1836
Joseph Nicollet—accompanied by the Ojibwe chief Chagobay, the chief’s 9-year-old son, and the half-French guide Brunia—paddles away from Fort Snelling upriver to correct Zebulon Pike’s map of the Mississippi.
1851
On behalf of Colonel John Stevens, surveyor Charles Christmas plots Minneapolis’s street grid. It’s oriented in relation to the Mississippi River, with Nicollet Street platted one block south of Hennepin.
1872
George W. Hale and Co., a retailer of dry goods, women’s apparel, men’s furnishings, fine furniture, and interior decorations, moves into a building on Nicollet and 3rd.
1883
William and Lawrence Donaldson buy the firm that owns the Glass Block, a building on Nicollet and 6th named for its large plate glass windows, and open their department store, Donaldson’s.
1895
Fire consumes the Westminster Presbyterian Church on 7th and Nicollet, forcing the church to move down to Nicollet and 12th. The Presbyterian exodus consolidates retail’s power on the street the city has officially renamed Nicollet Avenue.
1902
George Dayton, an entrepreneur from New York who made a fortune in Worthington, moves to Minneapolis to buy an office building on 6th and Nicollet, followed by a department store on 7th and Nicollet. A year later, he renames his store Dayton’s.
1913
Nearly 30 saloons are razed to create the most expensive park in the city’s history, Gateway Park. Built on the triangular junction between Hennepin and Nicollet, the park is meant to be a gateway from the railroad station into downtown.
1926
Elizabeth Quinlan, a pioneer in women’s ready-to-wear, constructs a new building on the strength of 30 years of success in fashion. When the Young-Quinlan Building opens on Nicollet Avenue, retailers from across the country are impressed with its elegance.
1953
After a long, heartbreaking decline into becoming ground zero for Minneapolis’s vast skid row, the city pulls the plug on Gateway Park. Its attractive pavilion is raised, and the Edmund Phelps–donated fountain is moved to the rose garden in Lyndale Park.
1956
After Donald Dayton commissions a study revealing that Minnesotans shop less in the freezing cold (shocker!), Southdale, the country’s first indoor mall, is built in Edina. Minneapolis’s downtown leaders panic.
1967
Lawrence Halprin, the landscape architect behind Ghirardelli Square in San Francisco, redesigns Nicollet Avenue into a 12-block open-air mall. Halprin’s serpentine $45 million mall adheres to his concept of “motation,” which looks at the city like a piece of sheet music.
1972
Already famous from being referenced in The Mary Tyler Moore Show’s opening montage, the IDS Center is completed (Moore tosses her tam in front of Donaldson’s across the street). Phillip Johnson’s glassterpiece fully integrates the skyway system into its design.
1982
The Thanksgiving Day fire destroys the Glass Block, torching Donaldson’s, and spreads to Northwestern Bank’s headquarters. The fire leaves a block of downtown in ashes for the biggest shopping day of the year.
1989
A new wave of luxury shopping crashes onto the mall with Gaviidae Common. Gaviidae I, designed by architect César Pelli, is anchored by Saks Fifth Avenue. Gaviidae II, anchored by Neiman Marcus, opens two years later. Pretty fancy for a mall named after the common loon.
1991
Nicollet Mall is remodeled again. City and business leaders cheap out, excising the proposed glass towers connecting street to skyway from their final plans. And to Halprin’s dismay, his curvy street is smoothed out. Bad sign: The new Austrian pines don’t survive the winter.
1998
The Conservatory, a “European-style arcade” with upscale shopping and dining, was doomed when it opened soon after the stock market crash in ’87. But when the building is demolished after barely a decade? Shocking.
2006
César Pelli completes his trilogy of downtown buildings—preceded by his Wells Fargo Tower on Marquette and the aforementioned Gaviidae I—with a soaring new Central Library on the mall.
2017
After two years, Nicollet Mall reopens. Once again, the proposed vision—this time by the NYC firm that designed Manhattan’s High Line—is subverted by disastrous budget cuts. The unique pavers are swapped for a riverbed of concrete.
2022
The RBC Gateway—its name a nod to the long-gone park—is finished on the far east side of the mall. The half-billion-dollar tower, which includes a Four Seasons, is the most expensive project completed without public funds in city history.