Posts Tagged ‘Midtown Phillips’
Blooming Together!
Semilla Teaching Artists Angela Barrera and Sarah Schulz trained and led 13 neighborhood youth in creating a very large mural on the corner of 26th St. and 15th Ave. S., teaching them mosaic skills, picking up litter, creating a poetry ‘zine with Patrick Cabello Hansel, and teaching them leadership skills in our Young Leader program. Photos by Semilla Center for Healing and the Arts By BART BUCH, Director of Semilla Center for Healing and the Arts This summer Semilla has been busy creating peace through beauty on and around Bloomington Avenue South in the Midtown Phillips neighborhood, our home. Last summer our theme was “Together/Juntos,” as coming together again after being separated from the pandemic was thrilling. This year we take that theme a step further with “Blooming Together.” We hope to reflect and create a wave of new togetherness, with us each trying to bloom anew. You are going to see quite a few flowers in the work that is going on, and amongst this new garden we are in, we acknowledge the persistent hardship, desperation and violence in our midst here in Midtown Phillips, and especially on Bloomington Avenue. The situation we are in is complex in this neighborhood, in this time. More complex than we can understand or deal with alone. We also recognize the beautiful blossom of each person and being on Bloomington Avenue as sacred, and the land and sky of Bloomington Avenue as sacred, with a flowering heart. In the work Semilla does this summer we try to hold these two realities with care.
2615 Park Avenue: Celebrating 75 Years of Cooperative Living
2615 Park Avenue in the 1950s / Photo courtesy Minnesota Historical Society By Becky Gazca, Walt Weaver, and Lou Tiffany Welter How many of you have driven by this building on the corner of Park Avenue and 26th Street and wondered what it was? In front of the American Swedish Institute, “2615 Park” was built in 1929-1930 filling an empty spot in the neighborhood landscape. It was the dream of our founders and builders, Carl Anderson, Gustav Nelson, Andrew Rydell and Gustav Rydell, to build the most luxurious and elegant apartment building in this neighborhood. “Financing for the construction of 2615 was obtained by the financial skin of our teeth in 1929. The architect most often credited for creating the plans was Martin G. Lindquist. The construction firm was the Anderson-Nelson Company, owned by Carl Anton “C.A.” Anderson and Gustav “Gus” Nelson, both recent Swedish immigrants. Originally designed to be ten stories high, plans were scaled back to six stories thanks to The Great Depression. 2615 was to be a “residents” hotel but with all of the amenities of a typical “transient” hotel. Owned by a group of businessmen, it was managed by the Anderson-Nelson Company with C.A.'s son, Lars, acting as garage attendant, office manager, maintenance man, switchboard operator, boiler tender, and grounds keeper for its first twelve years. When did that man sleep? On August 20, 1947, the Star Journal announced: “First steps to turn 2615 Park Avenue, a million-dollar apartment building, into a co-operative with tenants purchasing their own apartments were underway today. ”Soon the era of chauffeurs, maids, cooks and laundresses became a part of 2615 lore. Loretta’s Tea Room served its final Sunday brunch more than twenty-five years ago. We know that some people with illustrious names at one time made their homes here: Ted Mann; Charlie Johnson of sports fame; popular newspaper columnist Bob Murphy; conductor Eugene Ormandy; teacher, [...]
St. Paul’s Lutheran Church: 150th Anniversary and Still Proclaiming the Gospel
The current home of St. Paul’s Evangelical Lutheran Church is at 1901 Portland Avenue South. Built as a Presbyterian church in 1887, the building was acquired by St. Paul’s in the 1960s. The congregation has worshiped in several nearby locations throughout its 150-year history.Credit: Photo provided by St. Paul’s Evangelical Lutheran Church By PASTOR TOM PARRISH, current pastor of St. Paul’s On Sunday July 10, 2022 St. Paul’s Lutheran Church at Portland Ave S and 19th Ave will be celebrating 150 years of Jesus’ faithfulness and mission. That timespan takes us back to 1872, a mere seventeen years after Minneapolis was established, and the same year St. Anthony Falls and Minneapolis merged into one city. The proximity of Fort Snelling, built in 1819, was one of the major catalysts for the establishment of the two towns and their uniting into Minneapolis. 1872 was a mere four years prior to Custer’s defeat at the Battle of the Little Bighorn. Into this mix St. Paul’s Evangelical Lutheran Church was established. Throughout those 150 years the church has had but one goal. That goal is to clearly present the Gospel of Jesus Christ. How did St. Paul’s go about this mission? The church did the typical things most churches do in providing worship, music, education, children’s Sunday School and member care. But over those years St. Paul’s did even more. World Missions have been an important part of the church's life in sending, supporting, and praying for hundreds of men and women who serve around the world. St. Paul’s has also been on the radio for many years under the leadership of Pastor Carrol Satre. More recently, Pastor Roland Wells has developed two inner city ministries for training students of college age and older how to teach, minister and change lives. Today St. Paul’s is still doing inner city and worldwide ministry. Under the church's mandate of purpose, which is “To know Jesus, to Grow in Him, to Share Him with [...]
New Pollinator Plantings Beautify Neighborhood and Decrease Erosion on Abbott Northwestern Hospital Campus
Photos taken by the Mississippi Watershed Management Organization (MWMO) A wildlife-friendly landscaping plan is part of Allina Health’s multi-year infrastructure project at Abbott Northwestern Hospital that benefits the environment and pollinators By DAVID JOOS Allina Health is showing its commitment to sustainability in its multi-year infrastructure project on the Abbott Northwestern Hospital campus in the Midtown Phillips Neighborhood of Minneapolis. As part of the project, Allina Health is transforming the campus with a new Surgical and Critical Care Pavilion and a new Transportation Hub. With the help of a Mississippi Watershed Management Organization (MWMO) Action Grant of $50,000, Allina Health planted native, pollinator-friendly plantings in May 2022 along the Transportation Hub’s 5,000-square-foot slope near the Midtown Greenway. The new pollinator habitat includes carefully selected plants based on their bloom time and ability to grow well and prevent erosion on a steep slope. “I am happy that we were able to make the landscaping at the Transportation Hub more sustainable by planting pollinator plants with much deeper root systems that reduce stormwater by reducing erosion. As a health care system, taking care of our environment is a responsibility that is critical to ensuring good health for Allina Health patients, employees and our community,” said Suzanne Savanick Hansen, Allina Health sustainability manager. Allina Health’s sustainable landscaping plan that covers the slope is also made possible through a partnership with pollinator experts from the University of St. Thomas. These pollinator experts worked closely with Allina Health and the MWMO to review the plantings and will conduct pollinator plant surveys on the slope for the next two summers. “This was a great project using native landscaping to prevent slope erosion and create a more connected habitat along the Greenway that links the chain of lakes to the [...]
Letter to Midtown Phillips Neighborhood Association:
Response to 2744 and 2740 12th Avenue Proposed Development: Ensuring Gentrification and Income Inequality by Policy and Design By SUE HUNTER WEIR Reprinted in the alley by permission of the author The City of Minneapolis is well known for expressing concern about gentrification and income inequality—one of the dubious categories in which we lead the nation. These plans appear not to have taken into account the demographic makeup, and therefore the needs, of the people who live here. There is undoubtedly a need to have more housing for renters, but these designs are not the answer. I have listed some of the problems that jump out at me.1) Inadequate parking. Regardless of what the city's current policy is, the reality of life in Midtown Phillips is different. This is not, for the most part, a community of bicycle commuters. Our block (the 2700 block of 12th Avenue) is a block where most of the renters and owners are immigrant families. That usually means two working parents and several young children per household. Five of the houses on the east side of the street are duplexes with little off-street parking, and for those properties there are not two cars/vans per property, but more commonly four to six. Residents already have to pay for parking permits because of our proximity to a school, mosque, mall, and two major hospitals. Parking is at a premium. The notion that people will ride bikes if no parking is available is simply not true. (I say this as someone who walked from my house to the U every day for 30+ years and heartily supports the idea of bike commuting for those who are able).2) Safety. 28th Avenue is one of the city's busier streets and speeding is the norm. Twelfth Avenue is likewise heavily trafficked by residents, school buses, students' parents, and people using the park. All of these amenities are great but they do mean that there is a lot of traffic. (About one out of every three or four bike bollards are flattened on any [...]
Artists Invited to Submit Design Ideas for Light-Emitting Sculpture
By TIM SPRINGER The Midtown Greenway Coalition is issuing a call for artists to submit their ideas for a beautiful and stunning light-emitting sculpture. As mentioned in a previous Alley article, the purposes of the sculpture are to create exciting art that brings joy and makes you say “WOW!”, light up a dark area, and serve as a wayfinding beacon to help people find their way onto and off of the Greenway. This is a project of the Midtown Greenway Coalition with an Advisory Team composed of seven residents from the 2800 and 2900 blocks of 18th Avenue South, adjacent to the proposed sculpture location. I am honored to serve as Project Manager (a volunteer position) and work with the Advisory Team on this exciting project. The sculpture will be located at the top of the entrance ramp to the Midtown Greenway at 18th Avenue. It will be about 12 feet wide and will be suspended up in the air about 12 feet above the trail surface. The body of the sculpture will emit light; perhaps through sheathing made of translucent acrylic material or perforated metal, or a surface that glows or has lights. Out of the bottom of the sculpture there will be lights aimed downward to the pavement to light up the pathway and adjacent sidewalk, and perhaps also out onto the roadway at the trail/roadway intersection. Location of the desired public art piece. After receiving sketches from artists showing design ideas, the Advisory Team will select three finalists based on feasibility, artist capacity to complete the project, and how exciting each design is. Community members, Midtown Greenway trail users, and the public will then be invited to vote for their favorite design from among the three finalists. After a design is selected, the winning artist will be invited to enter into a contract for up to $8,000 to create a detailed design that can be submitted to the City of Minneapolis for approval. The detailed design will include sculpture dimensions, [...]
