“The skyways are absolutely horrible.”
Gil Peñalosa, urban planner and champion of Ciclovía/Open Streets (MPR, 2015)
Downtown Minneapolis has a hidden world tucked away on its second story. Ten miles of bridges and connected interior spaces are carved out from the inside of skyscrapers, and they are filled with people, food, commerce, idiosyncrasies and beauty.
Conceived in the post-war hustle of the late 1950s, the Minneapolis skyway system has evolved from a single bridge crossing Marquette Avenue to over 100 bridges, according to an article last spring in the Minnesota Star Tribune, connecting most of the central core of downtown. No single architect or scheme was behind the development, and yet it has organically grown to house what is arguably one of the most vibrant commercial districts in the city.
The skyways are consistently unpopular with urbanists and city thinkers. Eric Dayton, of the successful retail family behind the homegrown Target Corporation, wrote an opinion piece for the StarTribune in 2017 making the bold assertion that the network was so detrimental to the health of the city that it should be torn down. Gil Peñalosa, a champion of Bogota’s Ciclovia, which inspired Minneapolis’s Open Streets movement, called them “absolutely horrible.” Even our own Mpls Downtown Council calls them “loveable, but boring.”
It’s easy to accuse the skyway system of depriving the city’s streets of commerce and energy. But the reality of our shifting centers of activity is so much more complex, influenced by economic growth, favored architectural styles, Minneapolis’ penchant for tearing down old buildings, internet retail, remote work and a short-lived infatuation with downtown malls. The streets in Minneapolis are not unique in their diminished levels of sidewalk life, and aren’t even among the nation’s worst. (Consider, for example, the similarly sized Kansas City, Missouri and Orlando, Florida.) As cities evolve to meet new demands and realities, why should our understanding of what city life looks like or where it happens remain stagnant?
Meanwhile, stroll through the skyways on a midweek lunch hour in any of our four distinct seasons and you’ll see more people going about their business here than probably anywhere else in Minnesota. People are walking and talking, rushing past one another, pausing to check out lunch options, coming up and down escalators. Lines extend out from the more popular lunch spots, people eat at tables that approximate outdoor dining, and extensive windows bring a bit of the outdoors in.
It’s a year-round bustling reality that our cold climate would struggle to support in the actual outdoors. Our organically evolved, uniquely Minneapolitan patchwork of a skyway system offers an extensive infrastructure for pedestrian activity. As empty office spaces continue being repurposed for residential purposes, the skyway system can become ever more rich with potential as increasing numbers of people start living downtown. The skyways are a boon for what could be, with insight and proactive development, a highly-connected, pedestrian-dominated, 15-minute city.
“Skyways are the iconic transportation system of Minneapolis. . . . We need to embrace skyways as such, and not listen to others who want Minneapolis to fit into the conventions of relatively weather-less European cities.”
Dr. David Levinson, Department of Civil Engineering, University of Minnesota (Streets.mn, 2012)
A Second Look at the Skyway
Here are eight aspects of the Minneapolis skyway system that I think make it a pretty magical place.
1. The vision
When Leslie Park was pitching his scheme of an enclosed second-story walkway to downtown business owners and elected officials in the late 1950s, he wasn’t selling a solution to Minnesota’s cruel winters. His was a vision of an elevated urban experience, in both a literal and figurative sense. One to rival that burgeoning suburban utopia in Edina: Southdale, the world’s first enclosed shopping mall, which opened in 1952 with a novel, completely self-contained shopping experience. While downtown could never rival Southdale’s abundant free parking, Park’s vision contained the same elements of convenience, modernity and, yes, climate control.
The second-story walkway that Park eventually built, and the dozens that followed, offered a reimagined downtown experience — a sleek, streamlined, futuristic way to navigate the urban core. No waiting for stop lights, no puddle splashes, no noise, no stink. Commerce connected directly to commerce.
2. Historical precedent
On a recent visit to the old city of York, England, I learned about a network of pedestrian-only walkways called snickets. The oddly-named snickelways (a mashup of snicket, ginnel and alleyway) aren’t elevated, but they serve a similar function as the skyways of Minneapolis. They weave between buildings and cut through blocks, and some even support commerce. I found similar features in Prague and Paris — little throughways that take people where they want to go, almost in defiance of the buildings and the street grid.
Of course, there are a handful of ancient skyways — the Bridge of Sighs in Venice, the Vasari Corridor in Florence (built by a Medici) and even a Han Dynasty model, created in clay 2000 years ago. Modern skyways include one connecting the Petronas Towers in Kuala Lumpur, once the tallest structure in the world, 40-some stories up. Museums and airports have skyways and skywalks.
The Minneapolis skyway system is the world’s longest continuously connected pedestrian network. Calgary’s Plus 15 skyway network is slightly longer, but a few segments (about a third of its length in total) are unconnected to the rest. The 80 linked blocks in downtown Minneapolis form a space unto itself, one larger than Chicago’s downtown Loop or the French Quarter in New Orleans, and as full of activity as any other central business district in peak business hours. The space is intrinsically Minnesotan and, unlike Calgary’s system, which was fully designed from the start, has developed piece by piece into what it is today. With vision and care, the skyway system could become an asset to the city far beyond what its initial champions ever imagined.
3. They are bridges
Skyways are not just elevated walkways — they are actual bridges, inspected by the Minneapolis Regulatory Services Department. Except for the skyways that cross county roads, I learned from a city bridge inspector, which fall into the jurisdiction of Hennepin County.
The designs and structure of the system’s 100-plus bridges vary from one to the next. Most of them are window-dominated, but there are some small functional ones — little intra-block connectors that have only a window or two. Steel beam supports seem to be the most common structure, but there are also a number of suspension bridges and even one, crossing Third Avenue, that uses a Vierendeel truss, an uncommon bridge design that maximizes window apertures. Hennepin County Medical Center, the giant brutalist hospital that straddles Seventh Street, has a beautiful double suspension bridge that is lamentably hidden until you’re practically underneath it.
Curiously, St. Paul’s skyway system, which is much smaller and municipally owned and governed, has a consistent design to its bridges. There are a handful of exceptions, but the uniformity gives the second level a much more orderly appearance from the outside.
4. The beauty, the views, the odd spaces
Unlike traditional bridges that are grounded on earthbound footings, skyways generally span two separately designed structures, often of varying ages. Different buildings have different floor heights and internal beam placements, requiring some tricky configuration and interesting adaptations. See, for example, the Alice-in-Wonderland bridge between the Haaf ramp and the Gateway ramp. The ceiling height on one end is lower than the other by a few feet, making you feel like you’ve morphed in size, like Alice after consuming her magic cake, as you cross Third Street.
The carpeted interior space that runs through the Ameriprise Financial Center on Seventh Street and Second Avenue is dark and hushed, giving a somber impression of a firm that takes your money seriously. By contrast, the vast atrium at the foot of the Foshay Tower, with its high glassed ceilings and echoey brick walls, manages to feel bright and airy inside the base of the towering Depression-era obelisk. The Crystal Court, at the heart of the city’s iconic IDS Center, deserves an essay all its own. Architects Philip Johnson and John Burgee designed the structure to evoke an Italian piazza, replete with a fountain, trees, café tables and chairs and copious natural light.
The skyways offer thousands of frames through which to see the city’s architecture. The pale red Richardsonian Romanesque Minneapolis City Hall, designed in 1888 by the prolific firm of Long and Kees, is magnificently captured in the angled glass ceilings of the US Bank Plaza. The noble Art Deco eagles of the 1936 Minneapolis Armory building can be seen strikingly close-up from the skyway level of the new Thrivent Corporate Center that stands across Sixth Street.
5. Unmappable or, where the streets have no names
There are skyway maps, sure. But have you ever tried to use one? It’s not a matter of accuracy, it’s more that the geography itself lacks most of our traditional wayfinding tools. Think of delimiters like recognizable buildings, intersections, landmarks, stoplights or even a consistent street layout — none of these tools work quite the same in the skyways.
The pedestrian grid that overlays the street grid below isn’t as rational as the streets themselves. Internal pathways through any given block can’t always take a straight line. One building on the block may support an interior skyway-level pathway, but the next may not. Walkways will jog to circumnavigate an uncooperative building or inconvenient courtyard. And while the skyways are often made out of windows, these interior walkways generally don’t afford any view out to the buildings or the street below. It’s kind of like a funhouse, without the mirrors.
Phones haven’t proven much of a boon for skyway navigation. GPS loses accuracy inside buildings, and the interior network doesn’t appear in any major map apps. Add to that the intrigue of changing tenants and construction projects, and it becomes an organic and evolving landscape.
6. Scalable retail spaces
Urbanists have little love for the skyways. British travel writer Jonathan Raban visited Minneapolis in 1981 and likened the skyways to the “roller-coasting freeways” of Los Angeles or the “glass-and-cement cliffs of New York,” concluding that “only a city with really horrible weather could have arrived at such a thing.”
The skyways stand accused — by Raban, Eric Dayton, Twin Cities urban geographer Bill Lindeke and probably any serious urbanist who has ever considered the matter — of having robbed the city streets of urban vitality. Jane Jacobs would definitely disapprove. Or would she?
Because the skyways are a pedestrian transit corridor first and foremost, there are always people and some version of urban vitality happening on the second floor. Are people up in skyways, instead of doing good city-things on city streets? Perhaps. But the ground-level architecture in downtown Minneapolis isn’t exactly a small-business opportunity zone. Few buildings have retail spaces, and fewer still have retail spaces small enough to be welcoming for small businesses. I grew up in Uptown Minneapolis and watched the intersection of Lake and Hennepin sell its soul to the prospect of big-buck retailers that stopped being viable even before the pandemic and road construction put the final nail in the (hopefully temporary) coffin of the once exciting and successful area.
Downtown has priced out — and built out — much of the urban vitality we might like to see on our city streets. But the skyways haven’t. There are storefronts in nearly every connected building downtown, and the potential for more. The insides of many of these buildings were constructed with the idea of configurability built in. The convenience store wants to expand? Tear down an internal wall and give it more room. The department store wants to become a YMCA? I’m not sure what-all it took to pull that off, but the top floor of Gaviidae Common has made that transformation.
7. Car-free infrastructure
Our Minneapolis skyway system may be the world’s most extensive continuous pedestrian-only network. The Mall of America in Bloomington, once the largest in the world, offers about a mile per level. But a mall’s purpose isn’t transit. While the skyways certainly have mall-like features, their essence is a way to move people from place to place. Where else can you walk as far unimpeded by stoplights or wheeled traffic?
When you think of cities that might sustain a comfortable car-free existence, older cities like Paris, Amsterdam, Barcelona and New York come to mind. They’re strong in mass transit and dense in human habitation. A few smaller U.S. cities have made the list of “15-minute cities” in recent years, with Miami, San Francisco and Pittsburgh topping the list. But most American cities that evolved in post-war times embraced the expansive space that cars afforded and embodied sprawl. Some neighborhoods in Minneapolis sustain an organic 15-minute city vibe, but downtown has the potential to provide a relatively vast connected hub. You can already access doctors, dentists, tailors, fitness centers, a drug store, a Target, sports, conventions, banks, restaurants, bars and a (pandemic-diminished) number of retailers.
Brick and mortar retail is still reeling from the double punch of online shipping-driven commerce and the pandemic that disrupted much of the world’s shopping and working patterns. The protracted pandemic-era office and retail shut-downs dealt a blow to the activity and bustling commerce of the skyway system. USPS reported that 1,400 businesses have left downtown since 2020.
And while it’s fair to say it’ll likely never be the same again, it’s also too soon to sound the death knell for in-person transactions. People still need lunch and coffee, as well as camaraderie, and the skyway level of Minneapolis does not disappoint in that regard. As the post-pandemic real estate bust drives more office-to-residence conversions in city centers across the country, the skyway system provides the infrastructure for this kind of connectivity.
8. The weather
I’d be remiss if I didn’t mention the weather. Of course, the skyways are a boon to the crowds of downtown commuters heading for the bus in the winter. There is something wondrous in this dauntingly cold climate about being able to park in a skyway-connected ramp and leave your jacket in the car. Or heading out for lunch wearing just your inside-shoes. Days when the wind whips through the buildings, and the empty sidewalks offer little protection, commuters happily scuttle toward their bus stops in the hospitable warmth of the second floors.
And let’s face it, there’s little demand for outdoor seating for much of the year in these parts.
The skyway system has enabled a much more prolific and varied collection of lunch options than would exist in their absence. Without our hyper-connected second-floor network, far fewer people would leave the comfort of their own buildings for lunch in the winter. Or in the rain. Sure, some buildings would capitalize on the captive audience and maybe install a restaurant or coffee shop on the first floor, but it would be something bland and unlikely to offend, compared with the diversity of offerings in the skyway system.
Take for example, the Einstein Bagels in the skyway through the Wells Fargo towers. The towers are on a spur of the skyway system that leads to the US Bank Stadium and nowhere else. With no other office building junctures, people walking in that spur are either headed to a parking ramp or just getting their steps in. As a result, they are in something of a skyway food desert with only the innocuous bagel shop and an overpriced convenience store to choose from.
But walk to the heart of the connected center of downtown, and you’ll see dozens of restaurants with an impressive variety: sushi, salad, African, Vietnamese, burgers, Middle Eastern, pizza, soup, fancy Italian, sandwiches, doughnuts, coffee, Indian, New York-style deli, Thai, Mediterranean, French, bagels, Mexican and only a smattering of larger chain outlets.
Upstairs Downtown
I am a lifelong devotee of busy city streets, and I look forward to seeing density increase throughout the city as people return to downtown in the coming years. Skyways aren’t a replacement for street life, but they are also not the reason our streets are more lifeless than we’d like them to be.
Tearing down the skyways, as more than one serious urbanist has suggested, feels a bit like putting barriers on benches so no one decides to sleep there. What we should be doing instead is increasing affordable housing supply and tackling associated human needs so that no one needs to sleep on benches. Want more people on the street? Make the street more appealing. The skyways are a unique fixture of Minneapolis. They have their own place in the city, one to be celebrated not maligned.
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