The day after exploring the western part of the Loring Park neighborhood, I was back for the eastern part, which is to say, everything east of LaSalle Avenue. However, as the route map reveals, I also included some streets in the northwest that I had skipped the previous day. (The two days’ routes repeatedly cross in […]
Big houses, bigger apartment buildings, really big churches. Even though there is no direct cause-and-effect linkage, it makes sense that a neighborhood with some dense housing also has a cathedral, a basilica, and four other churches that are of similar grandeur. I saw half those churches on my first of two days walking the Loring […]
Having walked the western part of Elliot Park the previous day, I returned to walk everything east (or southeast) of Chicago Avenue. On the route map, the blue tint indicates the full neighborhood, the blue line indicates my main loop (starting and ending at the intersection of 9th Avenue South and 7th Street South), and the red […]
Elliot Park sits between Minneapolis’s downtown and Interstate 35W, the area tinted in blue in the following route map. During the city’s growth spurt from the 1880s into the early 20th century, the downtown area became increasingly commercial in character and so residences, religious institutions, and healthcare facilities separated into adjoining areas such as this. […]
Were it not for the Mississippi River and its St. Anthony Falls, there would be no downtown Minneapolis, and so my exploration of the neighborhood inevitably brought me to the riverside and its historic gateway, railroad, and mill areas. Although I saw a few structures dating to the 1870s, the area has been so extensively […]
Leaving everything from Washington Avenue to the Mississippi River for a fourth day, I planned a nice, systematic route to finish off the rest of what I hadn’t walked on days one and two. And then reality happened. As a result of construction, the block of Nicollet Mall between Washington Avenue and 3rd Street was closed even to […]
Part of Minneapolis’s Downtown West neighborhood could as aptly be grouped into the warehouse district. Day 2 contained that part as well as some more of the central downtown area and was divided into three segments, as shown on the route map below. (As on day 1, the blue tint indicates the full extent of the […]
The Downtown West neighborhood, indicated with blue shading in the route map below, is approximately to the west of Downtown East, though that direction is considered “north” so far as street nomenclature goes. Indeed, the directions north, south, east, and west are not particularly useful in central Minneapolis, where the streets are aligned more nearly to […]
The Mill City Farmers Market, Mill City Museum, and Mill Ruins Park were among the principal attractions for a second day in the Downtown East neighborhood, most of which I had walked on a previous visit. The map shows three loops in blue, each connected to the next by a purple segment, as well as two red spurs off of […]
Bank, bridge, book arts, bordello, and brewpub. Hotels and high-tech. Lofts and linseed oil. Mill ruins, museum, and medical clinics. Shelter, supportive housing, and sculptures. Theater and threshers. Downtown East has it all, from the 19th century to the 21st. And yes, one big indoor football stadium that has gotten a lot of attention surrounding […]