The petition was denied because the park board didn’t own the land.

A petition from some residents of the neighborhood to acquire the land for a park was

denied by the park board in 1908. A group of residents, including A. C. Loring, who was

the CEO of Pillsbury and son of the park board’s first president Charles Loring,

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petitioned the park board to acquire the land again in 1922, when they learned of plans to

build a hotel on the site. Residents of the neighborhood, who would be assessed the cost

of acquiring and improving the park, were divided on whether they wanted to pay for the

park. The park board’s committee on designation and acquisition of grounds sent the

proposal for the acquisition to the full board without recommendation, an unusual

indication of at best tepid support for the project. In late 1923 the full board voted to

purchase the land for the park for $76,000.

The annual report of 1922 includes a design created for the park by park commissioner

and landscape architect Phelps Wyman. The plan for the park was distinctive not only for

the pergola at the head of the park, but for the artificial cascade running through the park,

from which the park got its informal name of “Seven Pools.” It was also one of only two

park designs published in annual reports that were not produced by park board staff. Park

superintendent Theodore Wirth noted that Wyman prepared the plan at his invitation. The

plan is also unique in that it was printed in color, one of very few color plates printed in

annual reports before the 1990s.

Wyman’s plan for the park was mostly executed in 1924, although the pergola was

constructed in the spring of 1925. By then Wyman had resigned from the park board to

become a landscape architect for the Milwaukee park commission. Wirth called the park

one of the “most expensive undertakings” in the history of the park board at a total cost

of more than $100,000 for acquisition and improvement, roughly $44,000 per acre. But

Wirth also called the “gem” of a park one of the most attractive and satisfactory park

improvements ever achieved. “The location of this small park at the entrance to one of

the very finest residential districts of the city,” Wirth wrote in the 1924 annual report,

“furthermore justifies the expenditure.” The total cost was assessed on area property

owners over ten years.

The artificial cascade and seven pools were repaired in 1953. The park was given a

makeover—new brick path, new benches and fresh landscaping—in 1997.

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Luxton Park

Location: Williams Avenue SE and St. Mary’s Avenue SE

Size: 4.49 acres

Name: The name of the park was changed from “Prospect Field” to “George E. Luxton

Park” on August 17, 1963. Throughout 1963 the board had received petitions to change

the name of the park to honor Luxton. He died in late 1962 at the age of 82. George

Luxton had been a reporter, columnist and photographer for Minneapolis newspapers for

60 years and had been president of the neighborhood improvement association in

southeast Minneapolis. Moreover, as the board noted in its resolution to name the park

for him, “his love of flowers brought him in contact with literally every gardening club

and horticultural society in Minnesota.” He was called an “enthusiastic supporter” of the

board’s efforts to beautify Minneapolis. In its 1953 annual report the board included a

photo of Luxton receiving a scroll of appreciation from the park board for his interest in

park floriculture. The scroll was presented to him during “George Luxton Day” at the

park board’s annual chrysanthemum show at Lyndale Farmstead Park.

Acquisition and Development

The 5.31 acres of land for Luxton Park, then called Prospect Field, was purchased in

1912 from Frank C. Nickels, R. J. Owens and others for $15,134. The purchase was in

response to petition in April, 1912 from area residents for a playground in the southeast

neighborhood, which, despite park developments throughout the city, had no play area

closer than Van Cleve Park on the other side of the university. A petition in 1907 to

acquire a playground adjacent to Motley School had been denied.

The petition in 1912 was approved immediately for the tract of vacant land.

Condemnation proceedings began with the appointment of appraisers in May. Despite

objections from Frank Nickels to the amounts awarded, the park board confirmed the

appraisals. The board subsequently struck a deal with him for the bulk of the land for the

park.

One reason for the prompt action on the petition to acquire the land was revealed in

January 1913 when the Prospect Park Improvement Association thanked the board for the

acquisition and promised that it wouldn’t ask for improvements to the land until bonds

could be issued for that purpose. In those days of rapid expansion of the park system and

demands from every quarter of the city for park improvements, the board was more

inclined to acquire park land if residents of the neighborhood weren’t too insistent on

spending scarce funds for immediate improvements.

Nonetheless, park superintendent Theodore Wirth proposed in his 1913 annual report an

improvement plan for the park. The majority of the space was to be devoted to playing

fields and playgrounds, including a fieldhouse. But a portion was set aside as a “picnic

grove” with a “rustic shelter.”

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With the city council’s agreement to rearrange some streets around the park in 1914, the

way was cleared for improvements. In 1915 the upper field was completed, offering a

“splendid” skating rink in Wirth’s words in his 1915 annual report. He noted that a

warming house had been provided. Playground equipment was also installed. Wirth

wrote that an additional $23,000 was needed to build the fieldhouse, walks, steps and a

wading pool. All the park board approved was a modest sum to build tennis courts in the

park in 1917.

Four years later, a small recreation shelter was added to the park. Wirth noted at the time

that it was small and would only meet the most pressing needs, but hoped that it would

stimulate demand for more. Wirth wrote that the shelter, which cost about $6,000, was

constructed to be easily moved to another field when a larger recreation center was built

at Prospect Field.

What Wirth pictured as a temporary structure would remain in place for a long time—

nearly fifty years. The board’s post-World War II plans included improvements for

Prospect Field, but city bond funding was hard to come by for any park projects in the

decade after the war.

By 1957 it was obvious that proposed freeways in Minneapolis could have a significant

impact on parks. A special study of the Prospect Field area was conducted by the park

board’s planning division in “consideration of the new expressway system,” as the 1957

annual report phrased it. The phrase makes it clear that the board was already aware that

a proposed freeway could have an impact on the park. And it did. In 1964 the state

highway department claimed 1.3 acres of Prospect Field for the new I-94 freeway.

Once the boundaries of the park were certain, the board did proceed with the complete

renovation of the park in conjunction with the city’s housing authority, which developed

the Glendale housing project adjacent to the park. In 1969, a new recreation center was

built at Luxton Park, finally replacing the old temporary shelter. The housing authority

contributed money to build that center. The park was updated throughout, including

construction of a wading pool. In 1976 the park board granted permission for the state

highway department to build a noise-abatement wall between the park and I-94.

In 1990, the center was dramatically expanded with the addition of a gym and new

playground equipment was installed.

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Lyndale Park

Location: King’s Highway to Penn Avenue, Lakewood Cemetery to West 42

Street

Size: 61 acres (included in acreage for Lake Harriet)

Name: The name was taken from the name of William King’s farm, Lyndale Farm,

which once surrounded Lake Harriet. King donated much of the land for Lyndale Park, as

well as most of the land around Lake Harriet, to the park board. King named his farm

after his father, Lyndon King, a preacher from upstate New York, where William King

was raised. The name of the park was stipulated when the land was donated.

William S. King

William King and his wife, Caroline, donated considerable land for parks in Minneapolis.

They donated the much of shores of Lake Harriet, Lyndale Park and King’s Highway.

(The park board also eventually purchased the site of King’s farmhouse and barns, which

became Lyndale Farmstead Park.) King was a powerful and eloquent proponent of

creating parks in the city before the park board was created and he served as a park

commissioner on the first park board in 1883. Most important, he was the driving force

behind the legislation that created the park board.

Long before the park board was established King worked to create parks in the city,

including as founder and editor of one of Minneapolis’s first newspapers. In 1869, when

the city council refused to purchase as a park forty acres of land near what is today the

Minneapolis Institute of Arts, King joined three others, including George Brackett and

Dorilus Morrison, to purchase the land themselves and improve it as a park. They hoped

that the city council would someday change its mind and designate the land for a park,

which didn’t happen. (For more on what happened to that land, see Dorilus Morrison

Park and Washburn Fair Oaks Park.).

Two years later, King was one of the principal founders of Lakewood Cemetery near his

farm. Soon after, he proposed to sell 250 acres of his 1,400-acre farm to the city as a park

for $50,000. The land he offered would have surrounded Lake Harriet. The offer was

reportedly met with derision by some, who told King to stop trying to unload his farm on

the city for such an exorbitant sum and go back to Washington, D.C., where he lived part

of the time while serving as postmaster of the United States Congress. He later

represented Minnesota in the U. S. Congress from 1875 to 1877.

In 1883 King resurrected a dormant Board of Trade, which functioned as a chamber of

commerce for Minneapolis. One of the first actions of the revitalized board, with King as

its secretary, was to draft a bill—and convince the legislature to pass it—that created the

Minneapolis Board of Park Commissioners. The legislation was approved by voters in a

referendum on April 3, 1883. Charles Loring, the first president of the new park board,

credited King with getting the bill through the legislature. At one point in the campaign to

pass the “Park Act” referendum, Loring offered to step down from the list of the first

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twelve appointed commissioners if naming William King in his place would ensure the

referendum’s success.

After Minneapolis voters had approved the Park Act by referendum in April 1883, King

told the Board of Trade, “The intelligence, the pride, the public spirit and the humanity of

our people have at last been vindicated. That mean, wicked and cruel spirit of selfishness

and greed which for so many years has obstructed and defeated every effort to endow our

city with public parks, has, at length, been overcome by the uprising and better sentiment

and nobler spirit of our citizens.”

William King did serve as a park commissioner 1883-1887, however, even though he

was not among the first twelve commissioners appointed by the legislation that created

the park board. He was elected by other park commissioners to fill a vacancy when two

of the appointed commissioners declined to serve. It was a fitting recognition of King’s

efforts to create parks in the city and demonstrated the high regard of other park

commissioners for what Charles Loring called King’s “magnetism.”

Before his donation of land for Lyndale Park, King was the actual donor to the park

board of most of Lake Harriet. The park board was stymied in its first efforts to acquire

Lake Harriet by an appraisal of the land at almost $300,000, a daunting sum. But Henry

Beard, James Merritt and Charles Reeve came forward with an offer to donate a strip of

land around the lake for a parkway. Ownership of the land at that time was in dispute,

however, and the courts determined that King was the rightful owner of most of Lake

Harriet. When the courts decided the dispute in King’s favor, in an act of what Loring

called “characteristic generosity,” King honored the offer of the other men to donate the

land for a park.

The house and barns of King’s Lyndale Farm were also eventually acquired by the park

board and became Lyndale Farmstead Park. As part of his donation of land for Lyndale

Park, King also donated the land for what became King’s Highway, which ran past his

farm. King’s Highway today extends from Dupont and 36

to Dupont and 46

streets and

from there west to Lake Harriet. The original land donated by the Kings for the highway,

however began at Dupont and 38

Street. The extension of the highway north to 36

was

made possible by a purchase of a strip of land from Lakewood Cemetery.

In addition to Lyndale Farm, King had a home in the city on Nicollet Island, on the site of

the present DeLaSalle High School.

Acquisition

The acquisition of Lyndale Park and King’s Highway was a tangled affair. In May of

1890 Minneapolis newspapers trumpeted the generous donation by William and Caroline

King of land that one paper said would become the ”picnic ground par excellence” of the

park system. The donation was of land to the north and northeast of Lake Harriet. It

would take the park board more than a year, however, to accept the donation, because

King’s donation had strings attached.

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King attached a few conditions to the donation that the park board was reluctant to

accept. One condition was easily met. King stipulated that he would donate forty acres of

land if Lakewood Cemetery would also donate thirty-five acres of its land just north of

the lake. That was no problem. King had been one of the cemetery’s founders in 1871

and the cemetery’s board of trustees was still controlled by King’s friends, such as

Charles Loring and George Brackett, who had been so instrumental in the creation of

Minneapolis parks. In a short time, the cemetery association delivered a deed for its

contribution to the park board. The only condition of that deed was that the land be

dedicated to park purposes and be known as Lyndale Park.

The other conditions proved more complicated. First King asked for improvement of the

park, including construction of a road through it, within one year of his donation. The

park board, strapped for cash after its initial park acquisitions and improvements,

couldn’t promise that. King eventually relented on that condition and extended the time

for improvements to five years, which removed one major hurdle to the acquisition.

The second condition was trickier. King asked that his remaining land in the area be

exempted from assessments for park improvements until those assessments reached

$100,000, the value King placed on the land he was donating.

Neither of the two conditions was unusual at the time, but the sum of money was. Many

donations of land to the park board at the time had similar conditions attached. The

donation of land for parks was motivated at times in those days by the likely appreciation

of adjoining land when a park was created. Park-front property was highly desirable. In

fact, that had always been one of the arguments for the creation of a park board: parks

would pay for themselves in the increased valuation of other land nearby and therefore

higher real estate tax collections. This proved true in the case of Lyndale Park even

before King’s donation was accepted. Newspapers reported that lots near the proposed

park nearly tripled in value when the donation was first announced, and many lots that

had been for sale in the vicinity were taken off the market in anticipation of further

appreciation.

The other problem was that King didn’t own outright all of the land he proposed to

donate. Much of it was mortgaged. The primary mortgage holders were Charles Loring

and his partner in real estate investments, Henry Brown. (For more on Henry Brown’s

contribution to Minneapolis parks, see Minnehaha Park.) They held about $50,000 in

mortgages on the land.

Nearly a year after the original proposal by King to donate land had grabbed newspaper

headlines, the board voted to accept the donation on King’s terms. But that was not the

end of the story. The final chapter would not be written for another ten years.

The issue of the mortgages held on the land by Loring and Brown was apparently not

completely resolved at the time, because in 1893 park commissioner Patrick Ryan, who

had defeated Charles Loring for a seat on the board in 1890, inquired into the status of

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that mortgage. The inquiry was referred to the park board’s attorney. Loring had been

elected to the park board once again in 1893 and was again the president of the board at

that time. However at the end of 1893 Loring resigned his position on the park board, he

said, to avoid the appearance of a conflict of interest in a matter then before the board.

While that conflict of interest was never defined, action by the park board in early 1894

may explain it. While the issue of a release of Loring and Brown’s mortgage on the King

property was never mentioned again in park board proceedings, on May 7, 1894 the park

board, without explanation, issued a quit claim deed to Loring and Brown for four lots

the park board owned south of Lake Harriet. Reading between the lines, one could

surmise that the four lots were deeded to Loring and Brown in exchange for a release of

their mortgage on the land at Lyndale Park. It is highly unlikely that the property deeded

to Loring and Brown had a value near the $50,000 mortgage they had held on King’s

property.

Twenty-four years later, William Folwell wrote a letter to the park board claiming that he

had it on good authority, perhaps from his friend Charles Loring, that Loring had been

the true donor of Lyndale Park to the city. A small clipping from park board proceedings

that year, referencing Folwell’s letter and its claim, was pasted by Loring in his

scrapbook. That Loring considered the note of enough importance to save, one of the

only clippings from park board proceedings in his scrapbooks, lends credence to

Folwell’s claim.

But even with the mysterious deeding of land to Loring and Brown in 1894, the final

chapter of King’s donation of Lyndale Park was not yet written.

In 1901, King’s widow, Caroline, and his son, Preston, filed a claim against the park

board for not complying with the condition that Lyndale Park be improved within five

years of the donation. By that time the park board had acquired, in part through a

foreclosure sale, most of the former Lyndale Farmstead, including the barns and other

buildings. The park board settled the King’s claim by paying them $5,325 and swapping

title to some property at the farmstead. Caroline King reclaimed title to the land which

the old farmhouse occupied, and gave the park board title to the three remaining lots it

did not own from 37

to 39

between Bryant Avenue and King’s Highway.

The claim and the settlement prompted William Folwell to write in the annual report of

1901, “The transaction is another testimony to the unwisdom of accepting titles with

conditions, unless under exceptional circumstances.” Not to challenge the counsel of

William Folwell, who had a vision for Minneapolis parks that was matched by no one,

but with the benefit of one hundred years of hindsight, the acquisition of Lyndale Park

from the Kings and Lakewood Cemetery for such a small sum, would today qualify as

exceptional circumstances that justified the aggravation at the time.

Development

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From the time William King first proposed to donate the land for Lyndale Park and

King’s Highway, the property received intense interest. Park board proceedings of

August 5, 1890 recorded that landscape architect Horace Cleveland had submitted a letter

on the use of the land. The contents of that letter are not known.

Charles Loring also weighed in with a forward-thinking opinion on the land in the annual

report he wrote for 1893. “In no park,” he wrote, “have we a more suitable place for

athletic sports and children’s playgrounds and none that will be more accessible.” He

went on to recommend that a small area in the park be laid out for “the exclusive use of

little children, where piles of sand, swings, seesaws and other proper appliances of

amusement and exercise shall be furnished by the Board.”

Also in 1893 the board reserved a tract of land at Lyndale Park for a nursery and directed

Superintendent William Berry to consult with nurserymen across the country about

stocking it with trees and shrubs that could be used throughout the park system.

The actual development of the property took some time however, as the entire nation

plunged into recession in 1893. The impact on the park board was dramatic. For years,

the board had no money to spend for acquisitions or improvements. The park board had

to borrow money just to maintain a few of the city’s parks and the maintenance of most

parks was neglected completely.

The first improvements to Lyndale Park occurred in 1904 when the park board built a

road over the lowlands between Lyndale Park and the pavilion at Lake Harriet, created a

concourse at the top of the hill near King’s Highway overlooking the lake, and planted

trees in the park. The work was done to a plan by landscape architect Warren Manning,

with some changes suggested by Charles Loring.

Several prominent landscape architects, in addition to Horace Cleveland, were associated

with Lyndale Park. In 1894 the sons and successors to the landscape architecture business

of Frederick Law Olmsted were consulted about designing the new park. Olmsted was

the famous designer of many parks in the United States, most notably Central Park in

New York City. (By that time age and illness had incapacitated Horace Cleveland, who

had designed most of the city’s first parks and still lived in Minneapolis at the time.) The

park board had little money, however, and the Olmsteds never actually developed designs

for the park. Five years later, the park board hired another well-known landscape

architect, Warren Manning, to develop plans for the park, but those plans were not

implemented. Manning also submitted a review of the entire park system, which was

appended to the park board’s 1899 annual report. In 1904, with Minneapolis’s economy

booming again, Manning was hired to revise his plans for Lyndale Park and the first

improvements were made to the park.

The transformation of Lyndale Park, however, awaited the arrival of Theodore Wirth as

park superintendent in 1906. At the end of his first year in Minneapolis, Wirth submitted

in the 1906 annual report extensive recommendations for the improvement of Lake

Harriet and Lyndale Park. (Wirth noted that Lyndale Park was really a part of Lake

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Harriet Park and one name should embrace the “entire territory.”) He made dramatic

suggestions for changing the lakeshore of the lake, including adding a peninsula on the

west side of the lake. As for Lyndale Park on the east shore, he said “not one single acre

can at present be classed as being in serviceable condition.” Wirth had two ideas. First,

the area from the pavilion east would be filled with material dredged from the lake to

create playing fields surrounded by groves of trees. Second, the eastern and southern

sections of the park would be devoted to “educational purposes on plant life.”

His first suggestion for Lyndale Park was never followed; his second was—with

spectacular results. Wirth proposed two types of gardens for the area. First, a rose garden,

which would, in addition to providing “beauty and pleasure,” provide “an instructive

lesson on what roses to grow and how.” Above the rose garden, he proposed “a garden of

trees, shrubs, and wild and cultivated flowers of every description.” The garden would be

planted so that in every season something would be blooming and each plant would be

properly labeled. Wirth wrote that “the educational service of the grounds towards home

beautifying is inestimable.”

It was the beginning of gardens that have been loved by generations of Minneapolis

citizens. The first project to be initiated in 1907 was the rose garden. Wirth had created

the first municipal rose garden in the United States in his previous position as

superintendent of parks in Hartford, Connecticut. Under the direction of newly hired park

florist Louis Boeglin, Wirth set out to replicate that success. (Boeglin eventually became

the head of all horticulture in Minneapolis parks and remained in that position until

1940.) The rose garden was completed in 1908 and the next year Wirth called it a “great

success.”

A perennial flower garden was begun on land that had once been the nursery after Wirth

moved most of the nursery stock to Glenwood Park in 1909. The road from King’s

Highway to Lake Harriet was built in 1910.

Over the next few years, the gardens were gradually developed, but had not yet caught on

with the public. In 1914 Wirth called the rose garden an inspiring scene, but lamented

that it was “remarkable that only a small proportion of our population visits this ground,

or even knows about it.”

The public visibility of the gardens got a boost beginning in 1917 when the first

playground pageant was performed on the hill above the rose garden overlooking the

lake. The playground pageants included performances written specifically for the

occasion and featured children in costumes from every park in the city. The first year the

pageant drew a crowd of 15,000 and in later years the performance was extended to two

evenings and played to crowds of 40,000. The pageant remained a popular annual event,

with a hiatus during the Depression, until 1941. The pageants drew such large crowds

that in 1930 the park board considered building an 18,000-seat amphitheater on the

hillside at Lyndale Park to accommodate pageant crowds and host other outdoor concerts.

With the onset of the Great Depression, however, funds for such a project never

materialized.

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In 1924, Louis Boeglin, the park board horticulturist, planted a large new garden of

perennial and annual flowers on the northern edge of the park west from King’s

Highway. The garden was 1,000-feet long and from four- to twenty-feet wide and

contained 10,000 plants. Wirth noted that the new planting attracted an unusual amount

of attention and thousands of visitors. That year Louis Boeglin also proposed a rock

garden planted with Alpine plants to the west of the new garden stretching toward the

lake. With the creation of the perennial garden Lyndale Park replaced the Armory Garden

at The Parade as the premier garden in the city. In fact Wirth proposed that with the

decline in the Armory Garden and the need to replenish the soil there it would make

sense to concentrate floriculture and plant collections at Lyndale, instead of renovating

the Armory Garden. He went so far as to suggest that the Armory Garden might be better

devoted to tennis courts.

Boeglin’s idea for a rock garden at Lyndale Park took a few years to develop, but he

finally implemented his plan in 1929. He brought in Oneonta dolomite rocks collected

from the Mississippi River bluffs in Wisconsin for the garden and planted alpine plants

around them. Unfortunately, the rock garden fell into disrepair in the 1940s after Boeglin

retired from the park board and was eventually overgrown with trees. It was not

rediscovered and resurrected as a Rock Garden until the 1980s and was later transformed

into the Peace Garden.

The next important development at the park was its official designation as a bird

sanctuary in 1936. The designation had been requested by the Minnesota Audubon

Society. One of Christian Bossen’s first acts as the new park superintendent in 1936, after

Wirth retired, was to request the park board to designate the park as a bird sanctuary. The

park board went him one better and designated all city parks as bird refuges. One of

Bossen’s favorite places in Minneapolis parks was the trail through the wetlands north of

Lake Harriet. Upon his death in 1956 his ashes were scattered along the path that is now

named Bossen Lane. The bird sanctuary was named in 1947 for Thomas Sadler Roberts,

a retired doctor who had become a professor of ornithology at the University of

Minnesota and director of the university’s museum of natural history.

A fountain was installed in Lyndale Park in 1947 thanks to Frank Heffelfinger.

Heffelfinger had seen the bronze and marble fountain in Florence, Italy, bought it and had

it dismantled and shipped home to Minneapolis. He donated it to the park board and it

was dedicated in Lyndale Park in 1947. Heffelfinger’s donation came shortly after the

addition of an official test rose garden for the All America Rose Selections in 1946. The

patio around the fountain was installed in 1988.

A second fountain was installed in the park in 1963. The Phelps Fountain or “Turtle

Fountain,” had originally been a gift from long-time park commissioner Edmund Phelps

in 1915 for The Gateway in downtown Minneapolis. When the Gateway neighborhood

became the focus of urban renewal in the early 1960s and the city bought the original

Gateway park from the park board, the fountain was moved to Lyndale Park. A perennial

garden was built around the newly installed fountain as part of a five-year expansion of

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the gardens in the park, and the old perennial border garden along the park’s northern

border was abandoned. The former perennial border garden was later converted to a

perennial test garden maintained by the Men’s Garden Club of Minneapolis.

The transformation of the Rock Garden into the Peace Garden had its roots in 1963, when

the Japanese American Society donated cherry trees to be planted in Lyndale Park. At the

time the Rock Garden itself was overgrown with trees. That changed in 1981 when a

tornado blew through the park and knocked down many trees. In the process of clearing

the toppled trees, the Rock Garden was rediscovered by park horticulturist Mary Lerman.

Lerman launched an effort that over the next 17 years re-established the rock garden and

led to the creation of the Peace Garden. The transformation relied largely on donations

from the public and a great deal of volunteer labor as well to implement a new design for

the garden created by Betty Ann Addison. A wooden “peace bridge” was installed in the

lower garden in 1985 flanked by stones donated from the post-atomic bomb wreckage of

the cities of Hiroshima and Nagasaki, Japan. In 1988 a peace pole, a gift from Japan to

Minneapolis Mayor Don Fraser, was installed nearby. The pole is inscribed in four

languages with the phrase “May peace prevail on earth.”

In 2005 the “Spirit of Peace” sculpture by Caprice Glaser was added to the garden. The

twelve-foot-tall bronze sculpture depicts the folding of an origami paper crane. In

addition, the original peace bridge was replaced in 2009 by one designed by Kinji

Akagawa and Jerry Allan. Both improvements were accomplished primarily with

donations.

Additional Sources

Letter from Charles Loring to George Brackett in George A. Brackett Papers, Minnesota

Historical Society, St.Paul

Interview with Mary Maguire Lerman, Minneapolis Park and Recreation Board, 2007

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Lyndale Farmstead Park

Location: Bryant Avenue South and West 38

Street

Size: 17.23 acres

Name: The park was once the site of William S. King’s “Lyndale Farm.” It was, literally,

the Lyndale farmstead. The name was never formally adopted. King derived the name of

his farm from his father’s first name, Lyndon. King’s one-time farmhouse, the last

vestige of the farm, still stood in 1920 on the last parcel of land acquired for the park at

and Bryant. It was once the headquarters of a 1,400-acre farm that encompassed

almost all of Lake Harriet. (See Lake Harriet, Lyndale Park, and King’s Highway for

more on William King and his donations to the park board.)

Acquisition and Development

Park board records indicate that the first deed to any part of this property was purchased

in 1896, however no record of that purchase is included in park board proceedings for

that year, nor is it mentioned in annual reports of the park board then or after. It is

possible that a portion of the property acquired for King’s Highway or Lyndale Park (all

donated in complicated transactions), was later attributed to the Lyndale Farmstead

property.

The first mention of the farmstead in park board proceedings is a reference by park

superintendent William Berry in October 1895 that all boats used on Lake Harriet had

been stored in King’s barn for the winter. The next mention is in June 1897, when the

park board approved renting “one of the King barns on 38

Street” for storage purposes

at a rent not to exceed $10 a month.

Finally, in January 1899, the park board received notice from the D. C. Bell Investment

Company that it was holding a bank foreclosure sale on the property on which the King

barn was located. The board instructed its attorney, Chelsea Rockwood, to attend the sale

and bid “such an amount as the president and Committee on Designation will approve.”

Rockwood subsequently reported that he had purchased three lots on which the barn

stood for $700. In the summer of 1899, the park board instructed the superintendent to

repair the barns and prepare the basement of the barn to winter the animals from the park

board’s Minnehaha Park zoo.

A few months later, on November 6, 1899, Rockwood reported that he had acquired,

“pursuant to informal instruction from the Board,” all but nine lots of the two blocks from

King’s Highway (Dupont Avenue) to Bryant Avenue between 38

and 39

for $6,000. It

was the first of several developments on the property over the years that proceeded

without formal action by the park board. Rockwood reported that with the purchase the

park board then owned both large barns on the property. In the 1899 annual report of the

park board, William Folwell called the purchase a “judicious proceeding,” as it gave the

park board much needed storage space and a maintenance yard—roles that the property

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has played ever since. The next April, the park board purchased six of the remaining lots

on that tract, for $350, and vacated Colfax Avenue through the property from 38

to 39

In March 1901, the board instructed the secretary to negotiate purchase of the three

remaining lots on the two-block tract. It acquired those lots in an unusual transaction.

That summer William King’s widow, Caroline King, and his eldest son, Preston (who

joined with a later park board president Jesse Northrup to form the seed company

Northrup King), sued the park board for not complying with the terms of the donation by

the King’s of Lyndale Park and King’s Highway a decade earlier. Folwell noted in his

annual report, with a tone of disapproval, that the King’s suit was not brought to gain

compliance with the terms of the donation of land, but to get money. But there was likely

more to it. The park board settled with the Kings by paying them $5,325. In return,

Caroline King gave the park board title to the three remaining lots it needed on the tract.

But Caroline King also got something more than cash. She regained from the park board

title to the two lots on which her home, the old farm house, stood near Bryant Avenue

and 39

Street.

Charles Loring, a close friend of King, once noted that King had died “near a poor man,”

because of his desire to give land to the park board. What Loring never said in his many

tributes to King and his generosity was that when King and his wife had donated the land

for Lyndale Park, Loring and his partner in real estate investments, Henry Brown, held

about $50,000 in mortgages on King’s land. Loring and Brown released those mortgages

to the park board.

In 1894 Loring and Brown were given quit claim deeds by the park board to four lots

south of Lake Harriet. Although it is not discussed in park board proceedings, it is

reasonable to suppose that those lots, the value of which could not have approached

$50,000 at the time, were deeded to Loring and Brown in return for their release of the

mortgages they held on the land King had donated. In effect, Loring and Brown, not

King, had donated a large portion of Lyndale Park. That view is supported by a letter

William Folwell wrote to the park board many years later. In 1918 Folwell wrote that he

had it on reliable authority (likely from Loring himself) that Loring had been the true

donor of much of Lyndale Park. Folwell’s claim is supported by the fact that Loring

clipped from park board proceedings a brief description of Folwell’s letter and pasted it

in his scrapbook; it is the only clip from park board proceedings in those scrapbooks,

which cover events of nearly 40 years. Loring and Brown had also acquired from King

considerable land south of Lyndale Farm, which they developed for residential purposes.

The next episode in the history of Lyndale Farmstead is also shrouded in some mystery

and off-the-record agreements. In the 1905 annual report, park board president Fred

Smith suggested that the office of the superintendent of parks should be transferred from

city hall to the grounds of the Lyndale barns. He went further. He recommended building

a residence and office for the superintendent there and transforming the grounds into an

“attractive park.”

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It is noteworthy that Smith’s report for 1905 was written after the park board had hired

Theodore Wirth to replace William Berry as superintendent of parks beginning in 1906.

Wirth had been convinced to leave his job as superintendent of parks in Hartford,

Connecticut by Charles Loring, who was acting as a special committee to find a

replacement for Berry. Wirth later claimed that one condition he and Loring had agreed

to verbally was that the Minneapolis park board would provide a house for Wirth—a perk

that Wirth enjoyed in his Hartford job. The suggestion by Smith, who had also traveled to

Hartford to interview Wirth, that the board should build a house for the new

superintendent indicates that he may have been party to the verbal agreement between

Wirth and Loring. But that agreement is not a part of the public record. That the subject

was introduced so circumspectly suggests that the board anticipated such an agreement

might be controversial.

In Wirth’s first annual report as superintendent in 1906, he included a detailed plan, a

“Suggestive Plan for the Enlargement and Improvement of the Lyndale Farmstead,”

which showed where the superintendent’s house would be located facing Bryant Avenue

between 39

and 40

th.

At that time, the park board did not own that land. Wirth’s plan

included a warehouse, greenhouses and nurseries, and a pond for waterfowl along King’s

Highway, in addition to the house. “That the proper place for the superintendent’s

residence would be within this administration plant is quite evident,” Wirth wrote,

“because this varied plant should be under his daily supervision, and because the

principal administration work must be done from this point.”

Wirth thought the park board’s nursery in Lyndale Park, established on the

recommendation of William Folwell in the late 1890s, was inadequate and urged that it

be moved to Lyndale Farmstead. He needed a better nursery, and greenhouses, he wrote,

because the city’s parks at the time were “inferior in proper plantations.”

Wirth advocated extending the park board’s property south, not only to provide land for

his house, but, he wrote, to connect the farmstead to Lyndale Park, which began only 200

feet southwest of 40

Street and King’s Highway.

The shift of the nursery and the construction of greenhouses at Lyndale Farmstead were

accomplished in 1906 and 1907, but there was still no house for Wirth. Wirth was also at

least partially responsible for getting the animals out of the old King barns in winter. At

Wirth’s urging the park board closed most of its zoo at Minnehaha Park in 1907. The

park board retained pens for the elk and deer, which did not need indoor winter homes.

The rest of the animals were sold to Robert “Fish” Jones, who established a private zoo at

Longfellow Gardens west of Minnehaha Falls. That zoo lasted into the 1930s, when the

park board acquired the land from Jones. (See Longfellow Garden for more on Jones and

his zoo.)

Then came the conflagration. On March 2, 1908, a fire consumed the larger of the old

King barns at Lyndale Farmstead. Along with it went much of the park board’s

machinery and supplies. The need to construct a new warehouse perhaps provided the

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opportunity to expand the park, upgrade its facilities—and build a house for the

superintendent.

On May 4, 1908, only two months after the fire, the park board reported that Charles

Loring, who was no longer a park commissioner, had assisted in the acquisition, by

donation, of land to expand the park to the south. Loring had convinced James J. Hill of

railroad fame and Thomas Lowry, who built the city’s streetcar system, to donate land

from King’s Highway to Bryant Avenue between 39

and 40

streets. Lowry and Hill

asked in return that they be reimbursed for their expenses and the taxes they had already

paid or still owed on the property, which came to a little more than $13,000. The

donation expanded the park by more than eight acres. The donation also included most of

the block south of 40

between Colfax and King’s Highway. Curiously, the park board’s

annual report for 1908 didn’t mention this significant new addition to park board

holdings of nearly three square blocks of prime real estate. And the acquisition of the

land was never listed by the park board as a donation, but as a purchase—and the money

paid to Hill and Lowry was recouped by the park board through assessments on nearby

property.

Why was this important acquisition never mentioned in park board reports? And why was

Charles Loring involved? It could be that Loring was delivering on a verbal agreement he

had made with Wirth to provide a house for him, and this was the location needed. The

park board was going to have to construct new buildings on the property to replace the

burned-down barns. Perhaps Loring saw this as an opportunity to get a house he had

promised thrown in at the same time. Perhaps that is why he went to his friend Thomas

Lowry to get him to donate the land. And perhaps the park board never mentioned the

acquisition because commissioners knew that it would not be used for a park, but for a

residence for the superintendent. Even park board proceedings noted that the land was

acquired for “additional grounds for nursery and other purposes.” (Italics added).

The park board had the land to build a house for Wirth, but the house still wasn’t being

built. Wirth reported in 1908 all the details of a new three-story warehouse and shop

building constructed on the Lyndale Farmstead site. One side benefit of the new

buildings, including greenhouses, was that in the fall of 1908 the park board held its first

Chrysanthemum Show for the public at the Lyndale Farmstead greenhouse. Wirth

reported that 6000 people attended the show. The mum show became a staple of the park

board’s autumn calendar, continuing through 1975, with interruptions for depression and

war.

While the park board did maintain nursery facilities on the grounds for many years, the

bulk of nursery operations were moved to Glenwood (Wirth) Park in 1910 after

additional greenhouse space was added at Lyndale Farmstead.

But plans for a superintendent’s house were moving forward. In December 1909,

Theodore Wirth asked the board to “construct a house, according to the plans submitted,

for the use of the Superintendent of Parks.” The request was referred to a joint committee

on finance and improvements, with power to act, which meant that the request would not

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have to come before the full board again. The “plans submitted” were apparently the

designs for the house prepared by architects Long, Lamoreaux and Long.

In February 1910 the joint committee recommended a contract with a builder to construct

a house for the superintendent to specifications developed by the architects. The contract

was for $6,800. Park board proceedings noted that park board employees would lay the

foundation for the building, and that heating, wiring, plumbing, tiling and hardware were

to be provided under separate contracts or by park board workers. The total estimated

cost of the building, the report said, would be within the estimate of the superintendent

and the architect of $10,000.

The controversy that the park board seems to have been trying to avoid over building a

house for the superintendent—and had put off building for four years—flared almost

immediately. Two weeks after the park board approved the contract to build the house,

the city comptroller, Dan Brown, informed the park board that he would not sign the

contract because, in his opinion, the proposed expenditure of city funds “for the

construction of a house for the Superintendent of Parks” was illegal.

At that point the builder who had been contracted to build the house stepped in and sued

Brown to force him to sign the contract. Brown’s refusal to sign the contract was upheld

in district court, but upon appeal to the Minnesota Supreme Court, in a divided opinion

the justices ruled that the park board did have the authority to build the house and

instructed the comptroller to sign the contract.

From that time forward the house was referred to as an “Administration Building,” not a

house. Never again in park board proceedings, including itemized bills from some

suppliers, was the building referred to as a residence. Most of the money paid to the

contractor for the residence was lumped in with the same contractor’s invoices for

constructing the recreation shelters at North Commons and Jackson Square that year.

Once the residence was built, the park board relented a bit on how it described the

building. The 1910 annual report of the park board includes a photo of the house

captioned “Lyndale Farmstead—Administration Building.” Park board President Wilbur

Decker, however, made a bow to reality when he described the building as “an

administration plant and residence for the use of the Superintendent.” Decker commented

that the building provided “a much needed addition to our equipment that will not only

make for better service, but which will constitute a permanent asset of considerable

value.” He cited the total cost of the building as $13,244.

In the superintendent’s segment of that annual report, Wirth pleaded the case for what he

too called the “Administration Building.” Although he led his report on improvements on

Lyndale Farmstead with the comment that “few changes have been made during the

year,” and noted minor improvements to the warehouses and greenhouses, he finally got

to the point. “The building serves as the residence of the Superintendent,” he wrote, “with

an attached office and drafting room…This residence makes it possible for your

Superintendent to keep in closest touch with the administration plant and the work

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directed from there with the least loss of time, while the facilities of the offices will

enable him to do a large amount of clerical and engineering work before and after the

routine work of the day. The constant interruptions unavoidably encountered at the

general office at all times, make it almost impossible to do justice to the large amount of

preparatory work which your Superintendent should attend to.”

As far as the park board was concerned, that was the end of it. The two “administration”

rooms in the walk-out basement—in reality Wirth’s home office—were used to define

the three-story home above them. The pretense of an administration building to justify a

private residence in a park was exposed a bit the following year when Wirth requested

permission to keep a cow, a pony and chickens on the property for the use of his family.

The board granted that request.

The charade of an administration building was not continued when Wirth finally retired

in 1935; he remained in the home for another ten years as superintendent emeritus until,

in 1945, he moved to San Diego for health reasons. Wirth’s successor as superintendent,

Christian Bossen, never lived in the house, and presumably made do with an office only

at city hall, because he retired in the year that Wirth vacated the house.

With a house built for the superintendent and greenhouses completed in 1910, the

campaign for more facilities at Lyndale Farmstead did not end. Over the next several

years Wirth urged the board to build laundry facilities for washing the towels and rented

swimsuits from the Lake Calhoun bath house and linens from the refectories at Lake

Harriet and Minnehaha Falls, a “show house” for flowers, a second equipment shed, even

a cottage for the shop foreman.

Wirth’s plan for the property in the 1913 annual report included all those things, and it

showed an outline of the old King farmhouse, which was to be removed. It showed no

recreation spaces, but in 1914, two tennis courts were installed at the corner of 38

and

Bryant in what was the first effort to have the park property serve the immediate

neighborhood—which had paid assessments for the acquisition of land for the residence.

Sometime in the late 1910s the park board also created a small ball field near 39

and

Colfax. That space was included on a list of park properties that were provided skating

rinks in 1918.

In 1917, still without a laundry, Wirth encouraged the board to sell the land south of 40

Street between King’s Highway and Colfax to pay for better facilities at the Farmstead.

He noted then that one of the old barns still on the property was the “worst kind of fire

trap.” He was prescient.

In 1920, fire destroyed the old buildings that had survived the fire of 1908, which

prompted Wirth to create a new plan for the property. It included detailed plans for new

buildings, as well as other recommendations for improvement: fill the pond on King’s

Highway (although it had been featured in earlier Wirth plans for the property, he now

called it a “land-locked swamp”), provide tennis courts and lawn games at Bryant and

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, enlarge the ball field near 39

and Colfax, and finally, once again, remove the old

King home.

Shortly after Wirth’s 1920 plan was published, the owners of the old King farm house, no

longer the King family, came forward with an offer to sell. The acquisition had been

“given consideration for years,” the board noted, but until that time the owners wouldn’t

sell. They finally did, and for $4,500 the last two lots of the park were purchased. The

sellers were given six months to remove the old King house. There is no record in park

board documents of whether the house was moved or demolished.

Apparently unsuccessful with his plea to sell the block of Lyndale Farmstead south of

to pay for a laundry, in 1921 Wirth encouraged the sale of those same lots to pay for

building a new pavilion at Lake Harriet. (This time not over the water, he wrote.) He

estimated that the sale of those lots would bring $35,000.

The first of those lots were sold in 1922, and despite a new plan that Wirth created for

Lyndale Farmstead in 1924, which showed tennis courts on the southeast corner of 40

and King’s Highway, the remainder of the block south of 40

was sold in 1925. In all

about 1.2 acres of land were sold. (In 1924 neighborhood residents protested plans of one

of the new property owners to build a duplex, but the park board claimed that it couldn’t

stipulate that only single-family homes could be built on the property it had sold or

intended to sell.)

New buildings were constructed at Lyndale Farmstead in 1922 and the board approved

filling the pond. In Wirth’s eyes, however, the warehouses and shops still needed

improving. In 1923 he provided plans for another new three-story building on the

property at an estimated cost of $67,000. Along the way the park board was starting to

catch flak from the neighborhood about the piles of machinery and supplies on the

property. In response to a petition from neighbors across Bryant Avenue to have

equipment removed from the land facing their property, the park board replied that the

land had been acquired for the purposes of storage and maintenance and it would be used

as that for “all time to come.”

Protests about the appearance of the grounds did have an impact, however, because

Wirth’s 1924 plan showed a fenced enclosure of the warehouse yards, plus twelve tennis

courts along 38

, the ball field enlarged to “full size,” and a playground in the “wooded

grounds” west of the superintendent’s house.

In his annual reports Wirth kept up the pressure to add warehouse space to the farmstead

and in 1929, the board dedicated bond funding to building a warehouse. The newest

addition to the farmstead was completed in 1930.

As on most park property in the city, those were the last improvements made for many

years. In 1952, park superintendent Charles Doell wrote that the park board needed more

space and the renovation of structures that were built “before the department was

mechanized.”

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Upon Theodore Wirth’s departure from Minneapolis in 1945, ten years after his

retirement, Doell succeeded Christian Bossen as superintendent of parks, and took up

residence in the superintendent’s house in the park. Upon Doell’s retirement in 1959, the

park board did not offer Doell’s successor, Howard Moore, the opportunity to live in the

house. Some park commissioners at the time considered a house for the superintendent an

elitist perk and wanted to consider other uses for the property, including offices. In April

1961, however, after the residence had sat empty for two years, the park board

recommended that occupancy of the residence be extended to Moore on the same terms

as Wirth and Doell, “recognizing the desirability,” it said, of having the superintendent

living near the central warehouse, shops and greenhouses. Although the board approved

the resolution, park commissioner George Todd, the business manager of a labor union,

requested that proceedings show he voted “No” on the resolution.

Succeeding superintendent’s Robert Ruhe, Charles Spears and David Fisher lived in the

house until 1995. Fisher requested permission to live in a house of his own choosing,

which the park board granted.

The modest play facilities that were created at Lyndale Farmstead—never the twelve

tennis courts proposed by Wirth—were upgraded in 1977 when a recreation center was

constructed near 39

and Colfax and the playground was rebuilt.

It took longer for the park board to upgrade its service facilities. In 1987 the park board

built a completely new service center on the property, finally replacing the 1920s

buildings. The state legislature, through the Metropolitan Council, financed about one-

third of the $4.5 million cost.

The site is now the home not only to service facilities, but the environmental operations

of the park board, a use that could not have been imagined when the property was first

devoted to the maintenance of park board properties. The west wing of the building

known as the Southside Operations Center was renovated in 2007.

After David Fisher moved out of the superintendent’s house, the park board rented the

building to the Minnesota Recreation and Parks Association for offices. In 2004, the park

board took back the space for offices for its staff. In 2008, The Foundation for

Minneapolis Parks began using the former residence for its offices. New park

superintendent Jayne Miller began leasing the building as her residence in 2010.

The most recent developments in the park included a new playground and general site

improvements in 2002. The East Harriet neighborhood contributed neighborhood

revitalization funds to the project, but the bulk of the cost was paid with city bonds. The

kitchen in the recreation center was upgraded in 2008.

A new dog park opened south of the operations center in 2013.

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Lynnhurst Field

Location: Minnehaha Parkway and West 50

Street

Size: 8.11 acres

Name: A 1934 report on park names attributed the name to the Lynnhurst District in

which the park is located. A report in 1975 speculated that that name was derived from

the many linden trees in the area. It is as likely, however, that the name derived from

Lyndale Farm, William King’s farm that once included most of Lake Harriet. King

named his farm for his father Lyndon King. The Lynnhurst Field name was adopted April

20, 1921 shortly after the park was acquired. During acquisition proceedings the land was

referred to as Remington Park, after the legal name of the subdivision.

Acquisition and Development

The land for Lynnhurst Field was designated for purchase by the park board on February

16, 1921. The park board paid $24,800 for the land. The purchase concluded four years

after the park board first decided to acquire land in the area for a park.

The park board had first designated land for the park in late 1917. At that time the park

board envisioned a much larger park than it eventually acquired, extending one block

further north (toward Lake Harriet) than the present park and another block west to Knox

Avenue between 49

and 50

. The resolution to acquire the land also included a

resolution to improve the land, creating playfields. After the first designation of the land,

the matter fell from park board proceedings for nearly two years until, in November

1919, the park board again designated land for the park (the same day it designated land

for what became Linden Hills Field), but this time without the block between Knox and

James, and deferred improvement of the land. The board simply stated that it did not need

the extra block to create the park. The park board’s annual report of 1919 said it that was

completing the acquisition of 19.1 acres for the park.

The acquisition proceeded smoothly until the appraisers appointed by the board made

their report in late 1920. Owners of the property to be taken for the park appealed the

award amounts in district court. The court then appointed three new appraisers and they

couldn’t agree on the value of the land, although they all appraised it at a higher value

than had the appraisers appointed by the park board. Faced with paying more than it had

planned for the land, the park board abandoned efforts to acquire the two blocks north of

the present park. It decided that the nearly ten acres at the present location were

“sufficient” for a playground for the neighborhood. The sums involved illustrate the

demands on park board resources at the time. The land it chose not to acquire would have

cost an additional $7,500—and today is likely worth millions.

The official acquisition date for Lynnhurst Field, February 16, 1921, is when the park

board approved the acquisition of the smaller area. The park board vacated Irving Avenue

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through the park and asked park superintendent Theodore Wirth to prepare plans for the

park.

In the 1921 annual report Wirth published a plan for Linden Hills Field and noted that the

plan for Lynnhurst Field was an exact duplicate of Linden Hills in its appointments,

which included a community building, outdoor gymnastic apparatus with separate spaces

for men and women, play areas for children, athletic fields, tennis and volleyball courts

and horseshoe pits. Wirth noted that “early execution” of the plan for this “very fast

growing district” was important because a park was needed as much as the school—

Burroughs School—that had been built the year before across the street from the park

near 50

and Humboldt. Wirth also wrote that a “sufficient” part of the grounds was

devoted to plantings and lawns to give the field an attractive appearance.

As with many park plans generated in that time, the plan would eventually be modified.

By 1925 the park had yet to be developed and in the 1925 annual report Wirth wrote that

people in the neighborhood were “exceedingly anxious” to have the park improved and

were circulating petitions among property owners to agree to be assessed for the costs of

building the park. One of the problems was that, as with so many other neighborhood

parks, the property was “low, swampy land.” Wirth’s 1925 plan included a “larger

proportion” of the ground for active service and a smaller part for “ornamentation” than

in his original plan. Included in the plan were ten tennis courts.

Even with a new plan in hand, the park board didn’t proceed with improvements until

1927, when it hired architects Downs and Eads to design a shelter for the park. The park

was finally developed in 1928 into playing fields and playgrounds, with a shelter to serve

as a warming house for skaters. The original development included only two tennis

courts, but eight more were added along 49

street in 1930.

Lynnhurst Field was singled out for improvements on the park board’s 1945 list of post-

war projects—and it was one of the few projects on that list that was eventually funded.

In 1948 those improvements began and the annual report of that year included an

explanation of why they were necessary. The park had been built on peat that ranged in

depth from six to thirty-seven feet. The peat had sunk over the years, which wreaked

havoc on concrete slabs poured for tennis courts, as well as graded fields. The old courts

were removed, the peat was excavated and the ground prepared for new courts. The old

play areas were also enlarged and the wading pool, which had been built by the Works

Progress Administration in the 1930s, was replaced. The makeover of the park was

completed in 1949.

The first time that Lynnhurst offered full-time, year round programming at the recreation

center was in 1958.

Noting an interest by community groups in improving the park, the park board reported

in its 1963 annual report that plans had been drawn for remodeling the recreation center

and outside facilities. But those plans were not implemented. Instead, by 1968 the park

board had developed plans to re-develop the park dramatically in 1970 and 1971 with

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$450,000 in city bonds. The board reported at that time that the redevelopment of the

park offered an “unusual opportunity” to blend the parkway and the outlet from Lake

Harriet to Minnehaha Creek into a community park.

In 1970 the board took action to seize that opportunity. The board approved a plan that

placed a new community center with a gymnasium south of West 50

Street on land

leased from the school board adjacent to Burroughs School, and closed Minnehaha

Parkway on the west side of the outlet from Lake Harriet to Minnehaha Creek from 49

to 50

to integrate the park with the overflow channel. In addition to building the

community center across 50

from the main park, a toilet building and warming house

were added on the park side of 50

and the old shelter was demolished.

The gym at Lynnhurst Park and Burroughs School was supposed to be step one of a two-

step plan. The park board agreed to build the gym that could be used by Burroughs

school and in return the school board would add a gym at Kenwood School for use by

park programs. The second step didn’t happen until more than ten years later, when the

school board finally renovated and expanded Kenwood School in the early 1980s.

Following a fire in the school building, the old school was demolished, and a new

Burroughs school was built further west on the school board’s property in 2005. The

school is no longer connected to the community center.

The Lynnhurst playground equipment was replaced in 1996, and the community center

was renovated.

The tennis courts were resurfaced in 2014.

Additional Source

Albert Wittman, Writing in Progress, The Minneapolis Park and Recreation System

1945-2000, unpublished manuscript, 2000

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Historic Main Street

Location: From Hennepin Avenue to Father Hennepin Bluff Park on the east bank of the

river.

Size: 5.61 acres

Name: The name is descriptive. The street was the original Main Street of the town of St.

Anthony.

Acquisition and Development

The street and the adjacent river bank were turned over to the park board by the city in

1979 at the same time that the park board acquired its first land on Nicollet Island. The

acquisitions were part of a plan developed in 1977 for the central riverfront by the

Riverfront Development Coordinating Board, a joint effort of the park board, the city

council and the Minneapolis Community Development Agency. The historic street linked

Father Hennepin Bluff Park downstream with the developments planned for Nicollet

Island and Boom Island farther upstream.

Main Street was linked to Nicollet Island in 1987 when Hennepin County floated a span

of the Broadway Avenue Bridge, which was being replaced, downriver to connect

Merriam Street on Nicollet Island to Main Street.

The entrance to Water Power Park, which provides access to the edge of St. Anthony

Falls, is located off Main Street.

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The Mall

Location: Hennepin Avenue to Calhoun Boulevard on 29

Street

Size: 4.91 acres; 0.32 mile drive

Name: The five-block boulevard from Hennepin Avenue to the lakes was known as

Twenty-ninth Street Boulevard at the time of its acquisition in May, 1912 until it was

officially named The Mall on December 17, 1912. The name was selected after the

unusual action by the park board of requesting public input in choosing a name. Park

board records indicate that the Lake Calhoun Improvement Association submitted

recommendations and shortly after, the name “The Mall” was chosen. The

recommendations of the improvement association are not recorded, but it is likely, given

the request for input, that the name chosen was among those preferred by the

neighborhood group.

Acquisition and Development

Less than a month after the huge public celebration of the opening of the channel that

linked Lake of the Isles and Lake Calhoun in July 1911, the park board received a

petition requesting the park board to create a parkway from Hennepin Avenue to the new

channel along the south side of the railroad tracks. That the issue was already being

widely discussed, at least in the neighborhood, is demonstrated by the fact that the board

received petitions at the same time from people who opposed the new parkway.

Those who wanted the parkway, a group organized under the name of The Lake District

Protective Association, presented the park board with a check for $460 in September to

pay for the cost of appraising the land and the expense of assessing the costs to property

owners in the vicinity. With that as an inducement, the board proceeded to determine the

cost of acquiring the land and building a parkway.

A couple contemporary developments in the neighborhood seemed to motivate residents

to request that parkway. At the west end was the symbol-of-progress channel that

connected the lakes. But perhaps as importantly, at the east end was the sparkling new

classical Walker Library on Hennepin Avenue, which was also completed in 1911.

The true motivation for the Lake District Protective Association, however, may have been

that the strip of land beside the railroad tracks was coveted by some who proposed

industrial developments there. To many people, industrial use of that land would have

been incompatible with the symbols of progress and refinement that stood at either end of

it.

On October 16, 1911 the park board designated the land for acquisition and estimated

that the total cost of acquisition and development would be $123,349, with slightly more

than $80,000 to buy the land. The understanding from the beginning was that the total

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amount would be assessed on benefited districts—or property in the surrounding

neighborhood.

The park board proceeded to prepare detailed lists of how much what it would pay

property owners and how much it would assess surrounding property for the costs and

presented them in March 1912. A final round of community meetings was held to

determine willingness to pay for the improvements and on April 1, 1912 a citizens group

called the Committee of Six, composed equally of proponents and opponents to the plans

for the mall, agreed to defer to the decision of the park board in the matter. The park

board took little time to confirm the damage awards and assessments, doing so on May 6,

1912.

The land taken for the parkway included seven houses, which were sold and removed

from the land before road construction began.

The double roadway that was built is noteworthy in park history because it was used to

test a new method of pavement: a two-course pavement of concrete and an asphalt-

concrete mix. Park superintendent Theodore Wirth imported two paving experts, one

from Winnipeg and one from Chicago, to assist with the construction. Wirth sought

permission to pay the additional expenses of hiring the experts only after they had been

paid and returned home, but the board retroactively approved those payments. Wirth

deemed the pavement result such a success that the method was then used on other

parkways.

Wirth changed his opinion on the surfacing material, however, within a few years. He

determined that the asphalt concrete mix was too expensive and not durable enough. It

was already apparent to Wirth within a few years that The Mall pavement would have to

be repaired. This was at a time when more than half of the parkways in the city were still

not paved at all.

In 1921, when the repaving was authorized, Wirth complained in his annual report that

restrictions were needed on vehicles and loads on parkways because pavements could not

withstand the heavy traffic to which they were being subjected.

In 1914 when the parkway was completed and landscaped, Wirth reported that it had

become a favorite route of “automobilists” driving to and from Lake Calhoun and Lake

Harriet.

The Mall was the site of another experiment in park engineering when in 1923 the

Minneapolis General Electric Company installed test lighting consisting of 12-foot

ornamental standards with 400 candle-power incandescent lights 100 feet apart along the

parkway. Wirth noted in his memoirs that the cost of operation and maintenance of the

lights on The Mall proved too costly for system-wide use.

In Wirth’s reminiscences of his first twenty-five years as park superintendent, published

in the 1930 annual report, he included before and after photos of The Mall. He selected

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several other locations for before and after photos too, but his inclusion of The Mall

photos attaches, from the distance of eighty years, an odd importance to a park property

that did not play a very large role in the life of the city or in his own formidable portfolio

of accomplishments.

The Mall largely disappeared from public and park board attention until in 1962 the City

Council requested an easement along The Mall for street and parking purposes. The park

board approved the easement until a howl of protest from the neighborhood forced them

to rescind their action before the City Council had time to formally accept it.

The only significant development on The Mall since it was constructed was the closing of

the intersection with Hennepin Avenue when the old Walker Library was replaced with a

new underground library at Hennepin and Lagoon in 1981. The library board asked to

purchase a piece of The Mall for the new library, but the park board refused. It cited its

land policy, developed in the 1960s at a time when roads and freeways were encroaching

on park property, which rejected the sale of any useful park land for any reason.

Roads being roads, however, the park board did spend over $400,000 to repave the road

and replace the lighting on The Mall in 1989. Now instead of providing a buffer between

railroad tracks and apartment buildings, The Mall serves as a pleasant stretch of green

alongside the bike trail that now occupies the former tracks.

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Marcy Park

Location: 11

Avenue and 7

Street SE

Size: 1.27 acres

Name: The park was named for Marcy School which once occupied the land. The present

Marcy Open School is next to Holmes Park on 4

Street SE. It was built in 1992 on the

site of the old Holmes School. Marcy School was named for William A. Marcy a leader

of the national Democratic Party before the Civil War. He was a senator from New York

who later became Secretary of War and Secretary of State.

Acquisition and Development

It is appropriate that the neighborhood in southeast Minneapolis is named the Marcy-

Holmes neighborhood with a hyphen. Both names come from elementary schools in the

old southeastern section of what used to be St. Anthony, thus the “southeast” designation

of the streets in the area.

The first Marcy school was built in 1878 at 9

Avenue SE and 5

Street SE, land that is

now covered by Interstate Highway 35-E. In 1890 Holmes School (named for Oliver

Wendell Holmes) was built six blocks to the east of the first Marcy School.

The first Marcy School was replaced by a second Marcy School in 1908 at 11

Avenue

SE and 7

Street SE two blocks north and east of the original school by that name. That

is the location of the present Marcy Park.

What makes the names a bit confusing is that in 1992 a third Marcy School was built—on

the site of the old Holmes School, which is next to Holmes Park. So Marcy Park is not

next to Marcy School, Holmes Park is. Marcy Park replaced Marcy School and Marcy

School replaced Homes School, but Holmes Park is still Holmes Park, just no longer next

to Holmes School.

In 1976 the park board expressed its desire to acquire the Marcy School site for a park

once the school closed. In 1979 the park board agreed to pay the school board the “fair

market value” of the school site, $150,000. The old school grounds were promptly

landscaped and outfitted with playground apparatus for smaller children. (See Holmes

Park for more of the story of parks in the neighborhood.)

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Marshall Terrace

Location: Marshall Street and 27th Avenue Northeast

Size: 6.55 acres

Name: At the time of its acquisition in 1914 the park was known informally as Northeast

Riverside Park. The park was officially named in 1915 for Marshall Street, which passes

by the park. The street was named for former Minnesota governor William Marshall. One

name considered by the board for the new park was Folwell Terrace, to honor William

Folwell, first president of the University of Minnesota and president of the park board

1895-1903. William Marshall played an indirect role in the development of the

Minneapolis park system by hiring Horace Cleveland to plan Marshall’s development in

the early 1870s of what became the St. Anthony Park neighborhood in St. Paul.

Cleveland’s work on that project, as well as other private contracts in the area, kept him

active and visible in the region, prior to the creation of the Minneapolis park board in

1883 and the board’s subsequent hiring of Cleveland to develop recommendations for the

new park system.

Acquisition and Development

The land for Marshall Terrace was purchased in 1914 for about $15,500. Land for a park

in the neighborhood had first been designated in 1913, at Marshall Street between 33

and 37

Avenue Northeast, but due to protests from neighborhood residents the

acquisition was abandoned. The board noted that it was “impracticable” to acquire the

land as designated. Instead the board chose to make a thorough canvass of the First Ward,

including aldermen and citizens, to select a location for one or more parks that may be

acquired and “make every effort to establish the parks to the satisfaction of the people of

the First Ward.” (The land originally designated for Northeast Riverside Park was in fact

later acquired by the park board and became part of St. Anthony Parkway.)

In May 1914, the board designated new land for the northeast riverside park and

approved its purchase. The description of the land was changed slightly in a new

resolution to acquire the land in August 1914.

In the 1915 Annual Report, Superintendent Theodore Wirth presented two plans for the

development of Marshall Terrace for playground purposes “for which the acquisition was

primarily made.” Both plans included a beach house on the river. Those plans were

abandoned when the board found that the river’s treacherous currents made swimming

there inadvisable. While Wirth presented two detailed plans for use of the property he

recommended simply grading the upper portion of the land for use as a baseball and

football field. Further improvements, he wrote should be determined after “patronage of

the ball fields indicated to what extent the grounds would be used.” Wirth noted that the

cost of either of his detailed plans was out of proportion to the size of the park. In

recommending only modest improvements, Wirth wrote that a “much larger tract of river

frontage land will be due that section of the city later on.”

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The board followed Wirth’s recommendation of making only minor improvements. His

suspicions about how much the park would be used proved to be well-founded. In 1917

the small shelter built at Marshall Terrace was moved to Farview Park because it wasn’t

being used. Wirth called Marshall Terrace “the only play field that has not come up to

expectations for attendance and appreciation.” He said the park was so little used that

upkeep was not justified.

Wirth’s view of the prospects for the park did not improve. In 1923 he noted that the

power plant adjacent to the park made it unfit for a playfield and recommended that the

board find another park site in the vicinity.

The park remained little improved until 1961 when the board constructed a small shelter

in the park. In the 1960s some dredging of the river for the creation of the city’s Upper

Harbor on the opposite (western) bank created fill for the area between the park and the

river. The 1968 annual report said that the filled area was seeded and planted, thus

increasing the useable space of the park by nearly four acres.

A playground for small children was constructed in the park in 1973 and a new river-

themed playground opened in 2013.

Marshall Terrace was renovated in 1991 when river overlooks were built, as well as stairs

down the riverbank to the shore below. The athletic fields were renovated in 2004. A

volleyball court was also built at that time.

A new river-themed playground opened in 2013.

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Matthews Park

Location: East 24

Street and 27

Avenue South

Size: 10 acres

Name: The park was named for Charles E. Matthews on May 7, 1969. Matthews was a

resident of the neighborhood who had been active in the community, in particular

campaigning for the park. Until the park was officially named it was referred to as

Seward Park after the elementary school adjacent to the park and the neighborhood in

which it is located. The school was named for William Seward, a former United States

Senator from New York, who became secretary of state in Abraham Lincoln’s cabinet.

Acquisition and Development

Matthews Park was the second park to be created in the Seward neighborhood, although

no one likely remembers the first. The first suggestion for a park in the neighborhood in

park board documents came in the 1910 annual report of the park board’s first recreation

director, Clifford Booth. Among his recommendations for improving the park board’s

recreation program that year was the addition of a playground in the “southern section of

the city between Powderhorn and Riverside playgrounds.” It was the only new

playground he recommended.

The park board followed Booth’s recommendation in 1911 and acquired four acres of

land at Minnehaha Avenue and East 28

Street for what was named Longfellow Field

next to Longfellow School. Longfellow Field became one of the most popular athletic

grounds in the city, especially for football games, in part due its proximity to the streetcar

line. In 1917, however, Longfellow Field was sold to a manufacturing company and land

for a new Longfellow Field, the one that still exists, was purchased a little over a mile to

the south and east. The area of the city that Booth thought most needed a new playground

no longer had one. The neighborhood would wait nearly fifty years to get another.

The campaign for another playground in the Seward neighborhood began in January 1958

when the PTA at Seward School requested a hearing by the park board on creating a

playground to serve the school’s area. Following a February 5 presentation by the Seward

PTA, the park board adopted a resolution to include a request for funds for Seward Park

in its 1959 bond program and directed park staff to make a joint study of the area with the

school board. Despite more petitions from the neighborhood in the next two years bonds

for the new park were not forthcoming.

Even in the absence of bond funding, on February 15, 1961, the park board designated for

acquisition the two blocks from 24

to 25

streets between 27

and 29

avenues. The

acquisition was part of a redevelopment plan for the neighborhood. In August and

September of 1961 the first seven lots for the park were purchased using money left over

from improvements at Farview, Audubon and Shingle Creek parks. Over the next two

years several additional lots were purchased for the park using an unanticipated source of

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funds: money paid to the park board by the state department of transportation for park

land it had taken for constructing freeways through the city. By the end of 1963 the park

board had acquired a little less than three acres of land, one lot at a time, at a total cost of

nearly $225,000. The cost was due in part to the fact that houses existed on most lots.

In 1963 the park board removed the houses on its new land, filled the basements, graded

the land to prepare for a skating rink that winter, and erected a portable warming house.

At the time the park board expressed its intention to acquire more land for the park as

funds permitted.

While small acquisitions for the park continued over the next couple years, the bulk of

the land to round out the park was acquired in 1967 with federal funds through the

Department of Housing and Urban Development’s Open Space program. The park board

paid the Minneapolis Housing and Redevelopment Authority (MHRA) $121,800 for the

remaining land for the park.

The development of Matthews Park followed a new model of combining a park, school

and social agency at one location. The park board and school board had cooperated on

several projects since the late 1940s, but the addition of a social agency to the mix was

new in the 1960s. Both Bethune (Grant) Park and Seward Park were planned from the

beginning as three-way partnerships. In 1966, the park board adopted a formal policy for

its role in those partnerships, which was influenced by the new superintendent of parks,

Robert Ruhe, who believed that recreation and leisure pursuits should be an integral part

of neighborhood life. In the words of the board’s policy statement, the cooperation

among agencies provided “the opportunity for a unified and collective approach to the

services required in neighborhoods.”

The social agency that partnered with the park board and school board at Matthews Park

was Pillsbury Waite Neighborhood Services. It was one of the first park projects in the

country that incorporated a social agency into initial planning for a park.

In 1968 construction began on a recreation center attached to what is now Seward

Montessori School. The park and recreation center were completed and dedicated in

1969. The new park included a volleyball court, basketball court, tennis courts, playing

fields and a wading pool. The park also included a unique feature in an otherwise flat

section of the city, a man-made hill in the southwest corner of the park that separated the

park from businesses to the southwest. The hill provides about the only place for winter

sledding in the neighborhood.

The recreation center was renovated in 1993 and additional improvements to the

playgrounds and playing fields were made over the next two years. In 2003, in a project

partially funded with Neighborhood Revitalization Program money, photovoltaic panels

were added to the roof of the recreation center to generate electricity and demonstrate

solar power generation.

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The rec center kitchen was updated in 2008 and in 2010 several improvements were

made inside the center to improve energy efficiency. The same year the playground

was upgraded to improve

accessibility.

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McRae Park

Location: Chicago Avenue and East 46

Street

Size: 7.92 acres

Name: The park was named in 1955 for Alexander A. McRae, a banker who served as a

park commissioner for 18 years and was the board’s president 1919-1921. He died during

his second stint on the park board in 1944 at age 74. Until the park was formally named,

it was referred to by its location on Chicago and 46

Acquisition and Development

The land for McRae Park was obtained partly through purchase by condemnation at a

cost of $24,250, and partly from the state of Minnesota for nothing. The state had

acquired the land through tax-forfeiture. The acquisition was completed in 1947.

A 1944 study of the city’s park needs recommended that two playground parks be added

to this southern section of the city, but no sites were available, or affordable, at the time.

In 1946, however, a neighborhood group, the Shenandoah Playground Association, asked

the park board to consider a site at 46

and Elliot for a park. Several parcels of land were

on the state’s tax-forfeiture list. The park board asked the state to withhold those lots

from its land sale and added to them by purchasing adjoining land.

Land nearby had been offered as a park nearly six decades earlier. In 1888, the owner of

the forty acres of land from 44

to 46

streets between Chicago and Portland had offered

to sell the land to the park board for $1,800 an acre. The park board declined, saying that

the property was “undesirable” for park purposes and the price “unreasonable.”

Plans to develop the park into a playground and athletic fields were completed in 1953, as

were special assessment procedures to bill area property owners for the costs of

developing the park.

Construction of the park was begun in late 1954 and completed in 1956. The new park

had baseball, softball and football fields, a hard-surface area for basketball and

volleyball, two tennis courts, a concrete wading pool, a small playground shelter and

warming house, and playground equipment. The park was dedicated in 1955 as McRae

Field. The final grading and sodding and installation of sidewalks and picnic tables were

finished in 1956.

At the beginning of a cycle of major improvements to park facilities throughout the city

in the 1970s, new playground equipment was installed at McRae in 1969. Seven years

later, the original small park shelter was expanded into a recreation center.

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A new play area for small children was added in 1996 and in 1998 a permanent hard-

surface skating rink was constructed that permitted year-round skating, in winter on

blades and summer on wheels.

Energy efficiency was the goal of improvements to the rec center in 2008 and 2010. And

in 2009 new lighting and fencing was installed on the playing fields. Neighborhood

revitalization funds were used for many of these improvements.

McRae Park was the park in which Edward Solomon came to prominence in park affairs.

Solomon was a frequent volunteer at the park, especially as a football coach. Solomon

was appointed to fill a vacancy on the park board in 1996 following the death of long-

time park commissioner Dale “Skip” Gilbert, and was elected to the board in 1997. He

became board president in 2000. He died while in office in 2002. One of the newest parks

in the city, southwest of Lake Nokomis, was named for Solomon in 2004.

In 2016, outdoor pickleball striping was added to the tennis courts.

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Meadowbrook Golf Course

Location: Excelsior Road and Meadowbrook Road in Hopkins

Size: 210 acres

Name: The course was named June 23, 1925 for its topography. Minnehaha Creek is the

“brook” that runs through the course. Before it was formally named the course was

referred to as the Southwest Golf Course.

Acquisition and Development

In the spring of 1924 the park board struck a deal with Armour & Company to build a golf

course on Armour property adjacent to northeast Minneapolis, which eventually became

Francis Gross Golf Course. That brought to three the total number of golf courses

operated by the park board—Glenwood (Wirth) and Columbia were the others—all in

north Minneapolis. While the park board purchased land around Lake Hiawatha in 1922

for a golf course in the southern half of the city, it was years away from being developed.

Property owners near Lake Hiawatha were already paying assessments for the extensive

work being done to develop Lake Nokomis and to acquire the Hiawatha property and

Minnehaha Creek east to the falls. The park board couldn’t assess those properties for

money to develop the Lake Hiawatha property at the same time.

Still, southern Minneapolis needed a golf course in the opinion of the park board and park

superintendent Theodore Wirth. Golf was increasing dramatically in popularity at the

time. So according to Theodore Wirth’s memoirs, written in 1945, he set out to find

suitable land for a golf course anywhere in the vicinity of south Minneapolis. The land he

found was 1½ miles west of Minneapolis on Excelsior Road.

Inspired by the financing arranged with Armour & Company for the acquisition and

development of the northeastern golf course, the board struck a deal with the Atlas Realty

Company to acquire the land west of Minneapolis. Atlas Realty agreed to sell the 210

acres for $80,000 and loan another $50,000 for building the golf course. They would be

paid back over twenty years with proceeds from the golf course. If the park board failed

to pay off the contract in twenty years, title to the land would simply revert to Atlas

Realty. It was a deal that was almost too good to be true for the park board—and it was.

Burton Kingsley, park board president at the time, wrote in the 1924 annual report that

the city was “literally obtaining golf courses without expense to the taxpayer.” Wirth

noted in his report that year that the creative contracts with Armour and Atlas Realty

“prove that there are many different ways open to accomplish desirable and worthy

objectives.”

The only catch, initially, to the Southwest Golf Course project was that the park board

had never before acquired land outside of the city limits that was not contiguous with

park property. (Since 1885 the board had had the power to acquire land outside of city

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limits that was an extension of a park or parkway within the city limits—and had used

that power in acquiring portions of Minnehaha Creek and Glenwood (Wirth) Park. Even

in the case of the Armour land for a golf course, although it was outside city limits, the

land was contiguous with St. Anthony Parkway.) To be sure that the board had the legal

authority to acquire the land for Meadowbrook Golf Course the park board instituted a

test case in the courts. Essentially the board sued itself—and won. The courts decided

that the park board had the power to acquire the land and use it for a golf course. The

decision was upheld by the Minnesota Supreme Court in early 1925, and Wirth was given

the go-ahead to commence building the golf course.

Like the new Armour course, Meadowbrook was built to designs by local architect

William Clark and had grass tees and greens. The first two courses in the city, Glenwood

and Columbia, still had sand greens and clay tees

The course was completed, including a small clubhouse, and opened for play in 1926.

The first problem encountered at the golf course emerged in 1927 when parts of the

course near a flooded Minnehaha Creek were too wet to be playable. To make them

playable, nine holes of the course were closed for three seasons to dredge a twenty-acre

lake from seventy acres of swamp. To pay for the dredging and filling, the park board

borrowed another $90,000 from First Minneapolis Company, the successor to Atlas

Realty, and put it on the tab.

Still, the course was popular enough that in 1930 the park board managed to pay the

interest on the contract and in 1931, despite the Great Depression, the park board made

payments on interest and principal with earnings from the course. That would be the last

year for many that the park board would be able to pay down the principal it owed.

As the depression took hold, the number of golf rounds played on all city courses

dropped dramatically. Even though the park board reduced fees to play Meadowbrook

and Armour from seventy-five cents to fifty cents, Meadowbrook operated at a net loss.

In 1933 the board announced that it was unable to make scheduled payments on the

contracts for Armour and Meadowbrook. By the end of 1934, with its failure to make

even interest payments for a few years, the board’s debt on the property had grown from

$220,000 to $253,000.

To make matters worse, summers of drought had made the golf course less appealing. In

order to compete with other golf courses in the area, Meadowbrook needed a sprinkling

system for its fairways. Once again the successors to the Atlas Realty contract,

Merchant’s Bank Building Company, came to the rescue. The company not only put up

the $40,000 for a new sprinkling system, but agreed to renegotiate the original contract,

wiping out over $100,000 in park board debts. The new contract set the board’s debt for

the course at $180,000.

By the late 1930s and early 1940s, Meadowbrook operated at near breakeven most years

and at that it was one of the most successful park board golf courses. It also charged the

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highest fees. In 1936 the park board instituted a season pass program for the golf courses,

ranging in price from $24 for Meadowbrook to $16 for Columbia.

Still, the long-ago dream of acquiring a golf course with only revenues from the course

had proved illusory. By the time the original twenty-year term of the contract was up in

1944, the park board had added another $53,000 in unpaid interest to the amount of the

contract renegotiated ten years earlier. The Merchant’s Bank Building Company

informed the board in 1945 that it was going to take back the land for failure to make

payments. The company already had a housing developer lined up to buy the land.

In a final act of generosity, the company agreed to sell the land—for which the park

board still owed $237,000 under the terms of its revised contract—for a cash payment of

$75,000, which was less than it had been offered by the developer. To cover the purchase

price and needed improvements to the course, the city agreed to sell $87,500 in bonds.

The bonds were to be repaid through operating profits on the course over the next twenty

years. Ultimately, golfers did pay for the course through playing fees, and the course has

since become an important source of revenue for the park board.

Clear park board title to the property was celebrated in 1947 when the National Public

Links Golf Championship was played at the course.

In 1968 Meadowbrook became the first park board golf course to offer golf carts to

players.

In 1979 the first non-golf improvements were made to the property, including a canoe

landing on Minnehaha Creek and a picnic area.

In June 2014 record rainfalls caused a devastating flood that forced the course to close

for the remainder of the 2014 season and all of the 2015 season. In September 2015 the

park board approved a plan that will allow the course to reopen in summer 2017 with an

improved layout.

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Memorial Parkway

Location: Theodore Wirth Parkway to 45

Avenue North then east to Lyndale Avenue

North

Size: 75.23 acres

Name: The parkway was originally named Glenwood-Camden Parkway when the land

was acquired for the parkway in 1911, referring to its route from Glenwood Park to

Camden Park. (Before the name was adopted it was referred to informally as North Side

Parkway.) It was officially named Victory Memorial Drive in 1919 and included all of

Memorial Parkway, and what is now Theodore Wirth Parkway and Cedar Lake Parkway.

The name was changed to Memorial Parkway in 1968 and applies only to the parkway

from Lowry Avenue to Webber (Camden) Park. In 2010 the park board approved the use

of Victory Memorial Drive again as a renovation and a 90

anniversary celebration were

planned.

Acquisition and Development

The idea of a parkway encircling the city, today’s Grand Rounds, is nearly as old as the

park board itself. When landscape architect Horace Cleveland submitted to the first park

board his formal “suggestions” for a system of parks and parkways in 1883 he envisioned

parkways connecting major parks in each section of the city. His original vision for a

system of parkways was largely achieved decades later, although most of those parkways

ended up being further from the center of city than Cleveland would have liked.

The first suggestions for a parkway in northwest Minneapolis came in 1884 when

commissioners proposed a parkway around the western shore of Cedar Lake and from

there through north Minneapolis to Farview Park. Some commissioners thought this was

a more scenic and certainly less expensive route for a parkway into north Minneapolis

than a direct route form Loring Park to Farview Park along Lyndale Avenue North. The

western route had the advantage that the owner of considerable land west of Cedar Lake

and in north Minneapolis, William McNair, had offered to donate land for a parkway.

Recognizing that the best route for that parkway would actually pass outside of

Minneapolis city limits into what is now Golden Valley, the park board even went so far

as to introduce a bill to the state legislature in 1885 that would give the park board the

power to acquire land outside the city limits. The legislature granted that power to the

park board.

In the summer of 1885, the park board arranged a meeting with McNair, a close friend of

several of the first park commissioners, to acquire a strip of land 150-feet wide for the

parkway. Charles Loring, the president of the park board then, wrote in 1890 that

ultimately the board rejected McNair’s offer of free land because the route around Cedar

Lake was too far from the city. McNair died in the fall of 1885 and the matter was not

pursued. (Many years later the park board had discussions with McNair’s heirs about

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acquiring that land once again, but other than the purchase of some of McNair’s land

along Cedar Lake, nothing came of the those discussions.)

The idea of a parkway around the city was revived by park commissioner William

Folwell in 1891, after the acquisition of the first sixty acres of Saratoga Park, which

would eventually be renamed Glenwood Park, then Theodore Wirth Park. In a special

report to the board on park expansion, Folwell urged the board not to limit parkway

development to the southwestern part of the city around the lakes. Giving the credit for

the idea to his friend Horace Cleveland, Folwell proposed a parkway around Cedar Lake,

through the new Saratoga Park to a large northwestern park, then across the city to

another large park in northeast Minneapolis, continuing down Stinson Boulevard to the

Mississippi River at the University of Minnesota, and then along the river to Minnehaha

Park. Folwell suggested the parkways could be called the “Grand Rounds.”

The idea—and the name—struck a chord, but before the park board could build the

connecting parkways, it needed the anchoring parks. And those would take many years to

acquire. Keeping the idea of a northwestern parkway alive, Folwell wrote in 1901 that

“but for the sudden deaths of two public-spirited citizens, the Hon. W.W. McNair and the

Hon. Eugene M. Wilson, the grand rounds would long since have been extended from

Calhoun to Glenwood Park and thence along the west boundary of the city to the north

line.”

The idea of the northwestern parkway came up again in 1909, after the board had

expanded Glenwood (Wirth) Park from its original sixty-six acres to more than eight

hundred acres and also acquired Camden (Webber) Park in north Minneapolis. The park

board had acquired Columbia Park in northeast Minneapolis less than two years after

Folwell’s proposal. With parks to connect, the desire to build parkways between them

took on new urgency.

At the end of 1909, the park board asked park superintendent Theodore Wirth to prepare

plans for a parkway from Glenwood Park to Camden Park. The following year, July 21,

1910, the park board designated land for the parkway, on the condition that residents of

the area would not request improvements on the land for some years, except for opening

a road from 19

Avenue North (Golden Valley Road) into Glenwood (Wirth) Park. With

only that stretch of road completed residents of north Minneapolis would have a parkway

connection to the lakes in south Minneapolis and Minnehaha Park beyond. The only

controversy surrounding the location of the new parkway, which was through open

farmland, was whether the east-west section should follow 43

Avenue or 45

Avenue.

The preference expressed by the Camden Park Commercial Club for 45

Avenue seemed

to resolve the issue for the board.

A total of 170 acres were acquired for the parkway at a cost of nearly $170,000. The

parkway on the western city limit was 333-feet wide and the east-west section on 45

Avenue was 200 feet wide. The cost of the land for the parkway, along with land for the

expansion of Glenwood Park and the purchase of the west shore of Cedar Lake, a total of

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$350,000, was paid for partly with bonds—30%—and the remainder with assessments on

property deemed to be benefited by the new parkway.

Construction of the parkway, in keeping with promises that it would take some time,

began in 1913 when the parkway was built from 16

Avenue North to 19

. The next

stage of the parkway from 19

to Lowry Avenue was begun in 1916, but due to spending

constraints during World War I, it wasn’t completed and opened to traffic until 1920.

Park superintendent Theodore Wirth called the parkway “one of the most impressive

parts of the Grand Rounds system.” In the 1916 annual report, Wirth presented plans for

completing the parkway north of Lowry Avenue, then east to Camden (Webber) Park.

Noting that “the country traversed is rather uninteresting,” Wirth proposed a straight

parkway on the west side of the land, leaving space on the east side of the parkway for

playgrounds and athletic fields.

Wirth altered his plans for the parkway in 1919 when former park board president

Charles Loring made a generous offer to the park board. Loring had already donated to

the park board the recreation shelter in Loring Park and had paid for the construction of

an artificial waterfall flowing into Glenwood (Wirth) Lake. Loring had long desired to

create a memorial to American soldiers. In 1908 he had commissioned a young

Minneapolis architect, William Purcell, to design a memorial arch dedicated to soldiers.

Where he hoped to place the arch is not known. But in the wake of World War I, Loring

proposed another kind of monument; he would plant memorial trees to soldiers along the

city’s parkways. Wirth had a better idea. He thought the planned Camden-Glenwood

Parkway was the ideal place to plant rows of stately elm trees as a memorial. Loring liked

the idea and agreed to pay for the trees and fund a $50,000 trust accountfor their

perpetual care. The result was a memorial drive, with the parkway centered on the strip of

land, instead of off to one side.

The board accepted Loring’s offer, named the new parkway Victory Memorial Drive, and

Wirth set out to find the perfect tree. He found a type of elm, called the Moline elm, in

nurseries in Chicago and New York, and brought them to the park board’s nursery at

Glenwood (Wirth) Park in 1919, so they would be well-established for replanting along

the parkway when it was finished.

With memorial trees ready to be planted, and an additional 5.3 acres of land acquired for

a monument at the northwest corner of the parkway, the final three miles of the Victory

Memorial Drive were completed in 1921. On June 11, 1921 the new parkway, and its

news trees, were dedicated in a grand ceremony. Loring, then age 87, was not healthy

enough to attend, but drove over the new parkway the day before with his old friend

William Folwell.

Later that year both General John Pershing and Marshal Ferdinand Foch, the French

commander of Allied forces during World War I, visited the parkway and expressed their

admiration for the living memorial. The name of each soldier from Hennepin County who

had died in war was placed on a wooden cross in front of a tree. Unfortunately the special

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elms selected for the drive weren’t hardy enough for Minnesota’s winters and were

replaced in 1925.

The wooden crosses were replaced as well in 1928, on the tenth anniversary of the end of

World War I, when bronze crosses and stars, each inscribed with the name of a soldier,

were installed.

The original wooden flag pole installed as a monument where the northbound parkway

turns east at 45

Avenue was replaced by a bronze flag pole and ornamental base in 1923

by the American Legion of Hennepin County. A statue of Abraham Lincoln, a replica of

St. Gaudens’ famous sculpture, was installed at the intersection in 1930.

In November 1959, the park board received a scare when consultants hired by the

Hennepin County Board recommended that the county take over the parkway for the

purpose of creating a county highway. The park board registered its opposition to the

proposal in early 1960, as did the Veterans of Foreign Wars, who opposed the

“desecration” of memorials to soldiers.

While the conversion of Memorial Parkway into a freeway appears not to have been

seriously considered, two years later the board still included Victory Memorial Drive

among parks and parkways that could be reduced or lost to freeways. During the 1960s

and after when freeways were built across the city, the park board did lose two parks

(Wilson Park and Elwell Park) and parts of several more to freeways. But all of those

losses were for interstate freeways, not county highways.

Many of the majestic elms in two rows beside the parkway succumbed to Dutch Elm

disease in the 1970s and after. Now a less uniform growth of a variety of trees covers the

parkway with shade.

The parkway, flag plaza and monuments were renovated prior to the 90

anniversary of

the dedication of the parkway and monuments in 2011. Eight intersections across the

parkway were vacated, trails were repaved, and new lighting was installed.

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Mill Ruins Park

Location: West River Parkway at Portland Avenue.

Name: The park was named for the ruins of the flour mills which occupy the site.

Acquisition and Development

The land for the park was acquired in 1985 as a part of the acquisition of the west river

banks for West River Parkway. A company that manufactured concrete held a long-term

lease on the land, which it acquired after the nearby lock was built in 1962 to lift boats to

the upper harbor above St. Anthony Falls. After the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers filled

the old tail races from the mills to construct the lock, it leased the land for 99 years to the

company that used it as a storage site for sand and gravel. The park board purchased the

lease and relocated the company’s storage facilities upriver at a cost of $8 million. The

funds were provided primarily by the state legislature though the Metropolitan Council as

part of efforts begun in the 1970s to redevelop the riverfront and create a central

riverfront park.

From early on in the efforts to redevelop the area and extend West River Parkway into

downtown, the historical significance of the site was an important consideration. The site

was excavated and its development planned under the direction of the St. Anthony Falls

Heritage Board, created by the legislature in 1988, and the park board. The National Park

Service contributed to the development of the park as part of the Mississippi National

River and Recreation Area, which had been established by the U. S. Congress in 1988.

The goal of the development of Mill Ruins Park was to give park visitors a glimpse into

the history of the mills in the area, which had been so important to the history of the city

and the region. The park was opened to the public in 2001.

In 2003 a 650-foot section of West River Parkway was converted to an oak plank road

similar to the original plank road that spanned the canals which carried water back to the

river after powering the mills. The park was completed in 2005.

The planks in the parkway were replaced by concrete in 2010 due to deterioration of the

planks and their noisy condition. In 2012 a Nice Ride bicycle rental kiosk was installed at

the park.

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Minnehaha Creek West

Location: The bed and banks of Minnehaha Creek from Humboldt Avenue South to

Zenith Avenue South.

Size: 39 acres

Name: The name is descriptive. “West” refers to the section of the creek and its banks

from Humboldt Avenue South to the western city limits at Zenith Avenue South.

Acquisition and Development

Minnehaha Creek had been desired by early park boards for the scenic connection it

provided from Lake Harriet to Minnehaha Falls. Much of the land along the creek from

Humboldt Avenue to the east was acquired beginning in the 1880s. The creek upstream,

or west, from Humboldt Avenue, however, didn’t hold much interest for the park board.

The area was mostly open land. Lake Harriet was far enough from the city; the park

board wouldn’t have met with much enthusiasm for a park along the creek even farther

from town.

It wasn’t until 1919 that the first suggestion was made to acquire the creek to the west

and then, unlike most other suggestions for new parks, the idea was introduced by a park

commissioner, Phelps Wyman, not residents of the area. Phelps Wyman was also a

landscape architect who created the first designs for what is now Lowry Park.

In 1920 the park board approved the acquisition of the creek from Humboldt to Newton

Avenue and later revised the plan to acquire the creek as far as Penn Avenue. From the

time the acquisition was first presented, however, it met opposition. Two commissioners

on the committee that recommended acquisition filed a minority report in which they

disagreed with the acquisition citing the fact that park superintendent Theodore Wirth had

said that section of the city already was “amply provided” with parks. They also objected

to claims that park board ownership of the creek would improve water flow in the creek

or improve the “sanitary” conditions of the creek, because the park board didn’t control

the creek upstream from Minneapolis’s city limits.

The debate over the acquisition flared up periodically for the next eight years. There was

always considerable opposition from property owners in the area who would have to pay

for the acquisition through assessments on their property. Resolutions to acquire the

creek were passed, then abandoned, three times, including an attempt to purchase the

creek all the way to the western city limit at Zenith Avenue in 1924.

An attempt to acquire the land in 1923 was abandoned when a number of property

owners appealed the appraisals of their land by the park board and appraisers appointed

by the district court doubled the awards.

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With several failed attempts behind it, park board president Washington Yale wrote in the

1927 annual report, “Unless this creek bed is soon acquired, it will, in a few years’ time,

suffer the same fate of Bassett’s Creek and become a very unattractive covered drain.”

Finally in late 1928 the park board voted to acquire the land by condemnation. It took

more than a year to complete the transactions, but in 1930 the park board finally owned

the entire banks of Minnehaha Creek within the city limits, from the Mississippi River to

the city’s boundary with Edina. The 39 acres of creek and land were purchased for just

over $100,000. The cost of the purchase and $65,000 for improvements were assessed on

property in the neighborhood over ten years.

Wirth presented his initial plan for the improvement of the property in the 1928 annual

report. Those plans were implemented in 1931. The entire length of the creek bed was

graded to a gradual slope and the creek was redirected in places to conform better to the

boundaries of the land the park board had acquired. Sidewalks were built along much of

the creek that year. Tennis courts were built near 53

and Morgan in 1932, along with a

concrete and steel footbridge over the creek near the courts, and a softball field was built

on the meadow south of the creek next to Penn Avenue South.

Because some homes were already located near the creek banks, and the banks of the

creek are very steep in some places, a parkway along that section of the creek was never

considered.

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Minnehaha Park

Location: Hiawatha Avenue and Minnehaha Parkway

Size: 167.24 acres

Name: The park was officially named Minnehaha State Park when it was purchased by

Minneapolis for the state of Minnesota in 1889. In 1906 it was officially designated as a

part of Mississippi Park, which included the parkways on both sides of the river and

Riverside Park. The name Minnehaha comes from words in the Dakota language that

mean waterfall. The popular translation of “laughing waters” comes from a felicitous, but

too literal Anglophone translation of “ha ha”

Acquisition and Development

Minnehaha Falls and the land surrounding it became one of the first state parks in the

United States when it was purchased by the state of Minnesota in 1889. Only New York

had created a state park at that time. But the state of Minnesota only paid for the park

indirectly and never had a hand in maintaining it. The city of Minneapolis put up the

money to buy it and managed it from the beginning.

The earliest plans of Minneapolis’s Board of Park Commissioners didn’t address the falls

because it was located far outside city limits at the time. Horace Cleveland in his

blueprint for the city’s parks in 1883 did not address specifically the development of the

land around the falls, although he called it “exceedingly desirable.” The first park board

focused instead on developing four neighborhood parks, as well as parks and parkways

around the lakes in southwest Minneapolis and the Mississippi River gorge below St.

Anthony Falls.

In 1885 the Minnesota legislature passed a bill that authorized the creation of a park at

Minnehaha Falls. The legislation was sponsored not by the park board, but by the

Minneapolis Board of Trade, the same organization that had drafted the legislation to

create the park board in 1883. The governor subsequently appointed a five-member

commission to select and appraise the land to be purchased for the park. The commission

was headed by the president of the Minneapolis park board, Charles Loring, and also

included George Brackett, who was one of the first park commissioners in Minneapolis.

The commission selected 123 acres around the falls and along Minnehaha Creek to the

Mississippi River. The land was appraised at about $92,000. Property owners whose land

was to be taken for the park, however, appealed the appraisals in court and the appeals

were not determined in favor of the park commission in time for the 1887 biennial

session of the state legislature to purchase the land.

When the legislature met again in 1889, it determined that the money to buy the land was

not available and was about to abandon the acquisition until George Brackett took

decisive action. With little time to act, Brackett drew up a promissory note for $100,000

and signed it himself. He then collected other signatures on the note from wealthy park

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supporters in Minneapolis. When he took the note to Henry Brown asking for his

signature as well, Brown did better than sign the note. (Brown was a partner in real estate

investments with Charles Loring, who was out of the city at the time on his annual winter

vacation in Riverside, California.) Brown took $50,000 out of his own bank account,

borrowed another $50,000 from his bank and handed Brackett a check for $100,000.

The next day the check was delivered to the governor and deposited in the state treasury.

The legislature then approved the purchase of the land for the park, with the

understanding that the park would be operated and maintained by the Minneapolis park

board. The city of Minneapolis later issued bonds to repay Henry Brown. Seven years

later, during a serious economic depression, which must have had a serious impact on

Brown’s wealth, he asked the park board to reimburse him for several hundred dollars he

had paid in interest on the money he put up before he was reimbursed. Brown

acknowledged that he had no legal claim to be reimbursed, but believed that he had a

moral claim. The park board rejected his claim, in part because it came so many years

after the transaction.

The hidden hand in Brackett’s bold action was likely Horace Cleveland’s. The landscape

architect, who had campaigned for many years for the city to protect its natural resources,

and had created the first plan for the city’s parks and parkways at the request of the first

park board in 1883, delivered a speech in 1888 to the Fine Arts Society of Minneapolis in

which he implored the city’s elite to take action to preserve the banks of the Mississippi

River and Minnehaha Falls. Cleveland’s eloquent and passionate plea to preserve those

“jewels”—his speech was printed and distributed as a small leather-bound pamphlet—

likely made it easier for Brackett to persuade wealthy citizens to sign his promissory

note.

Cleveland was very familiar with the lay of the land around the falls. In 1888 he had laid

out the grounds of the Soldiers Home built on land donated by the city of Minneapolis on

the bluff overlooking the confluence of Minnehaha Creek and the Mississippi River. The

idea for the Soldier’s Home, intended to care for the many maimed victims of the Civil

War, has been attributed to Albert Ames, the mayor of Minneapolis at the time the park

board was created in 1883. (Ames opposed the creation of the park board.)

The park board officially accepted title to the land from the state of Minnesota on June

15, 1889 and assessed the cost of acquiring the park—$92,283—on property owners in

the vicinity of the falls. In the fall of that year the park board had the new park surveyed

so that Horace Cleveland could work over the winter on plans for the layout of the park.

(Cleveland submitted “letters” to the park board in 1891 and 1892 on improvements to

the park, but there is no record that he ever submitted formal plans for the layout of the

park.)

The next summer, 1890, the park board had tables and settees placed north of the falls. In

addition the park board had “swings and hammocks suspended wherever practicable and

lavatories constructed.” Anticipating the popularity of the new park, the park board asked

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the street railway company to limit street-car fares to the falls to five cents, a request that

was complied with.

In 1892 the park board built its first pavilion—“more properly a shelter,” said the 1892

annual report—in the park near the falls and also installed electric lights in the park. One

reason for dressing up the park that year was that the Republican Party National

Convention was held in Minneapolis, the first major party convention held in the “west”

and a matter of great pride in the city.

The increasing popularity of the park was evident in the small additions to the park. In

1893 the park board gave permission for a man to offer Shetland pony rides in the park

and the park board began accepting gifts of animals for a zoo in the lower glen. Later that

summer the park board denied a request to spend $50 a week to provide concerts at the

Minnehaha pavilion because of the “inability of the street railway to accommodate traffic

already going there on Sundays.” The park board did, however, approve the construction

of two pedestrian bridges “of a rustic nature” over the creek, one above the falls and the

other below.

Improvements continued in 1894 with the construction of a parapet wall north of the falls

to protect spectators and the “clearing of rubbish,” including an old dam, from the glen

below the falls.

Requests to illuminate the falls and to grant photograph privileges at the falls were denied

by the park board. The issue of constructing a photograph stand next to the falls had

drawn the ire of Horace Cleveland who had always taken the position that the falls and

creek below it should be altered as little as possible from their natural state.

Cleveland wrote in a letter to park commissioner William Folwell, “I learn that the park

commission are seriously thinking of a building at Minnehaha for the express purpose of

taking photographs—on the site heretofore profaned by a shanty for that purpose. I

cannot remain silent in view of this proposed vandalism which I am sure you cannot

sanction—and which I am equally sure will forever be a stigma upon Minneapolis and

elicit the anathema of every man of sense and taste who visits the place. If erected it will

simply be pandering to the tastes of the army of boobies who think to boost themselves

into notoriety by connecting their own stupid features with the representation of one of

the most beautiful of God’s works.”

Meanwhile the informal zoo in the park continued to grow. An alligator tank was added

in 1897 and a bear pit in 1899. In winter the non-native animals were housed in the park

board warehouse at Lyndale Farmstead, except the alligator, which had its winter home

in a local greenhouse. By 1901 park board president William Folwell commented that as

many people were going to Minnehaha Park to see the animals as the famous falls.

To accommodate those crowds and provide “refreshments of a clean and wholesome

nature at a reasonable cost,” a refectory was built near the falls in 1903 to a design by

park commissioner and architect Harry W. Jones, who also designed two of the pavilions

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at Lake Harriet. Unfortunately the refectory burned down the following year, but it was

replaced in 1905.

In the 1905 annual report board president Fred Smith wrote that the new pavilion, as well

as changes in policing and the support of the city administration, have “done much to

redeem Minnehaha from its unsavory reputation and make it a place where women and

children can visit and enjoy their picnics without fear of molestation or insult.” The park

board had also addressed “unsavory” influences at the park by purchasing in 1904 two

blocks of land west of the park to Hiawatha Avenue for $6,800. The expansion removed

many saloons and restaurants that had existed to serve visitors to the park.

The park began to undergo important changes in 1906 with the arrival of a new park

superintendent, Theodore Wirth. One of Wirth’s first actions was to improve the entrance

to the park at Minnehaha Avenue, making it more “dignified,” in his words, including the

relocation of the pony rides. Wirth also convinced the park board to get rid of most of the

animals kept in the park zoo. In 1907 most of the animals were given to Robert “Fish”

Jones, who established a private zoo, Longfellow Gardens, adjacent to the park on its

western edge. Jones later donated his property to the park board. The park board,

however, kept elk and deer pens in the lower glen, in part because those animals could

survive year-round in their enclosures. Those animals remained in the park until 1923,

when the park board removed them to expand the picnic grounds in the lower glen.

Wirth was also an active promoter of playgrounds in parks. In addition to establishing the

park board’s first playgrounds at Logan Park and Riverside Park in 1906, the board

installed some playground equipment near the refectory at Minnehaha Park, including a

“Hartford” merry-go-round, the kind kids push.

One of Wirth’s other proposals for the park was not adopted by the board: Wirth

expressed in the annual report of 1906 his belief that no additional parkways should be

built in the near future by the park board, except for a half-mile drive down Minnehaha

Glen to the Mississippi River. Although Wirth repeated the proposal on a couple

occasions over the years—his 1919 annual report includes a map of where he would have

placed the road—the park board never did build a parkway down what remains today one

of the park system’s wildest, most charming escapes from the city. The charm of that

wild stretch of creek was diminished a bit in 1908 when a bridge was built over the gorge

to the Soldier’s Home. The design and construction of the bridge were approved by the

park board.

The first “monument” was added to the park in 1896 when the home of John Stevens, the

first permanent settlers’ home built in the city of Minneapolis in 1849, was hauled by

10,000 school children pulling on enormous ropes from downtown to the park. In 1912,

the park got its first statue when Jacob Fjelde’s depiction of Hiawatha carrying

Minnehaha across the creek was placed on an island above the falls. Three years later a

statue of Gunnar Wennerberg, a Swedish poet, composer and scholar, was added to the

park. Two additional monuments have since been added: a statue of John Stevens was

moved to the park in 1935 when its original location at Stevens Circle downtown was

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taken over for traffic purposes; and, a mask of Chief Little Crow, the leader of the Dakota

in the mid-1800s, was added to the park near the falls. In addition a fountain was installed

in 1996 in the former parking lot and overlook east of the falls, which is encircled by

verses cut in stone from Henry Wadsworth Longfellow’s The Song of Hiawatha.

Two additional historic structures also are now located in the park. The quaint Princess

Depot, built in 1875 before the park was a park, was given by the Milwaukee Road

railroad to the Minnesota Historical Society in 1964. In 2001, the depot was renovated

with the help of the Minnesota Transportation Museum and is now operated as free

museum.

The Longfellow House, once the home of Robert Jones at his Longfellow Gardens

attraction across Hiawatha Avenue from the park, was acquired by the park board along

with the land of the former zoo in 1937. Jones had donated his land to the park board in

an agreement in 1924 that enabled him or his heirs to remain on the property for ten

years. Legal appeals by Jones’ heirs delayed park board control of the property until

1937. In 1938 the house was leased to the library board as a branch library, which

operated until 1968. In 1994, with the construction of the “tuck and cover” tunnel for the

Hiawatha Avenue highway, the house was moved a few hundred feet to its present

location. It was renovated and now serves as an information center for the Grand Rounds

National Scenic Byway and as offices for park board staff. The house was built in 1906

as a replica of Henry Wadsworth Longfellow’s home in Cambridge, Massachusetts.

A major change to the park occurred in 1921 when the park board established an auto

tourist camp on the bluff overlooking the Mississippi River near the Soldier’s Home in

what is now the Wabun picnic area. The camp was intended to appeal to the many

tourists who were travelling the country in their new automobiles. Rental cabins were

built at the camp a few years after it opened. The cabins were initially built and operated

by a private contractor but later were purchased by the park board. The camp continued

in operation until 1956. (Other auto tourist camps were proposed for Columbia Park and

The Parade, near downtown, but were never approved.) Access to the tourist camp was

enhanced and park use was increased in 1926 when the Ford Bridge was opened

connecting south Minneapolis with St. Paul.

The same year the park board designated the park to be a center for winter sports

activities and authorized the construction of a ski jump on the hill where the deer and elk

pens had once been. The board also authorized the purchase of toboggans for rental on

the hill.

Major improvements were made in the park from 1932 to 1940 by federal work relief

crews. With the aid of federal money, stairs were built into the lower glen, as well as

retaining walls along the banks of the creek and new bridges over it.

With the closing of the auto tourist camp the park board created a new picnic area in

1957 in the Wabun section of the park. The new picnic spot included a pavilion which

featured metered electricity. Picnickers could deposit coins to get power. It was an

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innovation first introduced at a picnic shelter built in Columbia Park. Remodeling of the

1905 refectory was also begun in 1957.

The park was expanded for the first time in decades in 1958 when the park board

acquired 26 acres of land from the federal government that had been a part of Fort

Snelling to the south of the park. The park board had lobbied Congress to donate most of

Fort Snelling to the park board since the turn of the century. Early park boards had

coveted the largely unused land of the fort to continue West River Parkway through

Minnehaha Park all the way to the Minnesota River.

Four years later the park board acquired additional land on the bluff adjacent to the

Wabun picnic area in a trade with the Minnesota highway department. The land was

acquired in exchange for land the highway department needed at The Parade as it planned

the construction of the first freeways in the city.

At that time the park board was more accommodating to relinquishing land for freeways.

As the demand for park land for highways increased, however, the park board eventually

fought those actions with bitter determination. The conflict between highways and parks

came to a head over highway plans for Hiawatha Avenue (Highway 55) in the mid-

1960s. The highway department planned a freeway from down town to the airport via

that route. The plan was to build an elevated freeway between Minnehaha Park and

Longfellow Gardens over Minnehaha Creek. The park board hired its own consultants

who proposed a plan that would divert the freeway around the western edge of

Longfellow Garden. That plan would have maintained the integrity of the parks better,

but would have required the dislocation of more homes and businesses, which the state

and the neighborhood fought strenuously.

The park board challenged the highway plan all the way to the U.S. Supreme Court.

Before the case could be heard by that court, however, it ruled in a similar case from

Nashville, Tennessee in favor of the preservation of park land. That decision set a

precedent that doomed the highway department’s plan. Before a compromise could be

reached federal money for building the highway was no longer available. The highway

was eventually built in the late-1990s to a plan that put the highway through a tunnel over

Minnehaha Creek covered by a “land bridge” between Minnehaha Park and Longfellow

Garden. A new garden, named Longfellow Garden, was created on top of the land bridge.

With the plans for the highway moving forward, the park board also developed a master

plan to renovate the park. In 1995, a new garden, the Pergola Garden, featuring native

wildflowers and grasses, was created overlooking the falls from the south.

Over the next two years, the parking lot that once overlooked the falls from the east was

removed to the edge of the park and traffic was no longer permitted up to the falls. The

parking lot was replaced by a garden and the fountain with Longfellow’s words inscribed.

The durable old refectory was given a veranda and a band shell was built east of the

refectory.

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In 2007 a new river overlook was built in the Wabun picnic area and a children’s

playground was added to the picnic area. Restoration of the creek in the lower glen began

in 2008: the creek banks were stabilized and retaining walls and footings installed by

WPA crews during the Great Depression were replaced. Work in the lower glen was

completed in 2010 with the restoration of native vegetation.

On May 15, 2012, a memorial in honor of Officer Mark Bedard was dedicated. Officer

Bedard died in the line of duty on November 9, 2007.

Park board masons completed reconstruction of crumbling stone walls and steps

descending to the lower gorge at Minnehaha Falls in 2012, and a year later a Nice Ride

bicycle rental kiosk was installed near the falls.

President Barack Obama hosted a town hall meeting at Minnehaha Falls on June 26,

2014, nearly 50 years after President Lyndon B. Johnson visited the falls. A month later,

on July 31, the Wabun Universal Access Play Area opened at Minnehaha Park. It was the

first universally accessible play area built in Minneapolis.

In 2015 a number of improvements to the refectory and area surrounding it were

completed, including a new roof, restroom updates, new lighting in pavilion, improved

outdoor seating for Sea Salt, additional bike parking and a new walking path from

parking lot to the falls.

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Minnehaha Parkway

Location: The parkway begins at Lake Harriet Parkway on the south shore of the lake

and follows an overflow channel along what once was Humboldt Avenue South to the

creek south of West 50

Street. It then follows the creek west to Lake Nokomis. At Lake

Nokomis the parkway and creek diverge. The parkway continues straight west along

what would be East 48

Street to Minnehaha Park. From Lake Nokomis the creek passes

under the parkway to Lake Hiawatha. From Lake Hiawatha the creek meanders between

East 46

Street and Minnehaha Parkway to Longfellow Garden and Minnehaha Park.

Size: 235 acres, 5.3 miles of parkway.

Name: The parkway is named for Minnehaha Creek.

Acquisition and Development

Park board records to not reveal the origin of the idea of a parkway along the valley of

Minnehaha Creek. The first mention of a park along the creek is in the park board

proceedings of October 8, 1887 when, after hearing from “interested parties,” the park

board resolved that when lands along Minnehaha Creek “are offered, they be accepted”

between Lake Harriet and the Soldier’s Home. (The Soldier’s Home was then planned to

be built at the mouth of Minnehaha Creek and the Mississippi River. Minnehaha Park and

its famous falls was not yet a park. As part of the resolution, the park board expressed its

intent to create a parkway beside the creek when it deemed best to do so.

In the annual report of 1887, board president Charles Loring reported that property

owners along the creek had committed to securing by donation a parkway 200 feet wide

from Lake Harriet to Minnehaha Falls. Loring was not only the president of the park

board, but also president of a five-man commission appointed by the governor of

Minnesota in 1885 to acquire the land around Minnehaha Falls as a state park.

Perhaps the idea of the parkway came from Henry and Eunice Butler and Josef and

Louise Fogg, because in early 1889 they donated the first forty acres for the parkway on

both sides of Minnehaha Creek from Humboldt Avenue South to Lyndale Avenue South.

Prompted by the donation, the park board purchased 25 lots along Humboldt Avenue

between the donated land and Lake Harriet to connect the creek with the lake. The

purchased land cost $10,000 and almost the same amount was spent the following year to

purchase by condemnation the remaining land for a parkway from the lake to the creek.

Under the conditions of the donation, the park board constructed a parkway on both sides

of the creek to Lyndale Avenue in 1889. The board named the new parkway Minnehaha

Boulevard but also named the northerly drive Butler Drive and the southerly drive Fogg

Drive. In the annual report of that year, the park board reported that it had received

“liberal offers” of more donated land along the creek from Lyndale Avenue to Cedar

Avenue, which would provide another three miles of parkway. Loring noted in that report

that the most feasible route from Cedar Avenue to Minnehaha Falls had not yet been

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selected, but that it was impossible, for reasons he did not specify, to continue a parkway

along the creek over that route.

(In 1889 the city of Minneapolis also purchased the land around Minnehaha Falls on

behalf of the state to make a state park of the falls. See Minnehaha Park for more on that

purchase.)

In 1891 the park board designated the remaining land along the creek east of Lyndale

Avenue and for the parkway east of Cedar Avenue. The acquisition of that land, much of

it by donation, was completed in 1892. The total cost of acquiring the land from Lake

Harriet to Minnehaha Falls was just over $35,000, with more than half of that amount

spent on the land that connected Lake Harriet to the creek at Humboldt Avenue. The cost

of the land—169 acres, which provided for a parkway of 5.3 miles—was assessed on

property in the area that “benefitted” from the creation of the parkway.

In 1891 Loring praised the acquisition. He called the land along the creek a “longitudinal

park” that was “more generally accessible to the people than the same area would be

lying more compactly.” In June, 1891 landscape architect Horace Cleveland, who had

created the first blueprint for a “system” of parks in Minneapolis in 1883, was asked by

the board to prepare a plan for the parkway from Lake Harriet to Lyndale Avenue and to

recommend the best route for the parkway from Cedar Avenue to Minnehaha Falls. Any

plans he created for those stretches of parkway, and a record of park board actions on

them, have not survived. At that time the park board owned neither Lake Amelia

(Nokomis) nor Rice Lake (Hiawatha).

Charles Loring later credited J. Arthur Ridgway, a park commissioner at the time and

later the park board’s secretary, for negotiating most of the purchases and donations of

land along the creek and suggested that a segment of the parkway be named “Ridgway”

in his honor. The board did not follow Loring’s recommendation at the time, but nearly

60 years later, in 1952, the park board renamed the section of St. Anthony Parkway

between Gross Golf Course and Stinson Boulevard “Ridgway Parkway” in his honor.

In 1893 the park board approved the construction of Minnehaha Parkway all the way to

Minnehaha Falls and assessed the cost of building the parkway, more than $150,000, to

property in the area. The parkway from Lake Nokomis to Minnehaha Falls was finally

completed in 1899. Some property assessments for the construction of the parkway were

reduced in 1900 after a crash in property values in the city following the Panic of 1893.

The park board’s attorney, Chelsea Rockwood, reported that year that if remaining

assessments owed on the property were not reduced by two-thirds some of the property

owners planned to abandon their property. Rockwood reported that the reduced

assessments were as much as the park board could hope to receive given the great

depreciation in land values since the assessments were made.

In 1897 in response to the bicycle craze of that era, the park board created a bicycle path

along much of Minnehaha Creek, going so far as to shave down the steep hill on the

parkway near Lyndale Avenue to make it less strenuous for bicyclists. (The bicycle craze

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of the 1890s ended within ten years. In 1907 park board president Jesse Northrup

recommended that the board convert the under-used bicycle paths to bridle paths and

walking paths. By then, automobiles were already using the parkways. In 1903 the park

board approved a speed limit of 15 miles-per-hour for cars on parkways.)

In the late 1890s and early 1900s several additional parcels of land were acquired near

the creek to straighten out the parkway and reduce maintenance costs. In 1897 the park

board did not maintain ice-skating rinks in parks throughout the city following

publication in Minneapolis newspapers of a plea from Charles Loring, who was not a

park commissioner at the time, for children around the city to forego ice-skating for the

winter so the park board could afford to buy some additional land it needed near the

creek. The children of the city acquiesced to the request from the acknowledged “Father

of Minneapolis Parks,” but not happily, and the next winter, despite no improvement in

the park board’s precarious financial position, ice-skating rinks were once again

maintained by the park board.

In 1910 park superintendent Theodore Wirth began a campaign to straighten and divert

portions of Minnehaha Creek. He had two reasons: one, to reduce the amount of water

needed in the creek to maintain a pleasing flow of water over Minnehaha Falls, and; two,

to allow the widening of the parkway to accommodate increasing automobile traffic. The

proposal must have met with objections because two years later in the annual report,

Wirth tried to alleviate fears that straightening the creek would destroy its natural beauty.

He repeated his call for widening the parkway in 1914, but still did not prevail.

The parkway was finally improved—and the creek bed rearranged—beginning in 1923.

Over the course of four years, 1923-1926, Minnehaha Parkway was completely rebuilt at

a cost of more than $1 million. It was the most expensive project in the first 70 years of

park board history. It would not be surpassed in cost until the construction of Parade

Stadium in 1951. Part of the cost was in the construction of six new bridges over the

creek, including three that replaced old wooden bridges.

Wirth noted in his 1924 annual report that the work along the creek had been criticized as

“detrimental, even destructive” to the natural beauty of the parkway, but he disagreed.

The old parkway, he wrote, didn’t show the most picturesque parts of the creek valley.

The new parkway did and, he added, the new parkway would lead to more residential

development in the area.

Meanwhile the eastern section of the creek itself, from Lake Hiawatha to Minnehaha Park

was acquired in 1922 along with Lake Hiawatha. The cost of acquiring the creek bed was

included in the $550,000 price tag for acquiring Lake Hiawatha and additional land for a

golf course beside the lake. The entire amount was assessed over ten years on property in

a large portion of south Minneapolis. The large assessment for the purchase of the land

was one reason for the delay in developing Lake Hiawatha and Hiawatha Golf Course

until 1931. The park board did not believe it could assess the cost of development on top

of the cost of the land purchase. That region of the city was also already paying property

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assessments for the cost of developing the swamps around Lake Nokomis into a lake and

park.

One of the few major changes to Minnehaha Parkway since it was reengineered in the

1920s was the construction of I-35W over the parkway in 1962. The parkway was closed

most of that year for regrading and relocating a small bridge in preparation for the

construction of the freeway. The same stretch of the parkway was closed again in 2008

when the freeway was widened.

Another significant change on the eastern end of the parkway near Minnehaha Park

occurred in 2000 when a new highway was built along Hiawatha Avenue. The new

highway was built over Minnehaha Creek to avoid disruption of the creek bed and then a

land bridge was built over the highway to carry Minnehaha Parkway and provide space

for a new Longfellow Garden. (See Longfellow Gardens for more on that development.)

The historic footbridge over Minnehaha Creek at Bryant Avenue was rehabilitated and

reopened in 2010. Many of the other bridges over the creek had been refurbished in 2007,

when some pedestrian paths near the creek were also resurfaced.

The tennis courts south of the parkway near 16

Avenue South were resurfaced in 2010.

Trivia

One the first expressions of concern for water quality in Minneapolis’s lakes and streams

came in 1902 when park commissioner and noted architect Harry Jones asked park

superintendent William Berry to talk with the Minnesota Sugar Company about its

discharge of water and refuse into Minnehaha Creek from its St. Louis Park plant.

In 1917, owing to unusually warm weather, the park board permitted—“for one year

only”—swimming at places other than the designated beaches on city lakes—and in

Minnehaha Creek.

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Monroe Place Triangle

Location: Monroe Avenue NE, 7

Street and 3

Avenue NE

Size: 0.03 acres

Name: The small triangle is named for the street on which it is located. The name was

formally adopted September 6, 1911. The street was named for President James Monroe.

Acquisition and Development

The city council transferred the property to the park board June 9, 1911 and the park

board accepted the property on August 7 of that year. The action was taken at the request

of the Logan Park Improvement Association.

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Morris Park

Location: 39

Avenue South and East 56

Street

Size: 3.87 acres

Name: The park was named for its location adjacent to Morris Elementary School.

Acquisition and Development

The park in the far southeast corner of the city west of the Mississippi River was

purchased by condemnation May 8, 1956 for $67,196, but it appeared long before then in

park board deliberations.

A potential Morris Park first appeared in the form of a protest from the Morris School

PTA against a resolution by the park board to acquire three park sites in the portion of

Minneapolis that was annexed from Richfield in 1926. One site the park board considered

was at 59

Avenue and 27

Street, southwest of the present Bossen Field, land that is

now owned by the airport. The Morris Park PTA wanted a park nearer the school.

After much debate over the location of a park in the vicinity, the issue was rendered moot

by the park board’s abandonment in 1931 of all efforts to acquire any parks in the newest

section of the city that was annexed from Richfield. Property owners were not willing to

be assessed for the acquisition or improvement of any of the proposed sites, perhaps

understandable given the onset of the depression.

An internal park board survey of neighborhoods that needed playgrounds in 1938

identified the Morris Park neighborhood as one where a playground was recommended

for future development. It was not placed in the two highest categories of “acute” need.

During the economic recovery of the 1950s, and after successful collaboration by the

park board and school board in building parks and schools jointly at Waite Park and

Armatage Park, the two boards considered another cooperative venture at Morris School

in 1954.

The addition of a park to the school grounds got a green light in 1955 as a special

assessment project, meaning that property owners in the neighborhood would be assessed

the costs of acquiring and improving the land for a park.

The land was acquired in 1956 and work began on the park. The park acreage was

augmented by 1.7 acres of land owned by the school board adjacent to the school. The

land acquired was not vacant land, so homes had to be moved before construction could

begin. A shelter was built at the park in 1957 similar to the design pioneered at Franklin

Steele Square with garage-door like exterior walls that could be raised in summer and

lowered in winter to provide a warming house. In addition to the shelter, the park board

installed ball fields, a hard-surfaced play area, a wading pool and playground equipment.

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The park was renovated, and neighboring homes protected, when in 1963 the park board

raised the fence between the baseball field and 56

street and installed a hooded backstop

on the field. Park superintendent Howard Moore wrote at the time that the improvements

were made because the field was small and that the park board “had trouble with balls

hitting homes adjacent to the park.”

Morris Park was the subject of political wrangling in 1979. The park board added an

expansion of the Morris Park shelter, at a cost of $467,000, to its 1980 bond program

request. The mayor vetoed the expenditure, but the park board voted unanimously to

override the veto. Despite the assertion of its independence from the mayor, the park

board did not get its way when the city council did not approve the bond request.

The park board did obtain city bond funds, as well as grants from the state, to renovate

the park in 1985 and 1986. Finally in 1993 and 1994, the funds were provided for the

expansion of the old portable-wall shelter at Morris Park into a small, modern recreation

center.

One of six skate parks in city parks was installed in 2005 and new playground equipment

was installed in 2009.

Morris School closed in 2007.

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MPRB Headquarters

Location: 2117 West River Road

Size: 3.8 acres

Name: The name is descriptive.

Acquisition and Development

The building is the first office space that the park board has owned. Until the purchase of

the former warehouse and office building for its headquarters, the park board had always

leased space.

The first park boards leased space in commercial buildings, including a building owned

by the first president of the park board, Charles Loring, on Washington Avenue at 2

Avenue South.

The park board later had offices in the basement of the County Court House until 1902

when it moved into the third floor of City Hall, where it remained until the 1960s. With

the growth of city government in the 1960s there was less and less room for the park

board. The board’s annual report in 1962 noted that the park board had been under

pressure for some time to move its offices out of City Hall.

In 1966 the park board was finally forced to move and it selected space in the Public

Safety Building near City Hall. That space, however, never was well-suited to the park

board and in 1979 the board moved its offices to the Flour Exchange across from City

Hall. In yet another move in the early 1990s, the park board and its staff moved once

again, across the street to the Grain Exchange.

When the park board was informed of a steep increase in rent in 2002 for space that was

ill-suited to the board’s work anyway, the board began to look at alternatives to renting

space. The answer was found in an office-warehouse building facing the Mississippi

River upstream from Broadway Avenue. The building was purchased in 2002 and

renovated for occupancy in 2003. The land and building were acquired for approximately

$3.5 million. Subsequently the park board has acquired from the city the riverfront in

front of the headquarters, as well as the river banks upstream to Olson Park.

In 2012, a Nice Ride bicycle rental kiosk was installed near the parking lot entrance.

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Mueller Park

Location: Colfax Avenue South and West 24

Street

Size: 1.85 acres

Name: The park was named for brothers Robert C. Mueller and Herbert L. Mueller on

October 26, 1977. The park was named in the Mueller’s honor at the request of

neighborhood groups, including The Wedge neighborhood organization. Herbert Mueller

had lived in the same house on Bryant Avenue South near the park since 1921. He and

his brother Robert, who had been an editor at Field and Stream magazine, were the

resident authorities on the natural history of the neighborhood. Robert helped to organize

an elm watch, one of the first in the state, in 1970s, as the city prepared for the onslaught

of Dutch Elm disease. The Muellers were among the few people who have had a

Minneapolis park named for them while still living. The brothers later donated money to

assist in the construction of the shelter at the entrance to the Thomas Sadler Roberts Bird

Sanctuary at Lyndale Park. Until the park was officially named, it was referred to as

Lowry Hill East Park after the neighborhood in which it is located.

Acquisition and Development

Mueller Park is in a densely-populated neighborhood that had been identified in 1944 as

one that didn’t have adequate park facilities. In 1970 the park board was attempting to

address that long-standing problem, when the federal Department of Housing and Urban

Development (HUD) created a “Parks in the Cities” program to encourage more urban

parks. Minneapolis applied for grants under that program to acquire and develop Mueller

Park along with Whittier and Willard parks. According to Al Wittman, the assistant

superintendent for planning during this period of remarkable development of Minneapolis

parks, Minneapolis was the only city that applied for funds under the federal program.

With the assistance of funds from HUD and from the National Park Service, the park

board began to acquire this half-block playground park in 1973. The acquisition took

some time to complete as the park board adopted a policy of trying to minimize

dislocation of people who lived on the land targeted for the park. The park was provided

playground equipment, a wading pool, a tennis court, horseshoe pits, and a small toilet

building when it was developed in 1976. The park was officially opened on June 26,

1976.

The park was redesigned and upgraded with new playground equipment in 1997. The

horseshoe pits were filled in and the tennis court was replaced with a basketball court.

The park was supervised with staff from Whittier Park in the mid-1990s. Additional

improvements were made to the park in 1998 with funds from the Neighborhood

Revitalization Program.

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Murphy Square

Location: 7½ Street and 22

Avenue South

Size: 3.15 acres

Name: The park was named for Edward Murphy who donated the land for a park when

he platted Murphy’s Addition in 1857. The name was officially changed from Murphy

Park to Murphy Square in 1890.

Acquisition and Development

When Edward Murphy dedicated the land for a park in 1857, parks were in the news.

That year New York City conducted a competition to design its vast Central Park, one of

the most important developments in the creation of urban parks in the country’s history.

That event may have influenced Murphy’s establishment of a park on land he was

developing.

Murphy Park was a long ways from the center of the small towns of Minneapolis and St.

Anthony at the time and the land served as little more than a cow pasture for twenty

years. In 1873 Murphy attempted to get the city council to pay to improve the land. Trees

were planted in the park, perhaps under the direction of Charles Loring, who is said to

have planted the first trees in Minneapolis and was a city council member at the time.

The city council approved an expenditure of $500 for the purpose, but the mayor refused

to authorize reimbursement for Murphy after he had paid for the work.

The park was transferred from the city council to the new park board shortly after the

park board was created in April 1883. The park board hired Horace Cleveland to create a

plan for the park in late 1884.

Murphy Square was one of several parks immediately improved by Theodore Wirth when

he was hired in 1906, including additional plantings and changes to the paths in the park.

An artesian well was also dug at Murphy Park that year, but the city condemned as unfit

the water produced by the well.

Murphy Square was one of the parks recommended as a playground in 1906, when the

park board installed its first playground equipment and a merry-go-round was installed in

1907. A tennis court was built at Murphy Square in 1917 at a cost of $400, but was

removed in 1919 with the explanation that there wasn’t sufficient space for it.

Some residents of the neighborhood petitioned the park board to install a kittenball

(softball) field in the park in 1922, but opposition from other property owners led the

park board to reject the idea.

With the growth of Augsburg College, Murphy Square became, in essence, a central

square for the college. The park board entered into serious negotiations with Augsburg

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College to sell the square to the college in 1957. When those negotiations were

unsuccessful, the park board included Murphy Square on a list of properties it could part

with, for housing purposes, in 1960. In 1975, the park board considered a land swap with

Augsburg College that would have transferred the park to the college, but once again the

city’s oldest park remained a park.

Ultimately, only a small piece of Murphy Square was lost, and that was due to the

construction of the I-94 freeway, which nipped off a bit of the park in the 1960s.

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Newton Triangle

Location: Hillside and Newton Avenue North

Size: 0.14 acres

Name: The property was named for Newton Avenue, which was named for physicist

Isaac Newton.

Acquisition and Development

The triangle was transferred to the park board from the city council September 30, 1892.

The triangle was included in an appropriation for improvements to various triangles in

1909, but it is not clear what work was done under that appropriation.

The triangle was improved—graded, seeded, planted and curbed—in 1916. A total of less

than $2,000 was spent to improve nine triangles.

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Nicollet Island Park

Location: The park is located on Nicollet Island in the Mississippi River.

Size: 26.83 acres

Name: The island was named for Joseph Nicollet, a French explorer and cartographer

who mapped the region of the Upper Mississippi River in the 1830s. In the Minnesota

vernacular, Nicollet rhymes with “chiclet.” The name for the island existed before

Minneapolis was created.

Acquisition and Development

Nicollet Island nearly became the first park land purchased in Minneapolis. In 1866 the

Minnesota legislature approved the union of the two towns on either side of St. Anthony

Falls, Minneapolis and St. Anthony. The act provided for the establishment of municipal

buildings on the southern half of Nicollet Island and reserved the northern half of the

island as a public park. The legislature mandated that voters of both towns had to approve

the union for it to become official. Minneapolis voted first—and St. Anthony voters

never got a chance to express their wishes, because Minneapolis voters defeated the

measure by fewer than one hundred votes.

The vote was long remembered not for the potential union of the towns, which was

accomplished anyway in 1872, but for the voters’ rejection of Nicollet Island as a park.

The sticking point at the time was the cost of acquiring the island for the city, which was

put at $30,000-$40,000. The issue became a rallying cry for park proponents over the

next 17 years until the Minneapolis park board was created by the legislature—and

approved by Minneapolis voters—in 1883.

Curiously, after the park board was created, it seemed to have no interest in creating a

park on the island. One of the only references to the island in park board proceedings in

the first couple decades of the park board’s existence was a request in 1894 from “the

committee for the protection and improvement of Nicollet Island” for the park board to

acquire the shores of the island. The request was referred by the park board to the city

council. Whether the request may have generated some interest on the park board is not

known, but the park board was in serious financial trouble at the time following the Panic

of 1893 and it had no money for acquisitions.

In 1908, the park board did approve taking charge of a strip of land on the west side of

the island, which was then owned by the city of Minneapolis and to spend up to $200 to

improve the land. Later that year the park board established a committee to ask Mrs. W.

W. Eastman to donate a strip of land around the island for a park. No follow-up reports

are recorded for either of those actions.

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As part of its ambitious plan for the redevelopment of nearly the entire downtown area,

the Minneapolis Civic Commission in 1910 proposed turning Nicollet Island into a park,

but once again no action was taken.

In 1915 park superintendent Theodore Wirth proposed the creation of a pier or park on

the west side of Nicollet Island primarily to relieve overcrowding at the new Gateway

park near the west end of Hennepin Bridge.

Wirth followed that recommendation three years later in his annual report with a

suggestion that the park board acquire all the river banks, including those on Nicollet

Island and Boom Island, from downtown to the northern city limits. He speculated at the

time that Nicollet Island would “surely be acquired by the city,” and suggested that in the

meantime the park board should lease or purchase the river banks on the island. Once

again no action ensued and the issue of Nicollet Island largely disappeared from park

board records for decades.

The idea of developing Nicollet Island as a park was introduced again in a 1960 park

board report on its goals in anticipation of its hundredth birthday in 1983. In that report

the park board estimated an expenditure of one million dollars to acquire land on Nicollet

Island and near St. Anthony Falls for a park and historic site.

The issue re-emerged briefly in the park board’s 1964 annual report when it was noted

that the park board had met with a citizens committee on Nicollet Island to hear proposals

for the development of a 48-acre historic site on the island. The report noted that the park

board had resolved to work with other city agencies to find a solution to the use of

Nicollet Island and that it “seemed practical” to embellish the island with replicas of

historic structures.

The ground work for preservation of the area was laid in 1971 when the land around the

falls was placed on the National Park Service’s list of National Historic Districts. The

impetus to develop the central riverfront, including Nicollet Island, came from a 1972

report entitled Mississippi/Minneapolis produced by city manager Tommy Thompson. In

the wake of that report, which proposed redevelopment of the former industrial and

railroad land of the riverfront, the park board, city council and the city housing authority

created a Riverfront Development Coordinating Board (RDCB) in 1976 chaired by park

commissioner Ole Olson. The RCDB’s primary objective was to create a development

plan that could be submitted to the Metropolitan Council for funding through the state

legislature. The RCDB produced a final report in 1978 that included specific

recommendations for the development of a central riverfront park.

By that time the first park on Nicollet Island had already been created, by the city, as a

part of the country’s 200

birthday party. The city had designated land on the southern

tip of the island, acquired in 1944 and reserved for use as a public harbor, as Bicentennial

Park. Two years later, the city turned over the park to the park board and the park board

owned its first three acres of land on the central riverfront.

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That acquisition was consistent with RCDB plans, almost all of which have now been

executed, from a parkway on the west side of the river to the development of the east

river bank as a park from Boom Island downstream to Father Hennepin Bluffs.

The plan for the lower half of the island called for converting the Island Sash and Door

Company building into a quality restaurant, transforming the Durkee-Atwood building

into a regional arts center and keeping the amphitheater that had been created in

Bicentennial Park. For the upper half of the island the RCDB recommended creating a

historic village, with preserved houses, a community meeting house, and a plaza with an

information center. One of the only elements of the RCDB plan that has not been

followed was for the development of the upper half of Nicollet Island.

In 1979 the park board purchased more than eleven acres of private property on the island

and in 1981 added more than five acres from the housing authority and acquired the

Durkee-Atwood building and it’s 3.6 acres of land. At that time the Durkee-Atwood

acquisition was the most expensive in park board history at $6.1 million. The expense

was due in part to the fact that the property was an active commercial property and the

company had to be relocated. The park board later converted the building into the

Nicollet Island Pavilion. The land was purchased with money provided by the Minnesota

legislature through the Metropolitan Council. In 1986 the park board completed the long-

negotiated purchase of the Island Sash and Door Building, which had already been

converted into the Nicollet Island Inn and continues to operate under a lease from the

park board.

The upper half of the island proved to be a more difficult deal due to conflicting views of

how the land should be used. In 1983 the park board acquired title to four-plus acres of

land from the Minneapolis Community Development Agency and leased the land back to

MCDA. The MCDA then sold by lottery—for $1—99-year leases to individuals to

maintain historic homes under very tight restrictions. The RCDB’s original plan allowed

for De La Salle High School to continue operating on roughly six acres of the island and

for residential use of about six acres on Grove Street, which were developed into

townhomes in 1983.

The old railroad bridge on the north end of the island that connected to Boom Island was

converted into a pedestrian bridge and another bridge was added to the island. Hennepin

County relocated a section of the Broadway Avenue Bridge, which was being replaced,

to connect Merriam Street on the island to Historic Main Street on the east bank.

In 2008 the park board approved the construction of a football field on park land adjacent

to De La Salle High School. The field was built by the high school to serve the school

and northeast Minneapolis. The first games were played on the field in October 2009.

In 2014, a Nice Ride bicycle rental kiosk was installed near the entrance to the pavilion.

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Normanna Triangle

Location: Minnehaha Avenue and East 22

Street

Size: 0.16 acres

Name: The name was suggested by William Folwell to honor the Norwegian ancestry of

many residents of the neighborhood. The name was officially adopted December 27,

1893. It had previously been referred to as Minnehaha Avenue Triangle.

Acquisition and Development

The park board asked the city council to turn over the triangle to the park board on

August 2, 1889. In May of 1890, the park board approved unspecified improvements for

the triangle.

Normanna Triangle was involved in an interesting discussion over wells on park property.

Residents of the area had requested a well in the triangle, and the request was approved in

1912. However, it must not have been installed because residents asked for a well again in

1914. On November 18, 1914 the Committee on Improvements reported in regard to that

request that “since the Board is not permitted under the State Law to have drinking cups

for the use of the patrons of the parks and the city water is now suitable for drinking

purposes it seems unwise to continue the placing of wells where the city water is

available.”

Curiously, given that apparently sound logic, the park board responded favorably to

another request for a well at Normanna Triangle the following year and in February 1916

went a step further, authorizing wells for not only Normanna Triangle, but also Bryant

Square and Lovell Square.

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North Commons

Location: James Avenue North and 16

Avenue North

Size: 25.48 acres

Name: The park was named North Commons on September 16, 1907 at the suggestion

of the North Side Commercial Club, because of its location in the city.

Acquisition and Development

The park was purchased in 1907 for $48,875 from L. P. Henry and others. The board’s

first resolution to acquire the land on June 3, 1907 included the purchase price. The fact

that a price had already been arranged suggests the board had been actively involved in

negotiating to buy the land before that date, although no record of formal decisions to that

end exists.

There was a long history, however, of agitation to provide another park for the north side

in addition to Farview Park. In 1889 the board had designated for acquisition a slightly

smaller parcel four blocks to the west, an area called Todd’s Pond, which later became

the football field at the first North High School. At that time a large majority of

landowners in the neighborhood objected to the purchase, or more precisely they objected

to paying for it by assessments on their property. The argument they used was that the

proposed site was near Farview Park (then still Prospect Park). The board abandoned that

acquisition in early 1890.

In the 1907 annual report, park superintendent Theodore Wirth provided a plan for the

development of the new park, which included mostly landscaped areas, but did provide a

place for gymnastic apparatus and a “sunken lawn” for games and a skating rink. Wirth

noted that he anticipated “early demand” for improvements and that his plan would serve

“young and old alike.”

Playground equipment was installed at North Commons in 1908 following the board’s

highly successful introduction of playground apparatus in other parks in 1906 and 1907.

It was one of the first five parks to receive basketball goals in 1908. It was also one of six

parks, other than Lake Harriet, to be put on the summer schedule of free concerts that

year.

The first major improvements to the property were scheduled for 1909 but they were put

on hold due to what Wirth said was a shortage of laborers and horse teams available for

hire.

In 1910 the park board began improvements to the park and built one of the park

system’s first three year-round “field houses” at North Commons. The building at North

Commons was larger than those built at Jackson Square and Camden (Webber) Park,

although Wirth noted that plans had to be modified to cut costs. It was essentially a

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warming house for skaters, in the unfinished half-basement, with toilets and one large

open room on the first floor. The total cost of the shelter was just over $16,000.

The improvements also included more space for playing fields than Wirth had proposed

in his first plan for the park. By 1911 North Commons had already become one of the

parks most heavily used for sports. Football goalposts were installed at North Commons

and there was such demand for playing space that, along with The Parade, North

Commons was the only park in which permits were required to use the baseball and

football fields.

In 1912 a wading pool, one of the city’s first, was built in the park. (From the creation of

one of the city’s first wading pools at North Commons, the park has been foremost

among city parks in swimming facilities, with later additions of a swimming pool and

water park. The addition of swimming facilities there has been part of an effort to

distribute water-based recreation facilities more equitably across the city. People in the

southern half of the city had relatively easy access to natural water—lakes—for

swimming.) The park also got its first tennis courts in 1912.

North Commons, and neighborhood parks in general, got the short end of the stick,

however, in this period of extensive park development elsewhere in the city. In both 1909

and 1913, as major park-shaping work was being done around the lakes, work at North

Commons was not completed due to a shortage of labor. The result was a park that was in

Wirth’s words in 1912, “to say the least, unsightly and unsatisfactory” in its “half

finished and torn up condition.”

By the end of 1914, most planned improvements had been made to North Commons—

grading, filling, and the addition of more tennis and basketball courts—and Wirth noted

that “on the whole North Commons makes a good appearance and is one of our most

useful and most frequented parks.”

At that time, more had been spent on the improvement of North Commons than any other

neighborhood park in the city, other than Logan Park, where a much larger and more

expensive ($40,000) fieldhouse had been built in 1912. The focus of the park board,

however, remained on developing the system of parkways and parks bordering the city’s

most prominent natural features, its lakes and the river. But even such less-substantial

projects as the construction of The Mall between Hennepin Avenue and the Calhoun-Isles

lagoon and the construction of King’s Highway near Lake Harriet had consumed

substantially more of the park board’s resources

In 1915, Wirth proposed additional funds to complete a driveway through North

Commons, a driveway that had not appeared in any earlier plans in annual reports. The

east-west drive through the park was completed in 1916, along with installation of a

backstop for the baseball field, and a bandstand. A fifth tennis court was added to the

park in 1917, when Wirth noted that the south section of the park had finally been

completed.

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Along with these improvements came heavy use. By 1921, Wirth noted that the playing

fields were possibly the most frequented in the whole park system. He recommended then

that the small shelter be replaced with a larger fieldhouse, a suggestion he would make

several times in the 1920s to no avail. The catch was that the fieldhouse would only be

built if residents of the area agreed to pay for it with property assessments. This was at a

time when almost all neighborhood park improvements throughout the city required the

approval of local landowners to pay for it. In 1921 Wirth wrote that the district could

afford a new building that would serve its needs.

The continued popularity of North Commons, and the lack of funds to improve it further,

was indicated in 1924 when Wirth suggested that plans to improve the driveway through

the park be abandoned and the park converted exclusively to pedestrian use. By 1928,

attendance at playground activities at North Commons almost doubled that of any other

park in the city. A huge participation in diamond ball, what later became known as

softball, was noted at North Commons.

Through the difficult days of the Depression and World War II, the park board had little

money to spend on improvements of any kind and the opportunity to build a new field

house had passed. Although North Commons was one of only a few parks that offered

year-round activities in the 1930s and 1940s, the park would await the coming of better

times for improved recreation facilities—as was true of every other park in the city.

In 1955 and 1956, improvements were made at North Commons for the first time in more

than thirty years. The playing fields were enlarged and regraded, play equipment was

added and a new concrete wading pool was built. The shelter built in 1910—and outdated

by 1921 in Wirth’s opinion—was not replaced, but it was modernized and was designated

as one of six district community centers in the park system. The park board’s 1956 annual

report claimed that attendance at the park tripled after its modernization.

The venerable old shelter was finally demolished and replaced with a new community

center with a gymnasium in 1971, one of the first new centers constructed at the

beginning of a building boom in Minneapolis parks in the 1970s. Two years later, an

outdoor swimming pool was built at North Commons, making it the first—and still the

only—Minneapolis park with both a gym and a swimming pool.

The swimming pool was closed in 1997 and reopened a year later as the North Commons

Water Park—with gadgets, geysers, slides, and funbrellas!—another first in Minneapolis

parks.

The community center underwent renovation in 1999 and that year the North Commons

outdoor basketball courts were renovated with a gift from the Minnesota Timberwolves.

In 2000, the North Commons community center was one of the first five city park

facilities to be outfitted with a computer lab. The North Commons tennis courts were

rehabbed in 2004. In 2011 the Minnesota Twins and Toro Company joined forces to

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upgrade a North Commons baseball field into a high-quality competitive field and a

Nice

Ride bicycle rental kiosk was installed at the park.

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North Mississippi Park

Location: The west bank of the Mississippi River from the railroad tracks south of the

Camden Bridge, about 41

Avenue North, to the city limits at 53

Avenue North.

Size: 67.2 acres

Name: The name is descriptive of the park on the west bank of the Mississippi River in

north Minneapolis.

Acquisition ad Development

This section of the Mississippi River received the attention of the park board long before

land was acquired for a park. In 1891 in an influential report on the possible expansion of

the Minneapolis park system, park commissioner William Folwell, former president of

the University of Minnesota, proposed that the park board acquire the banks on both sides

of the river upstream from the Camden pumping station to protect the city’s water supply.

While that was at the time beyond the means of the park board, it was one of the first

suggestions for acquiring property along the river upstream from St. Anthony Falls and

Nicollet Island. In fact that report preceded the acquisition of the river banks downstream

from the falls.

When the park board began acquiring land rapidly in the early 1900s after years of

limited resources, it acquired land near the site of North Mississippi Park. In 1908 the

board purchased the land for Camden (Webber) Park along Shingle Creek a few hundred

yards upstream from the creek’s mouth at the Mississippi. Although Camden Park and its

fresh-water swimming pool fed by Shingle Creek were very popular, the park lacked

space for athletic fields.

In 1917 the park board voted to address that shortcoming by acquiring the land between

Lyndale Avenue North and the river to enlarge the park. Park superintendent Theodore

Wirth presented a plan for the enlargement of the park in September 1917 (reproduced in

the 1917 annual report), which included the provision of baseball and football fields that

Camden Park could not accommodate. Wirth noted that the former lumber yard would

need a covering of clay soil to be useable. He also proposed a small shelter and a drive to

the river with a small parking lot. Wirth presented a revised plan at half the cost that

November, still providing primarily athletic fields for the expanded park. The revised

plan must have met with neighborhood approval because two weeks later the Camden

Commercial Club petitioned for the expansion of Camden Park to the river as far north as

Street and for proposed improvements to the new land and to the existing Camden

Park.

However, about the same time the North Side Commercial Club asked the board to

curtail all new acquisitions and improvements. As World War I dragged into 1918 the

park board canceled many plans for enlarging and improving parks, and the expansion of

Camden Park was no exception. In March 1918, the board deferred action on the new

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park. Later that year the park board did give public notice that it planned to acquire one

acre of land at 42nd and the river “at the proper time.” The action was taken, at the

request of many area civic groups, to forestall the creation of a coal yard on the site. The

board reported that “if conditions were normal” it would not hesitate to acquire the land,

but under “present conditions” could only state its intent to acquire the land in the future.

That intent, manifested by several later attempts to acquire the land, persisted. The park

board began proceedings again in 1919 and 1922 to acquire the land, but abandoned

them. In 1929 Wirth finally proposed adding a ball field to Camden Park on land that was

part of the Glenwood-Camden Parkway, and suggested that residents of the area were

able and willing to be assessed the cost of the improvements.

Over the next decade the target of park board interest in the area was in improving the

grounds of the city’s old water pumping station, which was no longer used. By 1940

another problem had arisen. The land below the 42

Avenue Bridge was occupied by

“squatters and house trailers.” The park board offered to improve the land if the city

would clear the land of its temporary residents and appropriate money to maintain the

park. The city council declined that offer.

Finally in 1944 the park board was informed that the state might sell the tax delinquent

land it had acquired from 48

to 49

on the river and asked the state to inform the board

of any land for sale so the board could determine if that land fit into the board’s plans.

(The park board acquired the land for Bossen Field and Hi-View Park free from the state

under those terms.)

The city did request that the state withhold from sale all land along the river in 1946. The

city wanted the land from 42

Avenue to downtown for an upper harbor and the land

north could be used as a park. In the 1946 annual report park superintendent Charles

Doell reported that the park board was considering acquiring 98 acres of land along the

river from 42

to 51

Streets, 75 percent of which was owned by the state as tax-

delinquent land. Doell noted that Liebert Weir in his 1944 study of the Minneapolis park

system had recommended that the park board acquire the river banks along that section of

the river. However, Doell noted that there were objections to the acquisition which

prevented the park board from including the land in its requests for bond funding. Doell

added that the state highway department had made preliminary plans to use part of the

area for highway purposes. This would be the issue that would eventually determine the

boundaries of today’s North Mississippi Park.

In 1950 the park board initiated condemnation proceedings to acquire much of the land

between 44

Street and 47

Street from Lyndale Avenue North to the river—twenty

acres at a cost of $15,000 for acquisition and improvement—but once again ran into

opposition. Part of that opposition was from the land owners who objected to the value at

which their land was appraised. As a result, in 1952 the park board reduced the amount of

land it had designated for the park and purchased only 5.2 acres of land for $8,800. That

transaction was completed in 1954 and passed without comment in that year’s annual

report.

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The next year the board acquired another 14.4 acres “by condemnation and donation for

eventual development as a river shore park,” as reported in the 1955 annual report. In fact

very little of the land was acquired by condemnation; most of the land was deeded from

the city to the park board. In 1959 another 11.7 acres were acquired along the river,

mostly from the state when the city council determined that it didn’t need all of the land it

had reserved for a city harbor. Three acres of land along Shingle Creek between the river

and Camden Park were also acquired at the time, although that acquisition wasn’t at the

time added to the park’s total acreage. The total cost of the additional land was just over

$8,000.

The first real development of the park didn’t begin until 1966 when the park board

installed a boat launch and parking lot on the river near the 42

Avenue Bridge. But by

then the state’s plans for a new freeway through north Minneapolis were already well

developed, and those plans included taking much of the land for a new I-94 freeway. In

an intense battle to preserve park land from incursion by freeways, the board had made a

stand at Minnehaha Park to prevent the construction of an elevated freeway on Hiawatha

Avenue from the airport to downtown. Court decisions related to that case and new

requirements for environmental impact assessment of new highway projects gave the

park board considerable power in determining the location of the new freeway through

north Minneapolis. The park board rejected the state’s plan to take much of the park in

1968.

In 1974 Minneapolis mayor Al Hofstede brokered a compromise between the park board

and the highway department that led to the present shape of the park. The highway

department was given the land at the western edge of the park, leaving enough room for a

riverside park, in return for land that would extend the park north along the river. The

compromise led to a longer, narrower park, but a net gain in more than seven acres for

the park, and preserved the river banks as open space.

State Senators Carl Kroening of north Minneapolis and Bill Luther of Brooklyn Center

obtained funding from the state legislature in 1985 for the development of a regional park

on the banks of the Mississippi River from North Mississippi Park into Brooklyn Center

on the west bank and Anoka County on the east bank. Kroening was instrumental in

acquiring state funding, administered through the Metropolitan Council, for Minneapolis

parks. He was later honored by having the park’s interpretive center named for him. The

new park was to be developed jointly by the Minneapolis park board along with the

Anoka County park board and Three Rivers Park District (Hennepin County).

The deal between the park board and the state led to the creation of another waterfall in

Minneapolis parks. The new I-94 freeway passed over Shingle Creek between Webber

Park and North Mississippi Park, so the state’s plan was to run the creek through a

culvert under the freeway. The park board instead developed a plan to drop the creek in

one step in an artificial waterfall west of the freeway and create paths beside the creek

under the freeway. That plan enabled the uninterrupted connection of pathways along

Shingle Creek to the river trails and beyond.

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From 1987 to 1989 the park board acquired the last 17 acres to extend the park to the

north Minneapolis city limit at 53

Avenue North. Part of the land that had once held a

housing project along the river was acquired from the Minneapolis Community

Development Agency for about $2.5 million and private land was purchased for nearly $2

million more.

A trail system through the park, connecting to Shingle Creek and commuter routes

downtown was developed in 1997.

The unique legislation that created joint responsibility for the park led to a partnership in

operating the park. When the Carl Kroening Interpretive Center was opened in the park in

2002, programming was provided by the Three Rivers Park District even though the

center is in Minneapolis. Regional park funding also was responsible for the construction

in the park of the largest picnic shelter in Minneapolis parks, a wading pool, rock

waterfall and playground at the north end of the park.

A new parking lot and three picnic shelters were added to the park in 2008. Solar panels

were added to the Carl Kroening Interpretive Center in 2010. Native plants were planted

in the park in 2011 to create more bird habitat as a part of the Urban Bird Treaty.

A Paddle Share kayak rental station debuted at the park in 2016.

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Northeast Athletic Field

Location: Fillmore Street NE and 13

Avenue NE

Size: 35.83 acres

Name: The name is descriptive, being located in northeast Minneapolis.

Acquisition and Development

The land for the park was acquired in 1941 for the purpose of providing athletic fields for

northeast Minneapolis. In the 1941 annual report park superintendent Charles Doell wrote

that there were few baseball or football fields in that part of the city, yet a number of

organized teams originated from that “district.”

The land was once a stone quarry that had been filled with debris. Most of the 37 acres of

land acquired was above grade, a unique situation for the park board, which throughout

its history was either given or purchased cheaply land that was swampy and wet. Part of

the land was acquired from the city, but most of the park was acquired from the state at

no cost. The land had been acquired by the state for non-payment of taxes. The total cost

of the land for the park was later listed as $104.

Initial improvements to the land, mostly grading, loam surfacing and the installation of

drains was begun in 1941 as a federal work relief program, but improvements were

suspended in 1942.

Following World War II the city faced a serious shortage of housing and a village of

quonset huts was built on a large portion of the property, mostly to house veterans

returning from the war.

The first recreation facility provided at the park was a small playground on Buchanan

Street that had been requested by the Quonset Hut Village Committee in 1947. Over the

next three years the park board prepared the remaining open ground on Buchanan

between 14

and 16

as a baseball field, built tennis courts and finally a toilet building in

1951. The quonset hut village was not closed until 1954.

In 1954 the size of the park shrank by ten acres due to the park board’s efforts to expand

two other parks in southeast Minneapolis. The board traded ten acres of Northeast Park to

Pioneer Engineering Works for one acre of land to enlarge Holmes Park on 4

Street

Southeast and portions of five lots to expand Dickman Park.

After the trade of land and the closing of the quonset hut village, the park board

rearranged the park and vacated Buchanan Street from 14

to 16

streets—gaining

another acre of useable park space in the process. By 1956 the park board had graded,

surfaced and sodded the entire area and had installed lights on a new football field.

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The next important change in the park resulted in the 1960s from the park board’s

continuing collaboration with the school board to develop properties together. The two

boards had successfully developed joint projects at Waite Park, Armatage Park and

Kenny Park in the late 1940s and early 1950s, Harrison Park in the late 1950s, and were

working together in the 1960s on projects at what became Bethune Park and Matthews

Park and others. In 1965 the park board sold nearly two acres of Northeast Park to the

school board for the new Putnam School built next to the park in 1966. Instead of

building a separate recreation center for the park, the park board built a multi-purpose

recreation center attached to the school in 1969. Putnam School was closed in 2006.

Another major addition to the park in 1968 consummated years of planning. A swimming

pool was built in the park that year, providing the first park swimming facility east of the

Mississippi River. A swimming facility had been considered for northeast Minneapolis in

1930 at Columbia Park, but with the Great Depression, followed by World War II, those

plans were never developed. In his 1944 survey of Minneapolis parks for the park board,

Liebert Weir strongly recommended that the park board provide a swimming facility east

of the river. Weir, who was the national secretary of the National Recreation Association,

was critical of many of the recreational facilities provided by the park board, but placed a

strong emphasis on the need for swimming in the eastern parts of the city. The southwest

had the lakes and north Minneapolis had the pool at Webber Park (a pool was built at

North Commons in 1967, too), but the park board provided no accommodation for

swimmers in northeast and southeast Minneapolis.

The pool was named for Henry Rosacker, a park commissioner from northeast

Minneapolis 1951-1973. The park board considered a recommendation to name the

whole park for Rosacker, but settled on his name just for the pool.

In 1979 the park board rebuilt the softball and baseball fields at the park and also opened

a two-kilometer cross-country ski trail that winter.

In 1994 the park board began renovation of the play areas in the park with funding from

the neighborhood through the Neighborhood Revitalization Program and the school

board.

In 1998 funding was obtained through city bonds to build a new swimming facility. By

2002 the new facility was completed not as just a swimming pool but as a water park.

The new water park was named the Jim Lupient Water Park in honor of a northeast

Minneapolis native who pledged to donate more than $1 million over several years to

provide programming and swimming lessons at the park.

The baseball fields at Northeast were upgraded in 2008 with a grant from the Minnesota

Twins and Justin Morneau. Further improvements to the field were made in 2011 when

new irrigation and fencing was installed.

The Grand Rounds Miniature Golf Course opened adjacent to the water park in 2009.

The recreation center at Northeast Park was closed early in 2013 to allow for the

expansion of Yinghua Academy, a full immersion Mandarin Chinese K-8 charter school

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adjacent to the park. A brand new recreation center is expected to open in 2017.

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Northeast Ice Arena

Location: 1306 Central Avenue NE

Size: 1.82 acres

Name: The building was named for its location in northeast Minneapolis when it was

acquired in 2006. It was originally called Edison Ice Arena for the Edison Youth Hockey

Association, which built the arena to promote youth hockey in the Edison High School

district.

Acquisition and Development

The facility was built by the Edison Youth Hockey Association (EYHA) to promote the

development of players for the Edison High School hockey program. The arena was built

for about $2.2 million in 1997. The City of Minneapolis provided the land for the

building, EYHA raised about $800,000, another $400,000 in grants were secured, and the

City of Minneapolis guaranteed a loan for slightly more than $1 million.

In 2004 the EYHA was in default on its payments on the loan primarily due to a decline

in charitable gambling proceeds from pull tab operations. The EYHA and the City turned

to the park board for a possible solution. The park board was operating the Parade Ice

Garden profitably and identified economies of scale in adding another ice arena that

could be managed from the Parade arena. At the time demand for ice time was expected

to increase due to the closing of the nearest ice arena in Columbia Heights. The useful

life of the arena, before major repairs would be needed, was estimated to be another

fifteen years.

Ultimately the park board purchased the facility for the amount outstanding on the EYHA

loan guaranteed by the city, or about $750,000, one-third of the original cost of the

facility.

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Northwestern Bell Property/Elwell Park

Location: 714 6

St. SE

Size: 0.18 acres

Name: Named for the company that originally leased the land to the park board and also

for the neighborhood park that it replaced. The park is also known as Telephone Park, for

obvious reasons, and Turtle Park, for the sculptured turtles placed in the park.

Acquisition and Development

The park board leased the vacant land next to what was then a Northwestern Bell

Telephone Company building on May 8, 1968 for $1 a year. The objective was to replace

Elwell Park, which had been taken by the Minnesota Department of Highways to build the

I-35W freeway through east Minneapolis. The lease has been continuously renewed since

with what is now CenturyLink.

The park was one of ten new small parks either purchased or leased in neighborhoods

without play parks in 1968 and 1969.

The park was given a major update in 1998 after a design charrette with neighborhood

input. The renovation was paid for partly with Neighborhood Revitalization Project (NRP)

funds designated by the neighborhood.

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Oak Crest Triangle

Location: 27

Avenue NE and Arthur Street

Size: 0.01 acres

Name: The triangle was likely named for the Oak Hill Addition in northeast

Minneapolis.

Acquisition and Development

The triangle was donated to the park board December 29, 1919 by John and Beatrice

Devaney and was named at that time.

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Oliver Triangle

Location: Oliver and 21

Avenue North

Size: 0.04 acres

Name: The triangle took the name of Oliver Avenue, which was named for Deacon

Oliver, a pioneer who platted his claim to this section of north Minneapolis. Oliver’s

name is also associated in park history with “Oliver Park,” the original name for Linden

Hills Park when it was purchased in 1919. The name of Oliver Park was changed to

Linden Hills in 1921.

Acquisition and Development

The triangle was donated to the park board when it was dedicated as park land in the plat

of Forest Heights, July 31, 1883 along with Cottage Park, Glen Gale and Irving Triangle.

The park board requested control of the property from the city council in 1892.

Initial improvements to the triangle were made in 1895 and additional work was done in

the park in 1909.

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Orvin “Ole” Olson Park

Location: West River Road North and 23

Avenue North

Size: 3.47 acres

Name: The park was named Skyline Park from the time of its acquisition until it was

renamed Orvin “Ole” Olson Park in 2006. Olson was a park commissioner from north

Minneapolis 1974-1978. As chair of the Riverfront Development Coordinating Board

while he was a park commissioner, Olson was instrumental in establishing policy and

guidelines for the later development of the Central Riverfront parks in the 1980s. Olson’s

son, Jon, has served as a park commissioner since 2002 and was president of the board

2006-2007.

Acquisition and Development

The land was purchased in 2002 as part of the park board’s long-term plan to acquire

more land along the Mississippi River above the falls. It is included in the board’s Above

the Falls Master Plan, which targets the acquisition of riverfront property as it becomes

available. The land was formerly the location of the Riverside Supper Club.

The first paths into the new park were built in 2007.

The park is a part of Upper Mississippi River Regional Park.

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Orlin Triangle

Location: Orlin Avenue SE and Melbourne Avenue

Size: 0.01 acres

Name: The triangle was named for the street on which it is located.

Acquisition and Development

The city’s smallest “park”—only a few steps wide—was acquired September 24, 1915

when the city council requested that the park board take over four triangles in the

Prospect Park neighborhood of southeast Minneapolis, including Orlin Triangle. The park

board agreed to take control of the triangles October 11, 1915 and officially named them

on November 17, 1915. The other three triangles accepted were Barton, Bedford and

Clarence.

The triangle was improved—graded, seeded, planted and curbed—in 1916.

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Painter Park

Location: Lyndale Avenue South and West 33

Street

Size: 2.95 acres

Name: The park board officially named the park Jonathan E. Painter Park on February 2,

1977. The park was referred to before that as Lyndale Park, or the old Lyndale School

site. Jonathan Painter was the first industrial arts teacher in the Minneapolis school

system and created the industrial arts curriculum in city schools.

Acquisition and Development

The old Lyndale School site was acquired in 1976, one of three former school sites the

park board acquired about that time in south Minneapolis. The others were Fuller School

and Corcoran School. As with the other two sites, the park board paid for the land with

money it had received from the state department of transportation for park land taken for

freeways in the 1960s and 1970s. There was some debate over whether the park board

needed another park only a few blocks away from Bryant Square, but the rare opportunity

to acquire a block of open land in the heart of a residential neighborhood was too good to

pass up.

The neighborhood had been targeted initially for a 7-10 acre site that combined a new

school and new park at Grand Avenue South and West 34

Street, two blocks east of

Painter Park, according to the park board’s biennial report for 1966-1967. But ultimately

the park board and school board developed their projects independently.

The site was redeveloped as a playground immediately after its acquisition, with playing

fields, playgrounds, tennis courts and a recreation center built in 1976.

Playground and field improvements were completed in 2001, with final landscaping

touches added in 2002.

The basketball court was resurfaced in 2015 and in 2016 outdoor pickleball striping

was added to the tennis courts.

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Parade Park

Location: Hennepin Avenue to I-394 between Vineland Avenue and Wayzata Boulevard

Size: 45.77 acres, including 2.32 acres of water

Name: The name “The Parade” was adopted October 31, 1904. The name was apparently

suggested by park commissioner John Bradstreet because the land was next to the

National Guard Armory and was used as a parade ground by the guard. On the date the

name was approved, Thomas Lowry, who donated a large portion of the land and whose

home on Lowry Hill overlooked it, had noted his approval of the name. The name applied

not only to new land donated and purchased for a larger park but also to the first land

acquired at the site, which included Spring Lake. The original park had been known as

Spring Lake Park from the time it was acquired in 1893. The name of the lake predates

park board records. For a brief time in 1893 the board considered renaming the lake,

Hiyata Lake, on the suggestion of William Folwell. He claimed the term was a Native

American word that meant “back by the hill.” The board voted to keep the name Spring

Lake. Despite the board’s refusal to change the name, however, park board records and

inventories for the next several years listed the property as Hiyata Park. The name of

Spring Lake was not changed when The Parade was named.

Acquisition and Development

Land for a park to the west of Central (Loring) Park was first proposed by Thomas Lowry

in November 1885. Lowry would later be the primary figure in the acquisition of the park

at the foot of the hill that was named for him, Lowry Hill. His mansion was on the hill.

Lowry was the owner of the Minneapolis Street Railway Company. He and his company

would play an important role in the development of Minneapolis parks, in part through

collaboration with the park board to provide a pavilion and entertainment at Lake Harriet

to stimulate ridership on street cars to the lake.

The park board considered many land acquisitions in its first years of operation, so did

not act on Lowry’s proposal at the time. But within a few years, as it shifted its focus to

the Lake District in southwest Minneapolis, and land owners offered to donate and pay

for the development of land, the park board viewed the area more favorably. As was

often the case with the park board in its early years it expanded the park system when it

was offered free land.

The park board’s first president, Charles Loring, had secured the donation of most of

Lake Harriet in 1885 and thought he could do the same at Lake of the Isles. Loring was

the driving force behind acquiring Lake of the Isles as a park that he envisioned would

connect by a parkway along Mount Curve and Hennepin Avenue to Central (Loring)

Park. In 1885 and 1886 he personally negotiated for the donation of the land around Isles

and the connecting parkway. In 1886, he also secured a donation of land for Kenwood

Parkway from Mount Curve to the west side of Lake of the Isles.

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The proposed route for the connecting parkway changed in 1887, however, when a group

of property owners led by Edward Twitchell, offered to donate land for a parkway, a strip

100 feet wide, connecting Central Park to Kenwood Parkway across the swampy land at

the base of Lowry Hill, instead of along the top of the hill as Loring had imagined. The

new parkway would climb the steep hill into Kenwood southwest of Spring Lake. That

offer of land was originally rejected, with even Charles Loring voting against it. The

following year, however, the offer was sweetened by area landowners, including Thomas

Lowry. They would not only donate the land, but they would pay for building the

parkway across it under the supervision of the superintendent of parks. The park board

formally accepted that offer in July 1888.

The acquisition of the first land for what is now part of The Parade was decided—but not

without some acrimony. At the same meeting that the board accepted the offer of the land

and money for improvement, park commissioner Byron Sutherland demanded to know on

whose authority park superintendent William Berry had already spent more than $4,000

on improvements to Kenwood Parkway. The park board meeting was promptly adjourned

and board president Loring did not reconvene the board for more than four months. No

explanation was ever provided in board proceedings for the expenditure on the new

parkway.

The acquisition of more than a parkway through the land waited another five years.

Petitions for the park board to acquire Spring Lake beside the new parkway were

received by the board in 1891, but as with the earlier parkway, the board postponed

action on those requests. Again it was the offer of free land and the money to develop it

that prompted action.

Charles Loring wrote to William Folwell on July 14, 1892 (Loring was not a park

commissioner at the time) that he and Thomas Lowry had finally gotten Joel Bassett to

agree to sell his property on the northern shore of Spring Lake to the park board. Loring

noted that Thomas Lowry had always said he would donate his property along the lake

for a park if Bassett would do the same or sell it at a reasonable price. Loring wrote that

he and Lowry had been “at work” on Bassett for three years to get a proposition, but

“until yesterday” had failed. “Now,” Loring wrote, “(Bassett) has agreed upon a price

which is satisfactory to the other property owners who are to pay for it.”

In early 1893 the park board formally agreed to buy ten acres of land around Spring Lake

from Lowry, Bassett and others for $75,000. The attractive part of the offer, however,

was that the same property owners agreed to pay for the property over ten years through

assessments on their remaining land in the area. The net cost to the park board would be

nothing. Once again Lowry also offered to donate the money—$10,000—to the convert

the land into a park.

That was the last property acquired by the park board for the better part of a decade as the

city and the country sank into economic depression following the Panic of 1893. When

the park board resumed acquiring land in 1902, the expansion of Spring Lake Park was a

priority. Citing a need for more land “near the central part of the city,” the park board

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acquired another 44.5 acres of land in 1904 that gave The Parade the basic shape we

know today.

Once again it was donated land that was at the heart of the acquisition. More than half the

land was donated, twenty acres by Lowry. Other donors were William Dunwoody, on

whose remaining land Dunwoody Institute was later built across from the park, and

Security Bank. The park board also purchased 21 acres at a total cost of nearly $110,000

and most of the cost was once again assessed on nearby property. The initial grading and

seeding of the new park land, much of which was low ground, was paid for by another

$11,000 donation from Lowry.

Lowry had initially given slightly more than 20 acres to the park board in the transaction,

including a plot of land near the railroad tracks north of the park that he had agreed the

park board could sell to create a maintenance fund. He later informed the board that he

had made a mistake; he had already conveyed that land to the railroad in an earlier

transaction and asked the park board to grant the deed for that land to the railroad. The

park board complied with the request of one of its most generous benefactors.

Over the next two years, perhaps to compensate for his error, Lowry made additional

donations to the park board for the Parade, including an “entrance” to the park in the

northeast corner, made in conjunction with the Church of the Immaculate Conception,

and the land in the southeast corner of the park, which is now the Sculpture Garden

across from the Walker Art Center. The park board had voted to acquire the latter parcel

by condemnation to enlarge the park. When faced with the board’s decision, Lowry

donated the land with a condition that the park board could erect no buildings on it. The

land occupied by the Armory on Lyndale Avenue was the only small parcel of the present

Parade and Sculpture Garden that was not then owned by the park board. The 1.2 acres of

land on which the Armory sat was finally given to the park board by the state in 1934 at

the time the Armory was demolished.

From almost the time The Parade was expanded in 1904 it was coveted as a recreation

park. In early 1905 the board received petitions from the YMCA and others to use The

Parade as a baseball field. This was at a time when the park board maintained no athletic

fields of any kind on park property and only a year earlier had installed the first few

swings for children on park property at Loring Park. Parks were still generally viewed as

places for quiet retreat and relaxation, not as places for active recreation, such as ball

games, or even as playgrounds for children.

The request from the YMCA for a baseball field at The Parade came from Clifford

Booth, the director of physical training at the YMCA. Two years later, in 1907, after the

park board had installed gymnastic and playground equipment in two parks, Booth

volunteered to provide instruction and supervision at the playgrounds, and the next year

became the park board’s first supervisor of recreation, a part-time job.

In the 1905 annual report, the park board recommended establishing a recreation park, its

first, at The Parade. In 1905 the park board also gave approval to the city to build a

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highway along the northern edge of the park. That highway became Highway 12 and later

I-394, which in the 1960s took nearly 21 acres of The Parade.

When the park board’s new superintendent of parks, Theodore Wirth, made his first

recommendations to the park board in March 1906 he announced that in his preliminary

plans for the park he had set aside two blocks for a football field. Because the park board

had no money to build the fields at the time, however, he recommended that the park

board grant a request from the city engineer to use that land to store city supplies, a

recommendation that the park board approved.

Petitions for the use of The Parade steadily grew. In 1906 the Northwest Interscholastic

Athletic Association asked the park board to create athletic fields at the Parade for the

city’s high schools to use. Another request was for concerts to be provided at the park,

and in June of 1906 the park board provided its first concert there.

In 1907 the park board reported that The Parade was already “one of the most useful and

valuable parks”—and reported that Lowry, Dunwoody and others had contributed nearly

$10,000 more for further improvements to the park. And requests for more facilities came

in, including tennis courts and a cricket field.

In the spring of 1908 the superintendent of Minneapolis schools, Charles Jordan, who had

joined Charles Loring and William Folwell a decade earlier in urging the creation of

playgrounds in parks, formally asked the park board to provide baseball fields and tennis

courts, along with locker rooms and showers, at The Parade. That summer five baseball

fields were laid out at The Parade and there was such demand for the fields that new

recreation supervisor Clifford Booth implemented a system of permits for using the

fields. Two baseball leagues, the Commercial League and the Flour City League, began

playing their games at The Parade.

When the football season came around, the city’s high schools asked for permission for

their football teams to practice and play at The Parade and the park board instructed

Wirth to erect football goal posts on the field. In the 1908 annual report, Wirth “heartily

recommended” approval of the requests from high schools to use the grounds for sports

and presented his first plan for the layout of athletic facilities at The Parade. Included in

his plan were baseball and football fields, with a grandstand for spectators, and basketball

courts.

That summer two more baseball fields were added, still without fencing or backstops,

bringing to seven the number of baseball fields. (The first backstops were not installed

until 1911.) Booth reported that the fields were used every night that summer for

practices and every Saturday for games. Athletic events were not permitted in parks on

Sundays.

The park board also granted permission for the first privately sponsored entertainment at

the park in 1909 when the board granted the Elks Club permission to hold a circus there

as a fundraiser. (A few years later, however, it denied a request from Ringling Brothers to

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hold a for-profit circus on the grounds.) In 1910 the first citywide track meet was held at

Parade, featuring competitors from seven park playgrounds and seven school

playgrounds. The park board shifted one of its planned concerts that summer from the

Lake Harriet pavilion to the Parade during the citywide athletic festival at the urging of

Wirth who said the festival needed a “good band.”

With the popularity of the fields at the Parade, Wirth presented a new plan for a

grandstand at the fields in 1911, but added that the park board needed a donation from a

public-spirited citizen to pay for it. As important as athletic uses of parks were becoming,

the expense of providing accommodation for athletes was still not seen as a primary

responsibility of the park board.

In addition to beginning the grading of the fields, the park board also built four tennis

courts at the Parade in 1911—also without backstops. In an unusual agreement, which set

a precedent that continued for decades, the board agreed to a contract with a private

tennis club for maintenance and operation of the courts.

The grading and reseeding of the fields at Parade took them out of commission for three

years. One of the problems, as in most parks in the city, was that the park was created on

low, wet land. Before the fields could be constructed the land had to be filled and the fill

had to settle before it could be graded, top-dressed and seeded. Theodore Wirth also

noted that the fields could not be completed earlier due to a shortage of funds. (The low

relative priority of athletic fields in the park system, despite persistent demand for them,

is demonstrated by the fact that in 1911 the park board received authorization from the

state legislature to sell $1 million in bonds for park improvements. With extensive lake

dredging and parkway building planned or underway at that time, however, sufficient

funds were still not available to complete the grading of the new fields, which meant that

another full year passed before they were usable.) Without the fields at the Parade, North

Commons and the first Longfellow Field (at Minnehaha and 28

) became the venues for

football games in the city.

While the fields were under construction, the park board gave permission in 1912 for

Woodrow Wilson to give a presidential campaign speech at The Parade.

Another attraction at The Parade began in 1913 when Theodore Wirth requested the use

of the ground south of the Armory for an ornamental garden. Wirth wanted to create a

show garden that year for the Society of American Florists and Ornamental

Horticulturists, which was holding its national convention at the Armory. The

“Convention Garden,” with more than 20,000 plants, was such a hit with the florists and

the public that it became the premier garden in the city along with the rose garden at Lake

Harriet. In 1914 park board president Edmund Phelps recommended continuing the

garden, but renaming it the “Armory Garden.” The Armory Garden remained long after

the Armory itself was torn down in 1934. The park board maintained the garden until

1967. Each year the central bed of the garden was used to spell out in flowers an

important event in the city. In 1964, after Look magazine had paid tribute to the city, the

flowers spelled out “All America City,” the title the magazine had conferred.

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The newly graded and planted Parade fields—seven for baseball and two for football—

opened for play in 1914. The Parade immediately regained its status as the premier

athletic ground in the city primarily due to its central location. But that central location

also put The Parade at the center of many discussions of other city facilities. From the

late 1910s into the 1930s many city leaders, including park commissioners,

recommended The Parade as the site of a new auditorium and civic center. In 1919 Wirth

even proposed creating an “auto tourist camp” at The Parade similar to the one the park

board later operated at Minnehaha Park. In 1923 the park board approved use of the

northern section of The Parade as a polo ground with barn and stables. This was after the

park board had rejected Wirth’s suggestion to turn Bryn Mawr into a park for equestrians,

including polo players.

Still the park was without amenities other than playing areas. In 1923 park commissioner

Maude Armatage suggested that the park board consider adding a “comfort station”—

toilets—to the property. No action was taken on her suggestion. Despite the lack of

amenities the popularity of the athletic fields continued. In 1926 a city-wide track and

field competition was begun again, under the sponsorship of the Minneapolis Tribune.

More than 2,000 people participated between the children’s events during the day and

adult contests at night. By 1932 participation had increased to nearly 3,000.

In 1930 Wirth advocated constructing an auditorium at the Parade and three years later he

added a stadium to the list of facilities that he believed were needed there. With the onset

of the depression and an extreme shortage of funds to develop or improve any park

facilities, Wirth suggested that a facility at Parade, and lighting for the tennis courts,

could be paid for by user fees. Even without action on buildings, the park board created

five more baseball and softball fields in the park in 1931.

While plans for a stadium funded by the Public Works Administration fell through, in

1933 the park board added lights, a fence, and bleachers to hold 2,000 people at the best

baseball field and authorized an admission charge of ten cents at some events to recoup

costs. For the first time night baseball games were played at Parade. The policy of

charging admission to events proved successful at the baseball field. Improvements were

made to the field several times, including new fencing and bleachers over the next fifteen

years. By 1946 the maximum allowable charge for admission had increased to fifty cents.

The tennis courts at the Parade got a new look in 1934 in preparation for hosting the

National Public Parks Tennis Championship. The championship required clay courts, of

which the city had none, so the park board’s first clay courts were built at The Parade

along with a tennis center building. At that time the park board had 175 tennis courts in

parks throughout the city, but all of them had either concrete or limestone surfaces. The

new courts provided a home court advantage to William Schommer and Charles Britzius

of Minneapolis who won the men’s doubles title. (The tennis center built for the event

was operated by the park board until 1942, when management of the center and the courts

were taken over by the Minneapolis Tennis Club. Despite hopes that the new clay courts

would pay for themselves in user fees, the courts had operated at a slight deficit.) Tennis

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was so popular at the time that when the state donated to the park board the site of the

Armory, which was razed in 1934, Wirth proposed converting half of that land into tennis

courts too.

No further developments occurred at The Parade through World War II although the new

park superintendent in 1936, Christian Bossen, repeated the call for a recreation center at

the park. It wasn’t until the park board began planning its post-war agenda that plans for

a stadium at Parade gained momentum. Various branches of city government were

encouraged to develop plans for “post-war progress” partly in hopes that government

spending after the war could help prevent a return to depression. On the park board’s list

of post-war progress projects, totaling $11.7 million, was Parade Stadium at a projected

cost of $1 million. It was one of the few projects on the park board’s list that was funded

by city bonds until the 1960s.

In 1949 and 1950 plans were developed and approved for a 17,000-seat football stadium,

a 4,000-seat baseball stadium and parking for 600 cars. Construction plans were held up

due to objections from homeowners in the Lowry Hill neighborhood, but construction

finally began in 1950. Just after construction began however, the National Production

Authority prohibited the construction of recreation and amusement projects in order to

conserve materials for defense purposes as the nation went to war in Korea. Mayor Eric

Hoyer and park superintendent Charles Doell went to Washington, D. C. to request an

exemption from the ban because the stadium construction had already begun. They

returned home with permission to finish the stadium—and to complete another park

project that was already underway, the construction of Waite Park.

The new stadium opened in the fall of 1951. The biggest event at the stadium that fall

was an NFL exhibition game between the Green Bay Packers and the San Francisco

49ers, which drew a standing-room crowd of 20,000. The annual NFL game, promoted as

a fundraiser by the Catholic Welfare Association, helped make the new stadium

profitable until the game was moved to Bloomington’s new Metropolitan Stadium in

1956. The first NFL exhibition games demonstrated the appetite in the area for

professional football, which eventually helped land an NFL franchise for the state in

1961.

From the time the stadium was built it became the home of Minneapolis high school

football. The first year the stadium was the venue for eight football games, but the next

year 47 were played there.

To make room for the new stadiums, the tennis center at The Parade was transferred to

Nicollet (King) Park. Post-war plans for the development of The Parade originally had

included an ice arena and an auditorium for basketball games, but those parts of the plan

were put on hold for lack of funds. The basketball auditorium would never be built on the

site, but more than 35 years later, an ice arena was added to The Parade.

In its first years of operation, thanks in part to the annual NFL exhibition game, the new

facilities at The Parade operated at a profit. In addition to regular football and baseball

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games, the park hosted the World Softball Championships in 1954 and again in 1958.

After the loss of the NFL exhibition game in 1956, the park board replaced some lost

revenue by leasing the stadium to a circus for a couple weeks in the summer of 1957.

Over the next several years however, the stadium operated at a slight loss due to

maintenance costs.

What made the park profitable again was not the stadium, but the parking lot. With the

construction of the Guthrie Theater in 1963, the park board began to see substantial

revenue from the stadium parking lot where many Guthrie patrons parked. The Guthrie

also benefited from having the park outside its doors. Patrons not only parked in the park

lot, but waited for performances to start by ambling through Kenwood Garden, the old

Armory Garden.

By then, however, The Parade had begun a change that would dramatically alter the park

and its setting. In 1962, the first parts of The Parade were lost to freeway construction, a

development that would eventually shrink the park by a third and form stark boundaries

on two sides of the park. Land to the east of Parade was taken for I-94 severing the park

from Loring Park and later more land on the north side of the park was taken for I-394

placing a freeway a few feet from the edge of Spring Lake. In the end the park lost 21

acres and seven playing fields to highways. One benefit of the loss of land at The Parade

to freeways was that the park board acquired from the state in exchange part of the

Wabun picnic area on the Mississippi River bluffs near Minnehaha Falls.

By the mid-1960s another development was also being considered that would change the

park. In 1966 the park board had its first discussions with representatives of the Guthrie

Theater and Walker Art Center about using a portion of the park across Vineland Avenue

from the arts complex for cultural purposes. A short time later the park board also

approved in concept the construction of a pedestrian and bicycle bridge across the new

freeway to reconnect Loring Park to The Parade. It would take nearly two decades for

those two developments to come together in the form of the Minneapolis Sculpture

Garden and the Irene Hixon Whitney Bridge. (See Sculpture Garden for more of that

story.)

The Parade finally got an ice arena, the first for a Minneapolis park, about the time the

Sculpture Garden was being completed in 1988. At that time the Minneapolis

Auditorium, the venue for high school hockey games in Minneapolis, was razed for the

construction of a new convention center. An ice arena at The Parade, initially proposed in

1950 when the stadium was constructed, was finally built in 1988, at a cost of $4 million,

primarily to provide a practice and game venue for Minneapolis high school hockey

teams. An additional performance space was added to the ice arena in 1997 prior to the

1998 World Figure Skating Championships that were held at Target Center.

Two years after the Ice Arena was built, a Parade Stadium that was well past its prime

was demolished. In its place a new baseball field was constructed to replace a field lost to

the expansion of the Sculpture Garden to the east.

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In 2006 a new synthetic turf field was installed at The Parade for soccer and football.

A new baseball field was constructed to replace a field lost to the expansion of the

Sculpture Garden to the east. In 2012 the new field (along with new fields built at

Neiman Sports Complex) hosted the Reviving Baseball in Inner Cities (RBI) World

Series, in which 24 elite youth baseball and softball teams from around the United States

and Dominican Republic competed in three divisions. The baseball field was upgraded in

2014 to include a new scoreboard (paid for by Augsburg College, which uses the field for

home games) and a new irrigation system paid for by the Minnesota Twins Community

Fund.

In 2015, a $9 million upgrade was completed at Parade Ice Garden. The comprehensive

renovation improved the arena’s energy efficiency through a number of projects spanning

from the basement to the roof. A rooftop solar installation was also part of the project. It

provides 10-15 percent of the ice arena’s annual electrical needs.

Trivia

At the height of the Cold War, on April 20, 1960 the park board approved a request from

Minneapolis Civil Defense to construct a demonstration atomic bomb fallout shelter at

The Parade. An earlier decision to place the fallout shelter in Nicollet (King) Park was

rescinded after objections from the community.

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Park Avenue Triangle

Location: Park Avenue and East 10

Street

Size: 0.03 acres

Name: The triangle was named on November 4, 1925 for the street on which it located.

Acquisition and Development

The triangle was transferred to the park board from the city council. The council turned

over the triangle to the park board April 8, 1925. An earlier request for the park board to

designate the triangle as a park was denied in 1924.

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Park Siding Park

Location: Dean Boulevard

Size: 1.39 acres

Name: The park name, adopted November 4, 1925, was chosen because the property was

adjacent to the railroad track just west of Dean Boulevard. From 1916, when the park

board first leased the property, it was referred to as the Dean Boulevard Construction

Yard or the Nelson Tract after the name of the company that sold the land to the park

board.

Acquisition and Development

The original property of three acres was purchased June 4, 1919 from the Nelson

Brothers Paving and Construction Company for $26,200, payable over ten years.

The property was acquired to provide a storage and work yard, primarily as a paving

plant for parkway construction. The board first leased the space for that purpose in 1916,

but park superintendent Theodore Wirth presented a drawing of the proposed location

and arrangement of an “asphalt plant and storage yard” at that location in his 1915 annual

report. At that time Wirth estimated that the pavement required for the entire system at

the time was one million square yards, a volume that would be handled more

economically with a modern plant. He noted that he already had a portable plant located

on the Nelson Brothers’ land before the lease was negotiated. After only a year of

operating under the lease, Wirth recommended in June, 1917 that the land be purchased.

The park board initially agreed to pay $32,000 for the property in 1918, but backed out of

that deal and was sued by Nelson Brothers to enforce the agreement. The court

determined that the agreement was not a valid contract and the Nelson Brothers and the

park board compromised on a purchase price of $26,200.

Wirth wrote in his 1919 annual report that the location provided excellent railroad track

facilities for off-loading supplies, and space for shops, storehouses and yards. Perhaps

what he left out is most telling, and may have contributed to the board’s reluctance to

proceed with the acquisition at the original price: asphalt. Wirth’s plans for an asphalt

plant were obviated by his conclusion that an asphalt-concrete mix for parkways was less

durable and more expensive than tar macadam. By 1920 it was obvious that the asphalt-

concrete mix used on The Mall and King’s Highway was already in need of repairs.

Wirth also made the case in his 1920 report that “asphaltic concrete” was two to three

times more expensive than tar macadam. His opinion had shifted dramatically from 1916,

when he emphasized the need for an asphalt plant, to 1920 when he stated the standard

pavement for the park system would be a tar macadam surface.

Wirth’s plan when the board finally acquired the railroad siding was to lower the ground

near the track by six feet and use the excavated gravel and sand in the Grand Rounds

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construction projects then in planning stages. He speculated that the value of that material

would more than cover the cost of the acquisition. He further noted that the new

machinery for grading, ditching and paving to be used in constructing the Glenwood-

Camden Parkway, among others, had been received and was housed in an old building on

the property.

This was at a time when extensive road-building had begun on the Glenwood-Camden

Parkway, soon to be followed by either paving or construction at Linden Hills Boulevard,

Stinson Boulevard, St. Anthony Parkway, Minnehaha Parkway and West Lake Calhoun

Parkway.

For accounting purposes, improvements to the property were charged against the park

construction fund, rather than the property itself, and are therefore difficult to track from

park board reports. The board did contract with the railroad in 1923 to extend the storage

tracks on the property.

Wirth wrote in 1926 that the value of the property to the park board was steadily

increasing. The location of the yard was especially useful for additional road construction

on Minnehaha Parkway and the west side of Lake Calhoun.

A small piece of the property was leased to a private citizen in 1933 and by the 1950’s,

with the exception of a playground for young children, the land was largely unused. The

park board staff recommended in the 1950s that the property be sold. In 1971, a

developer was interested in buying the property and, with the required permission from

the District Court to sell the land, it was advertised for sale. The only bidder was the

developer who purchased 1.3 acres of the property for $150,000.

A proposal to rename the park Woodcarvers Park, in 1977, in exchange for the donation

of three 25-foot totem or heritage poles for the park was not accepted by the park board.

The park was referred to informally by park staff as Woodcarvers Park anyway because

of the woodcarving shop and school across the street from the park.

When the park board completely renovated the little park in 1997—which was by then

nowhere near a working railroad track—it won a design award from the Committee on

Urban Environment. The renovation was financed in part by Cedar-Isles-Dean

neighborhood revitalization funds. In 2012 the Cedar Isles Dean neighborhood paid for

new trees, redesigned garden beds with new irrigation systems and two concrete outdoor

table tennis tables.

Today the tranquil little park, nestled on a dead-end street among modern townhouses,

lies beside not a railroad track, but a bicycle and pedestrian path. No longer a place to

unload railcars, it’s an excellent place for a breather for cyclists who travel the path the

trains once did. No hint remains of the muscular work of mixing asphalt and building

roads.

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Pearl Park

Location: Portland Avenue South and East 52

Street

Size: 29.33 acres

Name: The park was named for Pearl Lake, which once occupied the site. In its early

years it was referred to as Pearl Lake. The “lake” was not dropped from the name until

the park board built a shelter at the park in 1968.

Acquisition and Development

The first mention in park board proceedings of what became Pearl Park was an offer

presented to the park board on December 19, 1923 from Clarke’s Diamond Lake Realty

to donate a tract of land “surrounding Pearl Lake and a portion of the shores of Diamond

Lake” for park purposes. That donation, valued in park board inventory at $1,500, was

accepted in 1925. About a third of that value was later attributed to Pearl Lake when the

park board first listed Pearl Lake and Diamond Lake separately in its inventory in 1942,

although the majority of that first donation was closer to Pearl Lake.

In the 1927 annual report, park superintendent Theodore Wirth described four projects “it

is hoped may be completed this year.” One of them was the acquisition of another 116

acres surrounding and including Pearl Lake and Diamond Lake. Wirth planned to dredge

Diamond Lake and fill Pearl Lake.

In a revised plan in 1930, Wirth expected the southern end of Pearl park to be a

landscaped grove of trees, perhaps a buffer between the beach he proposed for the north

end of Diamond Lake and the athletic grounds he proposed for the northern section of

Pearl Lake.

While the plans to dredge Diamond Lake never were executed, the plans to fill Pearl

Lake proceeded fairly quickly. Pearl Lake was on its way to becoming a recreation park

from the time the first skating rink was provided there in the winter of 1929-1930.

The Pearl Lake and Diamond Lake park holdings were increased dramatically in 1936

when the park board acquired another 72.32 acres—mostly water—for the modest price

of $1,035. The acquisition included land to expand the planned recreation area at Pearl

Lake. The park board conducted studies with the community on development of Pearl

Lake as a community park and regional athletic field.

That year about 15,000 yards of fill were dumped and graded in the south end of the

“swamp” to improve the skating area. Later, with the help of federal work-relief crews,

the park board stripped a foot of peat off the bed of Pearl Lake and raised it two feet by

using 60,000 yards of fill acquired from the airport, where federal crews were grading for

new runways. (The park board owned the airport at the time and was responsible for its

development and operation until the 1940s.) Scoops dragged behind caterpillars pealed

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off the peat surface, which was stockpiled. After loam from the airport was used as fill,

the peat was put back as a top coat.

The work by the federal work-relief crews at Pearl Lake continued in 1937, when 200

men and 75 trucks worked to fill another 500 feet of the former lake bed with fill from

the airport. With filling completed, the crews built a skating rink, baseball, softball and

football fields, two tennis courts, a volleyball court and horseshoe pits. A children’s

playground was also installed. A twelve-inch drain was also placed in the center of the

park to drain excess water into Diamond Lake. Despite the drain, excess water at Pearl

Park would remain a problem for decades.

The park board planned big improvements to the Pearl Lake-Diamond Lake complex

after World War II, but was never able to get bond funding for the project. Even without

further development, the park was heavily used. Estimates of attendance in 1955 made

Pearl Park the second-most heavily used skating rink in the park system, behind only

Folwell Park in north Minneapolis.

By the early 1960s, while Diamond Lake improvements had been forgotten, Pearl Lake

was included in the board’s plans for improvements. In 1962, the board reported that its

capitol improvement program for 1965 included $600,000 for Pearl Lake, but added that

the project “depends on receiving fill material.” Pearl Lake, as most other parks in the

system built on filled land, continued to settle and need more fill. In the meantime, the

board authorized the superintendent to seek excess fill in 1963 from the construction of I-

35W a few blocks to the west.

In the 1965 annual report the board reported that plans for the improvement of the park

were completed. The new plans positioned the park recreation center at the south end of

the park instead of in the center of the park as earlier plans had done. Work to execute

those plans began in 1966, primarily grading and landscaping, and were continued the

next year with work on the new recreation center, wading pool, ball fields and

playgrounds, with lighting throughout the park.

The new recreation center was dedicated in December, 1968. The total cost of the

renovation of Pearl Park was $522,000, half paid on assessments on neighborhood

property and half by city bonds.

Pearl Park came close to being reduced in size in 1971, when the northern end of the park

was included on a list of park properties that were unused and could be sold. Although

one property on that list was sold, a portion of Park Siding Park, the board voted in 1972

that all parcels previously declared surplus would not be sold.

A park retrieved from a lake continued to have flooding problems, which caused the need

to refill and regrade the fields in 1979. Not only had flooding problems persisted, but the

original fill material from the airport included chunks of concrete that migrated to the

surface over time.

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The old shelter was renovated and a gym added in 1996 with a contribution of

neighborhood funds through the Neighborhood Revitalization Program. Ironically, given

the park’s wet history, in 2006 of an in-ground irrigation system was added for the

playing fields.

In 2008 the wading pool at the park was upgraded to meet new safety standards.

Arbor Day in 2011 was held at Pearl Park and 270 trees were planted by volunteers. In

2011 the baseball field was also improved with new fencing and a remediation of poor

soil.

In spring 2014 a residential organic waste drop-off site opened at Pearl Park. That

summer, the park board’s first outdoor Pickleball court debuted at the park when the

tennis courts were resurfaced. In 2015, the basketball and volleyball courts were

resurfaced, and a new youth-sized basketball hoop was installed

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Peavey Field

Location: Franklin Avenue and Park Avenue

Size: 7.08 acres

Name: The park was named for Frank H. Peavey whose grandchildren donated the first

3.44 acres of land for the park. The name was stipulated in the deed to the land given to

the park board. Peavey was prominent in the grain trade in Minneapolis. Like Elliot Park,

Washburn Fair Oaks and Dorilus Morrison Park, the park was once the site of the

namesake’s home.

Acquisition and Development

Land for the original 3.44-acre park was donated by the four children of Mrs. Mary D.

Wells, the daughter of Frank Peavey, on November 4, 1927. The original park site was on

East 22

Street from Park Avenue to Columbus Avenue with 290 feet of frontage on

prestigious Park Avenue. The board estimated the value of the donation at the time at

$28,000.

The donation of the land came twenty years after Frederick Wells and others had

petitioned the park board to acquire for park purposes the land directly north of the

Peavey estate on Franklin Avenue between Park and Columbus. The park board approved

the acquisition on the conditions that it could acquire the land at a satisfactory price and

that area residents would agree to advance the money to buy the land and be repaid over

ten years. Following that original commitment to acquire the land, the issue dropped out

of park board proceedings.

It resurfaced in the 1925 annual report when it was noted that Mr. F. B. Wells,

presumably Peavey’s son-in-law, had offered to donate the former Peavey house and

property at the corner of Park and 22

for park purposes. Park Superintendent Theodore

Wirth expressed reservations that the plan would work because of the cost of acquiring

adjacent land and the cost of maintaining the buildings offered.

Once the donation was accepted from the Peavey grandchildren in 1927, the Peavey

home was removed from the site. One small building was left, which provided the

“beginning of a very fine neighborhood playground” according to the park board’s 1927

annual report. From the time it was donated, park superintendent Theodore Wirth hoped

that the land would form the “nucleus” of a small playground park and hoped additional

land could be secured for the park. In fact, the park has more than doubled in size since

1927.

In 1941, the park board acquired four lots, one-half acre, adjacent to the original park

from the state at no cost. The lots had been forfeited to the state for failure to pay taxes.

The park was expanded more dramatically in 1947 when the park board purchased by

condemnation 2.8 acres in 22 lots east to Chicago Avenue at a cost of $223,000. The

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parcel acquired was much smaller than the park board had intended when it sought bond

funds in 1946 to expand the park by as much as eight acres. The park expanded slightly

again in 1949, when the city turned over to the park board the fire station at the corner of

Columbus and 22

. The next addition to the park came in 1956 when the park was

expanded by another .68 acre, in part through the vacation of Columbus Avenue through

the park. The final addition to the park occurred in 1992 when the park board acquired

two lots at the corner of Franklin and Chicago with funds from the National Park Service.

The liquor store on the corner was demolished and the site was incorporated into the

park.

While land was added to the original park donation, almost nothing was done to develop

the land into a useful park for many years. Park superintendent Theodore Wirth submitted

a plan for development of the park in 1928, noting that the grounds were “not very

sightly” in their present condition and “serve no particular purpose.”

In the lean years to come nothing would be done to improve the park. From 1935 to 1937

the park board did manage to grade the fields for a skating rink, surface the field with

clay and loam, and plant some trees, but that was only accomplished through state and

federal work-relief programs.

At the time the park board was planning to expand the park in the 1940s, park

superintendent Charles Doell wrote that play spaces were “badly needed in this thickly-

populated district of the city.” It was one of the districts that had the least playground

space. The nearest playground was Stewart Field Park five blocks to the southeast,

another neighborhood park in which the park board had invested no development money.

The problem faced by the neighborhood, as most older neighborhoods in the city, was

that property values in developed areas benefited less from park improvements than

neighborhoods that were being newly developed. Therefore property owners were less

likely to accept assessments on their property for park improvements. Newer or wealthier

neighborhoods that could afford assessments, in other words pay for their own parks, got

the attention of the park board. (The practice of assessing neighborhood property for park

improvements ended in 1968 because of the inequities it had caused.)

The purchase of land to expand Peavey Park in 1947 was financed by city bonds,

however, the first dime of its own money the park board spent on improving Peavey Park

was $15 in 1949. That was the year that Peavey Park replaced Farview Park on the roster

of eight parks that participated in community sings. Another $50 was spent on the park in

1950, until, in 1956, the park board secured $180,000, divided between bonds and

neighborhood assessments, to improve the park.

From 1956 to 1958, the park was graded, ball fields were built, tennis courts and a

wading pool were installed, and a small shelter was built. The shelter had garage-type

self-storing doors that could be opened in the summer and closed in winter to serve as a

warming house.

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In 1971, the park board seriously considered a proposal to locate a new American Indian

Center in the park, but ultimately decided that it wasn’t appropriate to alter the park

board’s land policy to permit a privately owned building on park land. Instead the center

was built on the site of a former school at Franklin and Bloomington, a few blocks east of

Peavey Park, a site that the Urban American Indian Center Board ultimately preferred.

The 1958 shelter was demolished and replaced with a new, larger shelter attached to what

was then Four Winds School (and is now Hope Academy) in the southeast corner of the

park in 1992. At about the same time the buildings on the most recent addition to Peavey

Park, two lots at the corner of Franklin and Chicago, were demolished and converted into

a new entrance to the park with brightly colored mosaic tile benches. Neighborhood

revitalization funds contributed to the renovation.

In one of the first steps toward implementing a Master Plan for the park, developed with

the neighborhood in 2000, the tennis courts at the corner of Franklin and Portland were

removed and the basketball courts rearranged and resurfaced.

Trivia

The name Frank Peavey appears another place in the Minneapolis park system. Frank

Peavey donated a fountain to the parks, which he placed at the intersection of Kenwood

Parkway and Lake of the Isles Parkway, in 1892. The Peavey Fountain was originally

meant to serve as a watering place for horses. It was later designated as a memorial for

horses that had died in World War I.

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Penn Model Village Triangle

Location: Oliver Avenue South and West 58

Street

Size: 0.16 acre

Name: The triangle was named for the residential development in which it is located.

Acquisition and Development

In 1946 Penn Model Village, Inc., a residential housing developer, proposed to donate as

a park a triangle at the street intersection of Oliver and 58

Street. The park board agreed

to accept the land as a park on the condition that it be curbed, graded and seeded with

grass and that the developer contribute $60 a year for ten years for maintenance of the

land. The board reported at the time that construction of the neighborhood and

negotiations on the land continued.

The park board’s attorney reported in the 1948 annual report that negotiations had been

completed and the triangle acquired, but the deed was not finalized until November of

1950.

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Perkins Hill Park

Location: Third Street and 34

Avenue North

Size: 3.76 acres

Name: The park’s name comes from the Perkins Hill Addition in which most of the park

is located. The name has never been formally adopted.

Acquisition and Development

The five-and-a-half-acre park was acquired in 1948 for $276. All but two lots of the park

were acquired from the state at no cost. The two additional lots were purchased. The state

had obtained the property through tax forfeiture. Perkins Hill Park along with Bossen

Field Park and parts of Peavey, Kenny and McRae parks were acquired in the late 1940s

from the state’s list of tax-forfeited property.

The neighborhood had been targeted for a playground by a 1944 study of the city’s park

needs. After acquiring the land, the park board promptly vacated 3

Street through the

park and graded the north end of the property for a ball field. The park was intended

primarily as a playground for small children. Improvements were completed in 1949 with

the installation of backstops for the ball fields and playground equipment and the seeding

of the park.

Perkins Hill Park shrank in 1969 when 1.8 acres of the park were taken by the state

highway department for the construction of I-94 through north Minneapolis. The state

paid $74,000 for the land. Almost $40,000 of that money was put into a fund to improve

the park and the remainder was put into a land account to purchase other land for parks in

the city.

Plans to renovate the remaining acres of the park were approved in 1970 and commenced

that year.

The park was given a makeover in 1990-91 and new playground equipment was installed

in 2010.

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Pershing Park

Location: Abbot Avenue and West 48

Street

Size: 8.51 acres

Name: The park was named for General John J. “Blackjack” Pershing, commander of

American forces in World War I. The name was requested by the Robert Fulton

Community Club and formally adopted December 5, 1922. In January 1923 the board

received a note of thanks from General Pershing for naming the park in his honor. The

board immediately approved a motion to have Pershing’s letter framed and hung in the

offices of the park board.

Acquisition and Development

The land for the park was designated for purchase on September 22, 1922. The action to

purchase the land followed an inspection visit to the site by park commissioners in May

of that year. The board completed appraisals of the land to be taken for the park and

confirmed awards for the land, amounting to $27,200, in February of 1923. The entire

amount was assessed on property in the vicinity of the park, to be paid over five years.

There appears to have been no intention to improve the land any time soon after its

purchase. In his 1925 annual report, in which he presented a future plan for the park’s

development, park superintendent Theodore Wirth wrote that no pressure for

improvement of the park “has been in evidence thus far, but may be expected in the near

future.” Wirth noted then that before the land could be developed as a park it had to be

drained and filled. The park board had purchased another wet patch of land. The vast

majority of neighborhood parks purchased were very wet, which is one reason they didn’t

often have houses on them and were affordable.

In 1929, Wirth’s plan was revised due to cooperation with the school board, which

planned to build a new high school, tentatively named Alexander Bell High School, on

the land to the east of the park. Shelter facilities for the park were to be part of the school.

However, the following year Wirth submitted another revision to his plan, which

included a park shelter this time, because it had become apparent that the school building

would not be erected for a number of years. (The school board’s land adjacent to the park

eventually became the track and football field for Southwest High School, which opened

in 1940.)

In preparation for construction, the park board closed Beard Avenue through the park in

January 1931. Construction began in late summer 1931 when the entire field—a peat

swamp grown over with willow brush, Wirth called it—was cleaned and had six inches

of clay and six inches of loam laid over the entire park. A field house was built on the

west edge of the field, streets were curbed and walks were laid. The field was dedicated,

appropriately for a park named for General Pershing, on Armistice Day, November 11,

1931.

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The park had no sooner opened than the park board received one of its more unusual

requests. A rifle club asked for use of the shelter’s basement for target practice. The

board denied the request saying that “no practical or feasible” arrangement could be

made.

The balance of the grading for playing fields was completed in 1932 and six concrete

tennis courts and a concrete wading pool were built, more than 2,000 square yards of

walks were laid, lighting and sprinkling systems were installed, and playground

equipment was erected. Property owners in the vicinity were once again assessed for the

entire cost of the improvements.

That was how Pershing remained, with the exception of improvements made by federal

work relief crews in the late 1930s, until 1954 when the building was remodeled and the

wading pool and playground equipment were relocated. The remodeling permitted the

basement of the recreation shelter to be used as a warming house, so the first floor rooms

could be used for community activities in winter. The small kitchen was also remodeled.

With the improvements, Pershing was one of three parks added to the park board’s roster

of nine full-time, year-round recreation centers in 1958. In 1959, when three more parks

were added to the full-time program, estimated attendance at Pershing was greater than at

any other year-round park program in the city.

The park was renovated again in 1962 after a petition drive in the neighborhood to get

property owners to agree to be assessed for more improvements.

The original recreation center was demolished in 1976 and the present center was

completed in 1977.

In 2002 the athletic fields at Pershing were regraded and resurfaced and new playground

equipment was installed. In 2008 the tennis courts (now only four) and basketball court

were resurfaced, partially with funds raised by Save Our Courts, a non-profit organization

originally created to upgrade the tennis courts at Kenwood Park.

Energy efficiency was the goal of upgrades to the rec center in 2010 and in 2011 the

playing fields were improved, including the installation of an irrigation system. In 2014

the basketball and tennis courts were resurfaced.

In 2014 the basketball and tennis courts were resurfaced.

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Phelps Field

Location: Chicago Avenue and East 39

Street

Size: 7.82 acres

Name: The park was named for park commissioner Edmund J. Phelps in 1939. Prior to

its official naming, the park was called Chicago Avenue Field. Phelps was a park

commissioner from 1905 until he died in 1923, which made him the longest serving park

commissioner in history at the time, surpassing William Folwell by several months. He

was president of the park board in 1912 and 1913.

Phelps is remembered in Minneapolis parks not only for Phelps Field, but for Phelps

Fountain, also known as the “turtle” fountain, that is now in Lyndale Park near the Rose

Garden. The fountain was donated by Phelps to be the centerpiece of The Gateway near

the Hennepin Avenue bridge downtown in 1915. The fountain was moved to Lyndale

Park in 1964 when the original Gateway was relocated. Phelps had been one of the

strongest proponents of building The Gateway.

He was also an avid horseman and, especially while president of the park board,

promoted converting the park board’s bicycle paths to bridle trails. When the bicycle

craze of the 1890s ended, the bicycle paths around the lakes were little-used.

Phelps was a park commissioner during a time of rapid expansion of the park system and

the beginning of the shift in emphasis on parks from tranquil open spaces to places for

more active and athletic use. Phelps was a strong supporter of park expansion and once,

in defense of The Gateway acquisition, he said that “the park board has never acquired a

park without opposition, whether from those who did not believe in parks, or those whose

private interests were interfered with.” In that context his comments in the 1913 annual

report at the end of his tenure as president of the board are noteworthy. Commenting on

the work of the committee that recommended new parks, he wrote, “With the acquisition

of the small parcels recommended by Mr. Wirth, there seems to be little left for the

Designation Committee to do in the future except to reflect upon its busy and useful

record and occasionally respond to a call for a neighborhood triangle.” At the time the

park board owned about half of the properties and sixty percent of the park acreage it

owns today.

Acquisition and Development

The park was designated for purchase November 1, 1916 and bonds in the amount of

$24,700 were issued to buy the land on April 4, 1917. The purchase concluded a year of

activism by residents in the vicinity of the park to have a playground. When residents

first asked for a park at Chicago and 39

in the summer of 1916 they were told to present

a petition from property owners offering to pay assessments on their property to pay for

the park. A group of residents returned in November with not only an agreement to pay

assessments, but with an offer not to ask the park board to maintain or improve the park

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for five years. They volunteered to make improvements in the interim at their own

expense under the supervision of the park superintendent. With that promise, the park

board immediately designated the land for acquisition and had the land surveyed.

With the purchase and an assessment schedule completed in 1917, and Columbus Avenue

through the park vacated, park superintendent Theodore Wirth included in his 1917

annual report a grand and detailed plan for developing the park and building a field house

in what he called a “rapidly growing section of the city.” The plan was to develop the

space primarily for athletic use, on three levels or terraces, but it still included significant

landscaped space for walks and trees, or “attractive park effects” as Wirth called them, as

was still the custom at the time. Wirth even had a scale model created of his plan.

The most interesting aspect of the plan was Wirth’s proposed two-story field house,

which included one wing for a gymnasium (at that time an indoor play area not as large

as today’s basketball courts) and another for an assembly hall with seating for 300

people. The plan reflected the national “social center” movement of the time in parks

around the country, and also drew on the enormous success of the park board’s first field

house built in 1912 at Logan Park. Wirth’s explanation of his plan practically defined the

social center movement. “It will be more than a playground and neighborhood park,” he

wrote, “it will be the meeting place at all times of the year for the people who are

interested in the doings and welfare of their children, the development of the district in

which they live, the advancement of the city as a whole, and, in fact, everything that

tends toward the furthering of the community’s progress and a neighborly spirit of good-

fellowship.”

Perhaps the plan was too grand, and too expensive for property owners to pay for.

Despite requests for development of the park and the offer to pay for it by some

petitioners from the neighborhood, the development of the park was not mentioned again

in annual reports for four years, except a brief mention in 1919. Wirth wrote then that his

plan was on file and could be implemented whenever property owners in the area

“express their willingness to assume the cost of the undertaking.”

Finally in 1922, after a petition for toilets at the park had been denied for lack of funds,

Wirth presented a modified plan for the park that met requests of the neighborhood to

develop the park at a cost of $75,000 to $80,000. Wirth wrote in his report then that he

regretted that the high cost of his earlier plan, costs which he attributed to the topography

of the land, made it prohibitive. (All four corners of the park were at different grades.) He

said the new arrangement offered nearly the same athletic facilities as his original plan,

but “from a park perspective, was not as attractive as the first proposed layout.” Also

missing was the “social center.” Instead of the field house, he wrote, “an ordinary shelter

is substituted.” (Former park commissioner and architect Harry W. Jones was hired to

create a design for the building.) The cost of Wirth’s new plan was $90,100. It was

approved by the park board in January 1923, and the cost was assessed 100% against

property in the vicinity of the park.

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Phelps was not the only park to be developed to scaled-back plans. In the 1917 annual

report, Wirth presented an elaborate plan for Folwell Park along with his plan for Phelps.

He proposed not only a field house for Folwell, but a grandstand for watching baseball

and football games. Just as with Phelps, Wirth presented much-reduced plans for Folwell,

Nicollet (King) and Linden Hills parks in the 1922 report. All developments at Phelps

Field, as at every other park in the city at the time, were to be paid for by property

assessments, and property owners would only approve the most basic and least expensive

plans.

The improvements to Phelps Field Park were 85% completed, by Wirth’s assessment, by

the end of 1924, including the construction of a shelter. The contract for the shelter was

awarded in October of that year and construction was completed in time for it to serve as

a warming house for skaters that winter. A small remaining balance in the fund from

assessments for the park was used in 1934 to construct a concrete wading pool and

cement walks around it.

The next time the park board spent funds, this time city bond funds, to improve Phelps

Field Park was in 1964, when the areas around the wading pool were refinished.

In 1969, at the beginning of an ambitious building program to update or replace park

buildings, a new recreation center was built at Phelps. Once again the original plans for

the recreation building at the park were scaled back, but this time for different reasons. In

1968 the park board had ended the policy of assessing property owners for park

improvements, but that created new problems. With improvements at all parks being paid

for by city bonds, the park board had to balance demands from around the city for those

funds. In this instance, the board approved more expensive plans for larger recreation

centers at Sibley and Nicollet (King) parks, east and west respectively from Phelps Field

in south Minneapolis, which required a cutback in the amount that could be spent at

Phelps.

Those reductions were made up a generation later when the park board added a gym to

the building at Phelps and renovated the park in 1993-1994. The funds for the project

came from many sources and led to a new operating agreement with the Boys and Girls

Club. The McKnight Foundation and Minneapolis Foundation were major contributors to

the project and surrounding neighborhoods contributed $750,000 in Neighborhood

Revitalization Program funds. A half-million dollars of city bonds also helped finance the

improvements. The Boys and Girls Club also contributed to the cost as a part of their

agreement with the park board to operate programs from the new facility.

In 2000, further improvements were made to the park and the center.

In 2010 two baseball fields were upgraded thanks to funding, expertise and volunteer

labor from the Minnesota Twins Community Fund and The Toro Company. In 2014 the

basketball and tennis courts were resurfaced.

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Phillips Pool and Gym Park

Location: 11th Avenue and East 24

Street

Size: 2.79 acres

Name: The facility was once part of Phillips Junior High School. The school, and

subsequently the neighborhood, was named for Wendell Phillips, an abolitionist orator.

Following the Civil War, Phillips turned his attention to fighting for Native American

rights and women’s suffrage.

Acquisition and Development

The park board acquired the pool and gym of Phillips Junior High School in 1987. The

facility had been slated to be demolished with the rest of the school in 1982, but instead a

deal was reached with the park board to take over the facility. The original school was

constructed in 1926 at 12

Avenue South and East 23

Street. The pool and gym had

been built as an addition to the school in 1973.

The ownership of the facility was transferred from the school board to the park board at

no cost, but $1.5 million was spent to renovate the facility making it the most expensive

recreation facility in the park system. It was also the only indoor swimming pool owned

by the park board. The renovation was groundbreaking in that for the first time, private,

non-profit foundations contributed most of the money for a park project. The McKnight,

Bush and Minneapolis foundations all contributed toward the renovation. Their

contributions were augmented by city and federal grants.

The operation of the center followed a model developed at Bethune Park with the Phyllis

Wheatley Center in 1968 where the building was leased to a social service agency. The

primary tenant at the Phillips Pool and Gym was the Jack Cornelius Boys and Girls Club.

In addition, the YMCA operated a daycare center in the building and Pillsbury United

Communities conducted programs as well. (Pillsbury United Communities was also an

original tenant in the recreation center built at Mathews Park in 1965. In the 1990s,

Pillsbury United Communities constructed the Brian Coyle Community Center adjacent

to Currie Park in the Cedar-Riverside neighborhood and transferred title of the property

to the park board, but retained operational control of the center.)

The last remaining tenant of the Phillips Pool and Gym, the Boys and Girls Club,

withdrew from the facility in 2008. The pool was also closed that year. At that time, the

park board took control of the building and began an extensive, three-year renovation.

When the building reopened in 2012 it contained a new gym, computer lab, teen club and

meeting rooms – as well as five new community tenants. It also received major upgrades

to heating and air conditioning systems, a new roof, new lighting, new finishes and was

brought up to code.

In 2015 the park board partnered with a number of public and private organizations to

raise enough money to renovate and expand the pool. The new pool is expected to open

in 2017.

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Pioneer Triangle

Location: Main Street NE and 5

Avenue NE

Size: 0.13 acre

Name: The triangle was named for the Pioneer statue, which was placed there in 1966.

Acquisition and Development

The land was purchased from the city in 1966 for $1 to serve as the new home of the

Pioneers statue, which had previously been located in Pioneers Square in front of the

main post office. The city bought the 2.5-acre Pioneers Square from the park board as a

part of neighborhood redevelopment of the Gateway and post office area at that time.

In 1930 the city council requested the park board to purchase a block of land at Marquette

Avenue and Second Street South to create a park in front of a proposed new central post

office. The federal government planned to build a new post office and asked the city to

provide an appropriate setting for the building. In the words of park board president

Alfred Pillsbury, “it proved this was beyond the powers of the City Council.” It became

evident, Pillsbury continued, that if the new post office would be built, “it devolved to the

park board to carry out this plan.”

Over the next two years, with the city council passing resolutions asking the park board

to speed up the acquisition, the park board considered how to pay for the property and the

cost of making it into a park, estimated at nearly half-million dollars. The sticking point

was how the costs would be assessed. The first proposal was that the costs would be

assessed on property owners, 1/3 on the city as a whole and 2/3 on property in the

“benefited district.” That didn’t seem just to park commissioners, who believed the

“benefitted district” would not enjoy all that much benefit from the new park. This was

during the Great Depression when the park board, not to mention the citizens of the city,

had very few resources, let alone the money to acquire and build a park it didn’t want.

The land was not finally acquired until the city council agreed to contribute $320,000 in

bonds if the remainder of the cost would be assessed against property owners in the area.

That broke the impasse and the site was finally acquired in 1932.

As work progressed at the new park, including the removal of the dilapidated buildings

on the block, the park board chose the name Pioneers Square for the park in May 1934.

Before then the project was known as Post Office Square or simply Block 20. Other

names proposed for the square included Lafayette Park and Roald Amundsen Square.

With the park nearing completion and money left over in the construction fund, the board

authorized a committee to propose a suitable monument to be added to the park.

Minneapolis sculptor John Daniels was commissioned to create a sculpture for the park at

a cost not to exceed $20,000. During 1935 Daniels submitted several drawings of the

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statue. The proposed design showed a Native American looking to the east, suggesting

the coming of white settlers, and three generations of settlers. But when the final design

was approved, the Native American was gone.

The statue and the park were opened with a grand ceremony on November 13, 1936, the

103

anniversary of the birth of Charles Loring, who had been known for more than 50

years as the “Father of Minneapolis Parks.”

Like The Gateway a block away, Pioneers Square did not solve the problems of an aging

neighborhood, even with a new post office, and both areas were condemned by the city

and taken for redevelopment in the 1960s.

The problem of what to do with the statue was solved by the city selling Pioneers

Triangle to the park board for a buck. The monument was moved to its new home in

1966.

The statue was moved across Marshall Avenue to more expansive surroundings on the B.

F. Nelson park site in 2011.

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Powderhorn Park

Location: 15

Avenue South and East 34

Street

Size: 65.88 acres, including 11.54 acres of water

Name: The name was taken from the name of the lake in the park. The lake was named

for its shape, which resembled an old powderhorn, a cow horn used to carry gunpowder.

The name first appeared in an 1839 survey of the Fort Snelling Military Reservation. At

that time the lake was larger than it is today. The lake level dropped considerably in the

early 1900s, and the northern arm of the lake was filled in 1925. The name was never

formally adopted, but was used from the first reference to the area in park board

proceedings in 1883.

Acquisition and Development

Powderhorn Lake and its environs were among the first places considered for a park in

Minneapolis. Only two months after the park board was created by the state legislature

and approved by Minneapolis voters in April 1883, residents in the vicinity of the lake

petitioned the park board to make it a park. But the park board at the time was starting

from scratch and focused instead on creating parks nearer the center of the city, at Lake

Harriet and along the Mississippi River. (The first parks acquired by the park board were

Loring Park, Farview Park, Logan Park and Riverside Park.)

Instead of a park at Powderhorn Lake, the board’s focus across south Minneapolis was on

a parkway proposed by landscape architect Horace Cleveland that would have extended

from the Mississippi River to Lake Calhoun along Lake Street. Park commissioners

quickly realized that the property along Lake Street was already too high-priced to

acquire the entire street as a parkway and in 1884 shifted their attention four blocks

further south to 34

Avenue.

The advantage of that street for a parkway is that it would have incorporated Powderhorn

Lake into a parkway that would have met up precisely with Summit Avenue on the St.

Paul side of the river. (St. Paul developed Summit Avenue, to designs by Horace

Cleveland, to meet up with Cleveland’s revised plans for a parkway on 34

Avenue.) The

parkway project across south Minneapolis was also abandoned in 1885 because the land

even on 34

Avenue was too expensive. Property owners from the river to Bloomington

Avenue had agreed to donate most of the land, but from Bloomington Avenue to Lake

Calhoun the board met with little success in urging landowners to donate a right of way

for a parkway.

During that time the park board continued to consider a park at Powderhorn Lake and in

1884 even accepted a donation of part of the land at the lake. But by the summer of 1885

the park board voted to abandon efforts to acquire Powderhorn Lake until property

owners submitted a “more reasonable proposition.”

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Two years later, in 1887, the park board did designate the lake shore as a park but had to

abandon the effort again in the face of what it considered high prices for the land. In the

1887 annual report park board president Charles Loring wrote with more than a hint of

frustration, “An attempt was made to secure Powderhorn Lake and a small tract of land

upon its shores, but some of the water proved so valuable in the opinion of a few of the

owners thereof, as to cause the project to be abandoned, temporarily at least.” Loring had

by that time personally secured the donation of most of the shores of Lake Harriet and

Lake of the Isles for the park board and was clearly disappointed by his lack of success in

replicating those efforts at Powderhorn.

But the park board did not give up. In May 1889 the park board designated 38 acres

around the lake as a park and began condemnation proceedings to have the land

appraised. By the end of the year the acquisition was still pending because so many land

owners had filed objections to the value that park board appraisers had placed on the

land. Loring noted in the 1889 annual report that the acquisition had failed twice before

and expressed his hope that this time it would succeed.

It did. In 1890 the acquisition of 38½ acres was completed at a cost of nearly $40,000.

The total cost of the land was assessed on property in the area. The park board vacated

the streets through the park and asked Horace Cleveland to prepare a plan for the layout

of the park.

Almost as soon as the first land was acquired, residents in the area petitioned the park

board to add 25 acres to the park on the west and south. Late in 1890, the park board

solicited offers from the owners of the land to expand the park. Loring noted wryly that

some of the landowners who had objected to being assessed for the original park were

among the petitioners for the expansion of the park. Loring wrote that with the expansion

the south-central portion of the city would have “a magnificent park.”

Powderhorn Park was expanded in 1891 by nearly 20 acres, with only several individual

lots still to be acquired to complete the park. Powderhorn Park was one of three large

additions to the park system from 1889 to 1892 and all were created around small bodies

of water. Glenwood (Wirth) Park around Birch Pond was acquired in 1889 and Columbia

Park around Sandy Lake was acquired in 1892. (Sandy Lake ceased to exist in 1915 when

the city installed storm sewers in northeast Minneapolis that drained storm water from the

region into the Mississippi River.) A smaller acquisition, the ten acres that included

Spring Lake, now a part of The Parade, was also completed in 1889.

With these acquisitions the park board continued its unstated policy of gaining control of

the lakes and ponds within the city. In the first ten years of its existence the park board

had acquired more than half the bodies of water in the city: Loring Pond, Lake Harriet,

Lake of the Isles, part of Lake Calhoun, Powderhorn Lake, Sandy Lake, Birch Pond and

Spring Lake. Still remaining to be acquired were the remainder of Lake Calhoun,

Keegan’s (Wirth) Lake, Cedar Lake, and the two swampy bodies of water southeast of

the city, Lake Amelia (Nokomis) and Rice (Hiawatha) Lake. Most of those lakes were

acquired in the first decade of the 20

Century. They may have been acquired sooner if

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not for the Panic of 1893, which led to a local and national economic depression. From

1893 to 1902 the park board acquired almost no land, and struggled to maintain the land

it already owned.

Shortly after the first acquisition at Powderhorn Lake, the park board established a

skating rink on the lake in 1891, one of only five rinks maintained by the board. It was

the beginning of one of the park board’s most successful recreational facilities. In 1892

Horace Cleveland and his son Ralph, who had left his job as the manager of Lakewood

Cemetery to assist his aging father, submitted their plan for Powderhorn Park, which was

included in the park board’s 1892 annual report. The most striking feature of their plan is

that the lake at that time extended north to 32

Street.

The northern arm of the lake no longer exists; nearly one block of the lake was filled in

the mid-1920s after years of low water levels in the lake. Cleveland’s plan for the park

included the creation of an island near the southern shore and a bridge over the narrow

neck of the lake at 33

Street. The plan called for dredging the lake to improve the

shoreline as had already been done at Loring Pond and the northern shore of Lake of the

Isles. Upon completion of the first round of dredging at Lake of the Isles in 1894, the

dredge was moved to Powderhorn Lake to begin work there.

In 1895 dredging of the lake deepened the water and reduced its size by nearly eight

acres, including the creation of an island of more than half an acre. However with the

economic depression and an extreme shortage of funds for the park board, the rusting

dredge still sat in the lake in 1903, when the park board finally resumed its plans to

improve the lake.

In the meantime, as the local economy began to improve, the park board purchased a

half-block in the northwest corner of the park in 1899 at a cost of $1,800 according to the

1899 annual report. The reason for the addition to the park is particularly interesting in

light of concerns with water quality in city lakes that began nearly 100 years later; the

park board reported that it had acquired the additional land because it “rendered it

possible to control the wash on streets into the lake.” It is one of the first mentions in park

board documents of concern over storm water runoff into lakes.

The western section of the park was initially graded and walks were laid out in 1899.

More than 100 trees and 1600 shrubs were also planted in the park that year. The planting

plan was created by noted landscape architect Warren Manning (Horace Cleveland had

retired). Manning recommended at the time that the park board construct a shelter for

skaters at the lake. The first shelter was built in 1900 and enlarged in 1902.

With economic recovery, the park board dusted off Horace Cleveland’s 11-year-old plan

for the park in 1903 and approved its implementation. However the full development of

the park awaited the arrival of a new superintendent of parks, Theodore Wirth, in 1906.

After nearly a year on the job, Wirth recommended in the 1906 annual report that the

shores of the lake be widened to create a walkway and that some of the open spaces be

converted into a playground. Following the establishment of the park board’s first

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playgrounds at Logan and Riverside parks early in 1906, Wirth recommended the

creation of playgrounds at five more parks. Powderhorn Park was on his list.

The first playground with gymnastic apparatus was established at Powderhorn Park in

1907 along 10

Street between 32

and 33

. A toilet building was installed as well. The

first supervisor of recreation in the park system, Clifford Booth, reported that the best-

organized classes for instruction on the gymnastic apparatus installed in the parks that

year were at Farview Park in the afternoons and Powderhorn Park in the evenings.

In the 1907 annual report Wirth provided a new detailed plan for the development of

Powderhorn Park, which included a feature Cleveland had recommended years before, a

bridge over the narrow neck of the lake at about 33

Street. Wirth’s plan also included a

much wider lake north of the bridge.

Wirth recommended building a recreation building at the southeast corner of the lake,

complete with a boat landing in front of it. The board approved the construction of the

shelter in 1907 and it was completed in 1908 to designs by architect L. A. Lamoreaux at a

cost of about $13,000. (Oddly the building did not include toilets, as it was apparently

too far from the nearest city sewer line. A toilet addition to the recreation building was

built in 1914.) Basketball hoops were also installed for the first time at Powderhorn that

summer and Clifford Booth reported that Powderhorn had the highest attendance of any

park playground.

Heavy use of the playground on 10

Avenue generated complaints from neighbors about

the noise, however, prompting Wirth to recommend that the playground be moved to the

southeast corner of the park next to the new shelter. The playground was finally moved to

the new location in 1911 and Booth called it a “model neighborhood playground.” Booth

also noted that two coasting courses for sledding had been established in the park. The

first three tennis courts in the park were also built that year near 10

Avenue and 34

Street.

From 1907 to 1914, the park was expanded by about 6.5 acres through several

transactions to its present boundaries on 35

Street. Land was also purchased along 10

Avenue at 32

Street to complete that corner of the park.

Wirth noted in his 1911 report that the lake level had dropped two feet for unknown

reasons. Perhaps it was the drop in the lake level that prompted Wirth to propose that the

northern arm of the lake be filled. In the 1914 annual report Wirth wrote that he was “still

of the opinion” that the lake should be reduced in size. He repeated the call to fill the lake

in 1915, suggesting that the created land would be suitable for an amphitheater or athletic

field with a grandstand. He included in that report a new design for the park. Wirth

repeated his call for a reshaping of the lake over the next few years without success,

although he wrote that residents of the area had requested that his plan be implemented

and had agreed to pay the cost through assessments on their property. To buttress his

argument, Wirth wrote in 1921 that the level of the lake had dropped six feet in fifteen

years.

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Wirth finally got the go-ahead from the park board to reduce the size of the lake late in

1922, but his plan for a new athletic field and grandstand at the park was not approved.

Dredging of the lake to generate the fill for the northern arm was begun in 1924 and

completed in 1925. During the reshaping of the park eleven new tennis courts were added

as well.

The smaller lake became home to an important attraction in winter, a speed skating track

that hosted national skating championships and Olympic speed-skating trials in the

1930s. Attendance at the 1934 national speed skating championship was estimated

conservatively at 50,000 for the two-day competition. Attendance at the Olympic trials

the following year was reportedly hurt by sub-zero weather. The Olympic trials were held

again at the track in 1947 and four of the nine skaters to win spots on the U.S. Olympic

team were from Powderhorn Park. One of those four, Ken Bartholomew, won a silver

medal at the 1948 Winter Olympics in St Moritz. The other Minneapolis skaters on the

U.S. Olympic team were Arthur Seaman, Robert Fitzgerald and John Werket.

The speed skating track was moved to Lake Harriet in the early 1960s and later shifted to

Lake Nokomis, but the popularity of speed skating waned in part due to a change in speed

skating competition from pack skating to racing against the clock, the European style, on

a larger track. The speed skating track was reopened at Powderhorn in 1990, but was

shifted to Armatage Park in 1999 as an experiment. It has since been discontinued.

Few changes were made to Powderhorn Park or any other park during the Great

Depression and World War II. Some work was done in the park, including construction

of a shore protection wall around part of the lake, in 1940 under a federal work relief

program.

The first significant changes to the park waited until 1963 when the recreation building

was renovated and became the first recreation center to have air-conditioning. That year

the hockey rink was moved from the lake, but general skating was still done on the lake.

The 1963 annual report of the park board noted that the lake had dropped another 3.5 feet

to its lowest level in recorded history. City water was pumped into the lake to raise it ten

feet. The low water level was thought to be temporary, perhaps caused by the digging of

the trench for I-35W to the west of the park.

In 1966 the park board resurrected an idea from the distant past when it staged a new

park pageant, “Song of Hiawatha,” featuring children from parks across the city.

Children’s pageants had been popular late-summer entertainments at Lyndale Park in the

1920s and 1930s.

A new totlot for smaller children was installed in the park at 14

Avenue and 35

Street

in 1968. The totlot was a prototype for nine others installed around the city later that year.

The old twice-renovated shelter beside the lake was replaced with a modern recreation

center with a gym in 1971-72. That facility was remodeled in 1996-97. At that time a

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pump system was installed in another attempt to control the level of water in the lake. A

new fishing dock was also installed in the lake. Another innovation at Powderhorn Park

was introduced in 1995 when “Powderhorn Prairie” was created by seeding the east and

north hillsides of the park with native grasses.

Powderhorn Park was one of the first five parks to have a computer lab installed in 2001.

As part of the effort to improve water quality in city lakes Powderhorn Lake was treated

with alum in 2003, which resulted in the best trophic state index recorded at the lake

since water quality monitoring began at the lake in 1992.

The outdoor basketball court was replaced in 2007, the same year that the park hosted

Arbor Day festivities and the planting of 200 trees.

The park board began hosting the annual National Get Outdoors Day at the park in 2011.

The day is designed to give people a chance to try new outdoor activities like canoeing,

standup paddle boarding, geocaching, fishing, birding, rock climbing, mountain biking

and archery.

Construction of a new concrete path and lighting around Powderhorn Lake, and sidewalk

along Powderhorn Terrace, was substantially completed in 2013 following rewiring of

lights on the athletic fields north of Powderhorn Lake.

Trivia

In 1892 Powderhorn Park provided a test case for the park board’s authority to vacate city

streets through parks. The Minnesota Supreme Court ruled that the park board did have

control over city streets running through parks, but not streets adjacent to parks. The

ruling confirmed that the park board had sole authority to close streets through land it

owned.

In 1911 the park board placed a limit on the number of minnows that anyone could take

from Powderhorn Lake: 100 per day for personal use, but they could not be sold.

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Reserve Block 40

Location: Drew Avenue South and West 24

Street

Size: 1.67 acres

Name: The park has always been referred to by its designation on plat maps in a

neighborhood known as McNair Park. The park has never been officially named.

Acquisition and Development

The triangular block of land west of Cedar Lake was part of the land designated for

acquisition on April 6, 1908 that included parts of the west shore of Cedar Lake and

expanded Glenwood (Wirth) Park to include Brownie Lake. The land was almost

immediately forgotten as it did not feature in park board plans for the development of

either Cedar Lake or Brownie Lake. In a 1909 map showing the proposed development of

Cedar Lake Parkway, the land was not indicated as park property. In later park

inventories, the acquisition date was incorrectly listed as 1909.

One the few suggestions for the development of the park is shown on a 1921 map

prepared by park superintendent Theodore Wirth of possible developments in the vicinity

of Cedar Lake. On that plan Wirth recommended two tennis courts for the park. Other

than that reference, the park is not mentioned in park documents until 1953.

The park board’s 1953 annual report noted that the low land had been in the possession of

the park board for many years. The park is mentioned in the 1953 report because in that

year, with the development of the Basswood Addition to the south of the park, the area’s

new residents had petitioned to have the block improved as a park.

In response to those petitions, filling and rough grading of the park were done in 1953

and curbs were installed on two sides of the park. The western edge of the park was

actually in St. Louis Park, and St Louis Park had not yet brought the street there up to

grade, so curbing that side of the park was delayed.

Fill for the park was obtained from the Prudential Building site to the west of Brownie

Lake. The land for the Prudential Building, which had once been a part of Wirth Park,

had been sold to Prudential in 1952. A condition of the sale of that land was that the park

board would construct an access road to the property between Brownie Lake and

Highway 12. The construction of that road provided the opportunity and the material to

fill the low land of Reserve Block 40. The cost of improvements was assessed to property

in the neighborhood. The first playground equipment for the small park was authorized

by the board in 1957 and installed in 1958.

The playground equipment in the park was replaced in 2004.

Volunteers working with park board arborists planted 18 new trees in the park in 2011.

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Ridgway Parkway

Location: The parkway connects St. Anthony Parkway and Stinson Parkway east of

Francis Gross Golf Course.

Size: 23.99 acres

Name: The parkway was named for James Arthur Ridgway in 1950. When it was

constructed in 1934, the parkway was known as the St. Anthony Boulevard Diversion

due to the unusual circumstances of its construction.

Ridgway was a park commissioner 1889-1897 and president of the board in 1894. He

resigned his seat as a park commissioner in 1897 to assume the full-time position of

secretary to the board, a job he held until his death in 1924.

Prior to working full time for the park board, Ridgway had been a real estate investor. His

intimate knowledge of real estate values in the city proved valuable to the board as a

commissioner and as its secretary. In the 1893 annual report park board president Charles

Loring credited Ridgway with doing much of the work to acquire Minnehaha Creek as a

park, most of it by donation. Later park superintendent Theodore Wirth cited Ridgway’s

critical role in acquiring the entire west bank of the Mississippi River from Franklin

Avenue to Minnehaha Park, including the islands in the river, at a cost of only $42,000.

The board’s 1924 annual report contains a two-page memorial to Ridgway. His photo and

a poem dedicated to him are at the front of that report.

In Loring’s tribute to Ridgway in 1893, he suggested that a portion of Minnehaha

Parkway be named for Ridgway. In fact, River Road West, now West River Parkway,

was renamed Ridgway Road for 27 days in 1939, until residents along the road

complained loudly. Calling it euphonious and unique, residents said they greatly

preferred River Road West. The park board rescinded the change in name, commenting

that it did not appropriately honor Ridgway if residents on the parkway were opposed to

the name. Ridgway’s name was finally given to the parkway in northeast Minneapolis 57

years after Loring first suggested that he deserved such an honor.

Acquisition and Development

The section of St. Anthony Parkway later named for Ridgway was initially built in 1933-

1935. It was known at the time of its construction as the St. Anthony Boulevard

Diversion because it was built to replace a section of St. Anthony Boulevard south from

Armour (Gross) Golf Course to East Hennepin Avenue that was sold less than ten years

after it was constructed. The land for Ridgway Parkway was swapped for the original

southern section of St. Anthony Boulevard and the company that swapped land with the

park board—the park board gained 19 acres of land in the swap—also paid for the

construction of the “diversion.” (See St. Anthony Parkway for more.)

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Few changes to the parkway have been made over the years. In 1960 and 1963 small

parcels along the parkway were sold to Hillside Cemetery and Honeywell Inc., which

own property north of the parkway. In 1967, however, the area of the park was reduced

dramatically when the Minnesota Department of Transportation took 16.7 acres of the

land south of the parkway for the construction of I-35W.

The parkway was repaved in 1978 at the end of a five year period during which most

Grand Rounds parkways were reconstructed or paved.

In 1997 much of the land adjoining the parkway was converted to prairie grasses and

native plants.

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Riverside Park

Location: Sixth Street and 26

Avenue South

Size: 27.68 acres

Name: The park was named in 1885 for its location near the Mississippi River. Until then

the park was referred to as Sixth Ward Park

Acquisition and Development

Land for Riverside Park was among the first designated for a park by the park board

shortly after its creation in April 1883. Wrangling over the exact shape and size of the

park, and objections from property owners, pushed back the acquisition to 1884 when

nearly 20 acres were acquired for a little less than $60,000. From the time the park was

acquired, it was intended to be the northern anchor for a parkway that would extend

downriver eventually to Minnehaha Creek and Fort Snelling.

A major expansion of the park occurred in 1911 when another 22.5 acres were added to

the southern end of the park at a cost of about $50,000. The board decided to acquire the

additional land adjacent to Riverside Park in part to extend its riverside holdings but also

to forestall the operation of a dance hall adjacent to the park. When the park board

learned of plans to build a dance hall next to the park, it acted to purchase and condemn

the land for a larger park.

The original plan for Riverside Park was created by landscape Horace Cleveland, who

had included the park in his 1883 “suggestions” for a system of parks and parkways for

the city. Cleveland loved the river banks and even suggested that Riverside Park might be

connected by a bridge to the east river flats, which he also thought should be acquired as

a park. Cleveland commented on his original plan for the park that “the paths are few—

the intention being that visitors should ramble at will in the woods and on the lawns.”

Cleveland’s plans were implemented in the park in 1885.

While supervising improvement of the park that year, park board president Charles

Loring took offense at some criticism of the work by other commissioners and promptly

resigned from the park board. Other commissioners and newspapers around Minnesota

urged Loring to reconsider, which he did. He returned to the park board after an absence

of a couple months.

In 1890 a road was built from the upper portion of the park to a concourse about half way

down the bluff and stairs were built from this concourse to the wooded tract along the

river.

Riverside Park was viewed by the park board as one of the best places in the park system

for active recreation. A toboggan slide was built on the steep slopes in the winter of 1887.

In 1904, the park board approved the first installation of children’s play equipment in any

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park—swings, teeter-totters and sandboxes—at Loring and Riverside parks for the spring

of 1905. When the next year the park board decided to install more extensive playground

and gymnastic apparatus in parks, it chose Riverside Park and Logan Park. The first toilet

at Riverside Park was built in 1905. By 1908, when the first basketball goals were put in

city parks, including a set at Riverside Park, Riverside had the largest playground

attendance in the city.

The popularity of Riverside Park led park superintendent Theodore Wirth to propose an

ambitious new plan for the park in 1913. The plan included an outdoor amphitheater and

a combined football and baseball field. In the absence of further improvements at

Riverside, Wirth submitted new plans for the park in 1916, which would have divided the

park into four terraces and provided a grandstand for the athletic fields that overlooked

the river, and a fieldhouse. The last traces of the old quarry that had occupied the site

when it was acquired were removed in 1919, when the site was graded. Wirth advised

that the grading would allow the installation of tennis courts on the north end of the park

in 1920.

Wirth tried again in 1925 to persuade the board to improve the park further with plans for

an outdoor concert theater overlooking the river. Wirth later surmised that his plans were

never carried out because after the construction of the Ford Dam in 1917, the river

became a reservoir that was in fact nearly a cesspool and gave off an unbearable odor.

Much of the city’s raw sewage flowed into the river until the 1930s.

Despite many grand plans for the park, the board finally gave Riverside a warming house

in 1927 for its skating rink. In 1932 it added two tennis courts, a wading pool and new

toilets.

During the 1930s, considerable work was done by the WPA around Riverside Park,

including construction of the stone steps leading from the upper level of the park to the

lower level. In 1933 a stone bathhouse was also built.

Riverside Park reached its current size in 1962, when less than two acres were taken for

the construction of I-94, for which the highway department paid $275,000, and the park

was regraded and rearranged to accommodate the freeway.

Extensive improvements at Riverside Park were begun in 2000, when the upper level of

the park was refurbished with new playground equipment, seating and picnic tables. The

basketball court was replaced with the help of a $10,000 grant from the Minnesota

Timberwolves. The soccer field was also upgraded, but soccer goals were not erected at

the time, in part to keep the space open for multiple uses.

Riverside Park became one of the first parks in the city with space dedicated to dogs,

when 1.28 acres of the park were fenced in and designated as an “off-leash recreation

area” in 2001.

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Rollins Triangle

Location: Minnehaha Avenue and 33

Street

Size: 0.01 acres

Name: The triangle was named for the Rollins Addition and was adopted November 18,

1931.

Acquisition and Development

The small triangle was taken over by the park board in 1929 at the request of the city

council. It has a total area of 27 square feet, making it likely the smallest park in the

Minneapolis park system. When Minnehaha Avenue was redesigned in 2015-16,

many angled streets were reworked to enter Minnehaha at right angles. Through no

street will cut through Rollins Triangle, an associated sidewalk will cover the entire

parcel. In 2015 the Park Board approved a permanent easement to Hennepin County

to use Rollins as part of the sidewalk network.

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Russell Triangle

Location: Russell Avenue North and McNair Avenue

Size: 0.03 acres

Name: The triangle is named for the street on which it is located. The street was named

for Roswell P. Russell, a prominent pioneer who resided on this street and opened the

first store in St. Anthony. The park was officially named on November 18, 1914.

The choice of name is interesting because this acquisition provided the park board an

opportunity to name a park property after the man who gave his name to the other cross

street, McNair Avenue. That it did not choose “McNair” is a bit surprising given that

William McNair was a prominent attorney in the days the park board was created and

was a close friend of Charles Loring and a law partner and brother-in-law of Eugene

Wilson, both of whom were commissioners on the first park board. Loring once wrote

that McNair had offered to donate most of the shore of Cedar Lake for park purposes, but

the donation was rejected because the land was so far from the city. McNair was also one

of the first to propose that the park board establish a north-south parkway along the city’s

western border and at one time offered to donate much of the land for that parkway,

which years later was acquired and became Victory Memorial Drive. It is reasonable to

speculate that if McNair had not died in 1885, when the park board was focusing its

attention and energies closer to town and on lakes Harriet, Calhoun and Isles, the park

board would have eventually arranged for McNair’s donation of those valuable

properties.

Acquisition and Development

The small triangle is first mentioned in park board proceedings on May 6, 1914 when the

park board authorized the board’s secretary to attend a tax sale and purchase the lot or

“have (it) purchased by another in the interest of the board.” Two weeks later, on May

20, 1914, William S. Nott and wife presented a quit clam deed for the property to the

board and the board voted to accept it. There is no indication in park board records if the

Notts were the original owners of the land or if they purchased the land “in the interest of

the board.”

The process of acquisition is of note because it is the first instance of the park board

acquiring land for a new park from a sale of land that had been taken by the state for

failure to pay taxes. In 1905 the board had acquired a few lots to expand Glenwood

(Wirth) Park at a tax sale and in 1910 the board had instructed the secretary to attend a

tax sale to protect the board’s interest and acquire land if desirable. After the Great

Depression and World War II, the board would acquire several important properties at

little or no cost from the state’s tax-forfeiture list, including Bossen Field, Hi-View Park,

and parts of Kenny, McRae, Northeast, Peavey and North Mississippi parks.

Initial improvements to Russell Triangle were completed in 1916.

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Rustic Lodge Triangle

Location: Rustic Lodge and Wentworth Avenue

Size: 0.09 acres

Name: The name comes from the curving Rustic Lodge Avenue in the Washburn Park

neighborhood. The name has never been formally adopted by the park board.

Acquisition and Development

Residents of the neighborhood asked the park board to accept the triangle as a park on

April 1, 1912, agreeing that the neighborhood association would maintain the property.

Two weeks later the Committee on Designation and Acquisition of Grounds reported that

the property had been designated as a park in the plat of Washburn Park on December 15,

1886 and recommended that it be accepted as a public park, which the park board

approved. An interesting coincidence: the request for the park board to accept the

property as a park was signed by, among others, James Leck, whose construction

company was at that time building the Logan Park fieldhouse.

In 1914 the small triangle was graded and planted creating, according to the 1914 annual

report, “a harmonious part of that fine residential district.”

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Sculpture Garden

Location: Between I-94 and Groveland Avenue from Vineland Place to Superior

Avenue.

Size: 11 acres, included in 48.09 acres of The Parade

Name: The name is descriptive.

Acquisition and Development

The garden is on land that was acquired as part of The Parade. The first land acquired for

that park in 1893 surrounded Spring Lake on the west end of the park. Most of the land

for The Parade was acquired in 1904. About half of it was purchased and the remainder

donated by Thomas Lowry and others. Lowry also donated additional land to the park

board in 1906 including the portion that is now the entrance to the Sculpture Garden.

Lowry also contributed about $20,000 for the improvement of the park, which sat below

his mansion on Lowry Hill. The final addition to the park came in 1935 when the state

donated the land that had once been occupied by the National Guard Armory.

Since 1913 the land near the intersection of Vineland Place and Lyndale Avenue has been

used for a public garden by the park board. As it was adjacent to the Armory, it was

informally named the Armory Garden. The park board continued planting the garden

every year, even after the demolition of the Armory in 1934, but the name was changed

to Kenwood Garden.

The Walker Art Center was built across the street from The Parade in 1927 and in 1963

the Guthrie Theater was built adjacent to the museum. Kenwood Garden became a

meeting place for theater-goers who parked their cars in the parking lot at Parade Stadium

(built in 1951). The rest of The Parade was devoted to athletic fields and tennis courts.

The first discussion of using part of The Parade as a cultural space occurred in 1966 when

the Walker and the Guthrie asked the park board to participate in a study of how the

space could be used to augment the cultural offerings of those two institutions. Although

that study led to no specific actions, discussions continued periodically through the 1960s

and 1970s, even after the park board discontinued planting the Kenwood Garden in 1967.

Construction of the I-94 freeway in the mid-1960s had severed the connection between

The Parade and Loring Park to the east.

The park board collaborated with the Walker in the 1970s on temporary exhibits of

sculpture on the site of the old garden. In the mid-1970s the park board proposed locating

a fountain donated by park commissioner Ben Berger on the site, but the Walker opposed

the idea because it was not an original work of art. The fountain was a copy of one

Berger had seen in Melbourne, Australia. The “dandelion” fountain was installed instead

in Loring Park in 1975.

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The park board had also approved the construction of a foot bridge over the freeway from

Loring Park to The Parade in the early 1970s, but no action was taken to move that

project forward. This was at a time of the greatest building boom ever in Minneapolis

parks when modern recreation centers were built in most neighborhood parks and several

additional park sites were acquired in the inner city both north and south of downtown. A

footbridge or the development of a cultural space was not a top priority of the park board

at the time.

By the time David Fisher became park superintendent in 1981, however, the landscape

had changed. Fisher had become the third superintendent in three years and the recreation

building boom was over. With the economy in bad shape and a tax-payer revolt gaining

steam, the park board faced limited resources to pursue any projects at all. The primary

focus of the park board at the time was on developing the central riverfront, which would

be accomplished primarily with funds from the state. The park board was also coming to

terms with a very critical report issued in 1977 of what was considered its overwhelming

emphasis on sports in its recreation program.

Against this backdrop, Fisher received a call on his second day on the job as park

superintendent from a man he had never met, Martin Friedman, who was the director of

the Walker Art Center. Friedman proposed a lunch meeting to discuss possible

collaboration between the park board and the Walker. What Friedman had in mind was

the open grass field across from the museum.

Friedman had the solution for the park board’s lack of funds to develop the property at a

time that Fisher had characterized the park board’s financial position as “grim.” The

Walker had a prodigious ability to raise funds privately from arts patrons and

foundations. So the idea of a sculpture garden was born.

The project came to life when Friedman secured a grant of $2.3 million from the

McKnight Foundation to develop the project. Other contributors were soon lined up not

only to develop the land, but to acquire sculpture to fill it. Frederick Weisman contributed

a million dollars for the centerpiece of the garden, which has become a Minneapolis icon,

Spoonbridge and Cherry, created by the husband-and-wife team of Claes Oldenburg and

Coosje van Bruggen. Sage and John Cowles contributed another million dollars for the

construction of a glass conservatory on the western edge of the garden (which also served

as a cold-weather walkway from the Parade Stadium parking lot to the Guthrie and the

Walker) and is the home of the soaring Standing Glass Fish by Frank Gehry. Kenneth

and Judy Dayton donated a million dollars for the purchase of sculptures. The Regis

Corporation, Dayton Hudson Foundation, Bush Foundation and Kresge Foundation each

contributed more than a quarter-million dollars for additional development. In addition

the family of Irene Hixon Whitney contributed $800,000 for the design and construction

of a pedestrian bridge, designed by Siah Armajani, which finally linked Loring Park to

the new sculpture garden.

The Sculpture Garden, designed by architect Edward Larrabee Barnes—who had also

designed the new Walker Art Center in 1971—opened in 1988 to terrific reviews and

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popular approval. Such was the success of the garden that it was expanded to eleven acres

in the early 1990s with the removal of another athletic field. The new addition to the

north of the original garden, which made the Sculpture Garden the largest of its kind in

the country, was funded primarily by a gift in honor of Alene Grossman.

The Sculpture Garden and Cowles Conservatory closed in 2015 and all but four of its

sculptures were relocated or put in storage in anticipation of a major reconstruction project

beginning in 2016. The project will fix failing infrastructure – irrigation, drainage and

stormwater systems, walkways, retaining walls – and increase accessibility and energy

efficiency. The garden is expected to reopen in summer 2017.

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Seven Oaks Oval

Location: 47

Avenue South and East 34

Street

Size: 2.25 acres

Name: The oval was named for the neighborhood as it appeared on plat maps: Seven

Oaks River Lots. The name was designated at the same time the board officially accepted

the property as a park on June 7, 1922.

Acquisition and Development

The property was dedicated as a park in the plat of Seven Oaks River Lots, July 10, 1913.

The board first considered accepting the property February 15, 1922 and after an

inspection tour of the property in May, designated the land as a park June 7, 1922.

The acquisition is not mentioned in the 1922 annual report, overshadowed as it was by

acquisitions of neighborhood parks such as Sibley, Brackett and Pershing, the expansions

of Victory Memorial and St. Anthony parkways and Glenwood Park, and the possible

purchases of Lake Hiawatha, and Minnehaha Creek both east of Lake Hiawatha and west

of Humboldt Avenue.

Park superintendent Theodore Wirth proposed a plan in 1928 for the topographical

oddity—he called it a “deep oval basin” with “fine trees.” The plan called for filling the

lowest parts of the basin to a suitable grade and constructing walks through it. Wirth also

proposed that two sites in the park be prepared as campfire places, his map says “council

sites,” for the Boy Scouts and Camp Fire Girls. That part of the plan likely appealed to

park commissioner Maude Armatage who was a leader of the Camp Fire Girls and served

on the national organization’s board of directors, but the plan was not implemented.

In Wirth’s comprehensive inventory of parks in his 1932 report, Seven Oaks Oval is

lumped with 49 “Other Small Triangles”—even though it is not a triangle and is more

than 30 times larger than most of the other properties thrown into that category. Seven

Oaks was likely included in that category because, like all but two others, it had cost

nothing to acquire, and no money had been spent on its improvement.

Of the 58 triangles, circles, ovals and other tiny parks listed in that 1932 inventory, only

36 survive. Most of the lost park properties were taken by the city or state for traffic

purposes.

Trivia

Seven Oaks Oval is one of only two surviving park properties that is named for a shape

that doesn’t have angles. The other is Caleb Dorr Circle near East River Parkway. At one

time the park board owned several properties called “circles” or “ovals,” but all the others

disappeared, most of them paved over for streets and highways.

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Sheridan Memorial Park

Location: The east bank of the Mississippi River at Water Street north of the Broadway

Bridge.

Size: 5.8 acres

Name: The park is named for the Sheridan neighborhood in which it is located and also

reflects the goal of creating a veterans memorial on the site. The property was referred to

as Water Street Park, after the street on which it is located, until it was renamed in 2007.

The Sheridan neighborhood got its name from the Sheridan School at Broadway and

University. The first school on the site, built in 1896, was named for Phillip H. Sheridan,

a General in the Union Army during the Civil War and later the Commanding General of

the U. S. Army.

Acquisition and Development

Sheridan Memorial Park is the second Minneapolis park named Sheridan. The first was at

University Avenue Northeast and 12

Avenue Northeast adjacent to Sheridan School, a

half-mile east of the present park.

The park board purchased the 1.25 acres of land for the original Sheridan Field in 1912

for about $7,000. It was a half-block of land across 12

Avenue Northeast from Sheridan

School. At the same time the school board purchased additional land on the block and the

park board requested that the city council vacate 12

Avenue between the school and

new park/playground.

While the new playground was provided with a backstop for a baseball field and a

warming house for ice-skating, few other improvements were made to the park. In the

early 1920s park superintendent Theodore Wirth urged the park board to either expand

the playground or abandon it. He believed the site was too small. It was “inadequate,” he

wrote, to provide for the “large attendance (it) constantly attracts.” In the 1924 annual

report Wirth presented a plan for the enlargement and development of the park, but that

was the last mention of the possibility of expanding the playground.

A new, much larger Sheridan School was built on the site in 1932, and the following year

the park board granted the school board permission to use the park as a playground for

the school, provided that all maintenance and improvements would be the responsibility

of the school board.

But it wasn’t until 1953 that the park board officially abandoned the site. In a land swap

with the school board, the park board gave up the under-sized Sheridan Park, which was

used solely as a school playground, for the site of the former Trudeau School at 9

Avenue Southeast and 4

Street Southeast. The park at the Trudeau site was named

Elwell Field. It was the second park with that name, the other had been sold to a

manufacturing company in 1952 and replaced by Holmes Park. The second Elwell Field

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was eventually condemned by the state highway department for the construction of the I-

35E freeway. The park board was paid $125,000 for the condemned land.