In 1900, an enterprising young teamster named William Millett opened a saloon at 501 Washington Avenue North in Minneapolis. William was my grandfather, and his saloon—one of an estimated 100 on Washington Avenue at the time—was a stand-up joint where beer cost a nickel and lunch was free. And it was part of a bustling world of warehouses, implement dealers, factories, and rail yards that stretched for block after block. Today’s North Loop, with its stylish apartments and restaurants and bars, rose out of this old industrial landscape, which was itself a stunning example of urban transformation in the late 19th and early 20th centuries.
When Minneapolis sprang to life in the 1850s, its first big industrial district developed around the St. Anthony Falls and its mills. The city’s downtown core was a few blocks away at Bridge Square, where Hennepin and Nicollet Avenues came together. To the north and west, above Hennepin, was a residential area consisting mostly of small wood-frame houses and apartments serving working-class households, although a few early mansions were built along North 1st Street near the Mississippi River. At the heart of the neighborhood was the Church of the Immaculate Conception, built in 1872 at 3rd Avenue North and 3rd Street to serve the many Catholic families in the area.
But by the late 1870s, this unremarkable neighborhood would begin to morph into something entirely different, a change brought about in large measure by one of the great technological advances of the 19th century—railroads. The first trains arrived in the North Loop in 1867, when the St. Paul and Pacific (later Great Northern) Railroad built a bridge across the Mississippi at Nicollet Island, opening access to St. Paul and points east. More rail lines followed, drawn to the area in part because there was limited room for new industry in the tightly packed milling district around St. Anthony Falls.
By 1900, a half dozen railroads were operating in the North Loop, their yards extending along the river as far as Plymouth Avenue and also along the 4th Avenue North corridor (which was trenched in 1890 to avoid at-grade crossings with street traffic). Smaller spur lines also spread tentacles throughout the district, running behind buildings in what have now become alleys. Progress brought with it a price, and soot and smoke from coal-burning locomotives must have darkened the air on many days.
As railroads like the Great Northern and Northern Pacific expanded their reach into the rich agricultural lands of the northern prairies, the North Loop became the center of a booming business in farm implements. Companies like John Deere and International Harvester were among the big firms attracted to the North Loop, and by 1908, Minneapolis was reputed to be the largest distributor of farm implements in the world. The city, meanwhile, was experiencing a period of phenomenal growth, with its population more than quadrupling from 47,000 in 1880 to 202,000 in 1900.
Scores of new warehouses and factories appeared as the North Loop grew into a highly concentrated industrial district. Although a few large buildings, such as the former warehouse now occupied by the Traffic Zone Center for Visual Art, were built in the 1880s, most of the major historic buildings in the North Loop date from between 1890 and 1920. By a happy turn of events, this period was the golden age of American architecture, a time when even industrial buildings could aspire to high art. One of the best is the old Deere and Webber Building at 800 Washington Avenue North. Built in two phases between 1902 and 1910 and designed by the old-line Minneapolis firm of Kees and Colburn, it’s at once incredibly solid and elegant, with an elaborate arched entry in the manner of the great Chicago architect Louis Sullivan. And like many of the North Loop’s finest old warehouses, it has the stern heft of something built for the ages, a quality not evident in much of today’s architecture.
The North Loop’s supremacy as a warehousing hub began to fade in the 1920s, which is also when my grandfather’s saloon—rendered futile by Prohibition—was torn down. Increased rail freight rates, along with the development of new highway networks and long-haul trucking, contributed to the warehouse district’s decline, as did the arrival of the Great Depression in 1929. And when America moved to the suburbs in the 1950s, sprawling one-story warehouses and factories served largely by trucks became the order of the day.
But the North Loop, largely left to rot, held on to its most precious resource: its incomparable stock of huge loft buildings. Heavily constructed with massive timber, concrete, or steel frames, they were empty vessels ready to be filled with new urban dreams. As the historic preservation movement gained steam in the 1970s, much of the North Loop was incorporated into a historic district that now encompasses 30 blocks. Soon, one warehouse after another was renovated and put to new use, providing wondrous evidence that the old North Loop had embarked on a new life that would ultimately turn it into one of the jewels of the city.