Tag Archives: Architecture

Concrete support pillars are among dozens of remains scattered throughout the Gopher Ordinance Works, a WWII munitions factory in Rosemount.

Embracing Ruins as Historic Preservation

We tend to ignore ruins or look at them as failures, awaiting either a visionary creative reuse or the wrecking ball. What if we preserved them as they are instead?

National Links: Buildings as Batteries

Every day at The Overhead Wire, we collect news about cities and send the links to our email list. At the end of the week we take some of the most popular stories and post them to Greater Greater Washington, a group blog similar to streets.mn that focuses on urban issues in the D.C. region. […]

Wahu Apartments

Are New Buildings Ugly or Beautiful?

I had a spicy Twitter exchange the other day with Max Nesterak, who has been doing great work at his new website, the MN Reformer. The question he posed rekindled some long-simmering thoughts I’ve been having about the eternal question “are new buildings bad?” Here’s the tweet: Who’s going to write an op-ed for @MNReformer […]

Rafter Cenhen Southwest aerial

Ritzy Rafter Apartments in CenHen Opening August 1st

The new Rafter development will likely be one of the last large apartment buildings finished in Minneapolis before inclusionary zoning requires new construction to include affordable apartments. Pricing is out for units ranging from a 442 square-foot studio for $1,270 ($2.87 per square-foot) to a 2733square-foot 3-bed for $9,970 ($3.65 per square-foot). In other words, if they don’t […]

St Andrews St Paul

St. Andrew’s Church and the American Landscape

Editor’s note / correction: The original post did not state that Bob Roscoe is a paid consultant on this project. Per streets.mn editorial policy #14, possible conflicts of interest should be disclosed before publication. streets.mn regrets the error.   Many places of worship are built for unambiguously ecclesiastic use for the religious function of its […]

Where the Grass Really is Greener

June 5, 2016 Highland Park, Macalester-Groveland, Summit-University/Rondo, North End, Como 19 miles This ride featured significant stops in five neighborhoods. First, Highland Park where I spotted what strikes me as a house with a mullet because it’s all business in the front and a party in the back. Macalester-Groveland Grand Avenue plus the first Sunday […]

A Tale of Two Development Proposals

At the March 6th Downtown Minneapolis Neighborhood Association, two renderings of future Minneapolis developments were unveiled. One of these renderings was the long awaited new Thrivent Headquarters – a half block development that will be accompanied with paired developments on the remaining half block. Similar to the fantastic Kraus-Anderson HQ redevelopment, in methodology at least. […]