Walking through the neighborhood around East Hennepin and Central Avenues, on the southwestern flank of Northeast Minneapolis, feels like you’re experiencing 200 years of the city’s history all at once. Circa-1800s buildings abut glass-walled modern high-rises. New-to-the-city 20-somethings congregate near families that have called the area home for generations. The neighborhood, which harbors 50 of the city’s oldest buildings and landmarks—including the Ard Godfrey House and Our Lady of Lourdes Catholic Church—hosted more than a dozen new-biz ribbon-cuttings in the last year.
But despite the area’s density, walkability, and popularity, it hasn’t really had a name that’s stuck. It’s not Dinkytown or the North Loop—nearby neighborhoods with strong name recognition. And for Scott Parkin, a longtime resident and area business owner, that’s a problem.
To many people, the neighborhood is simply part of Northeast. But it’s not that simple. Even on city maps, it’s sliced in two, with East Hennepin as the dividing line. North of Hennepin is Northeast, but south is technically University.
“It’s a tiny neighborhood—about a 20-square-block triangle,” Parkin notes, “but it’s a very concentrated area of shops, restaurants, and residential buildings. And it’s got that feel to it, you know? Everything from Otter’s Saloon to All Saints.”
Parkin, who moved to the area in 1993 and owns Verve Realty on Southeast 4th Street, says, “For years, the neighborhood has been called many different things.” He parrots the names he’s heard over the years, both from neighborhood regulars and PR firms trying to plant a flag in the area: “Old St. Anthony,” “The Heart of Northeast,” even “Over by Surdyk’s.” But nothing has really stuck.
When Parkin started ruminating on neighborhood names years ago, he knew the ideal moniker would nod to its history. In the mid-1800s, the area wasn’t even part of Minneapolis at all. As Minneapolis grew on the west side of the Mississippi, the town of St. Anthony thrived on its own on the east side, until finally being annexed by its big-sister city in 1872 during Minneapolis’s milling heyday. Though this little slice has experienced varying degrees of success, it has stayed a business and residential district in the heart of the city ever since.
Then, one day, Parkin was chatting with a bartender at Whitey’s Old Town Saloon about the naming challenges. “The bartender, Chad, was saying, ‘It kind of feels like the city’s old town, like part of a bygone era, but there’s still so much going on,’” Parkin says. “And that got me thinking—and then I took it all the way.”
Old Town includes, ostensibly, everything in the triangle between 1st Avenue Northeast and Central Avenue Southeast, from the apex at Southeast 7th Street down to the riverfront. But Parkin considers the bulk of Southeast Main Street, even the part that extends past the triangle’s base, part of Old Town. As for Nicollet Island? Well, it’s complicated—he includes it in his mind but acknowledges the island has its own strong identity as well.
Parkin notes that Old Town is also a classic neighborhood name in other cities: Scottsdale, Arizona; Chicago; San Diego; and nearly 30 other cities across the United States have an Old Town.
“If you’re a traveler or you’re relocating here, any city in the world that has an Old Town, you know something cool and fun is going on there,” Parkin says.
When the Nicollet Island-East Bank Neighborhood Association, which serves the bulk of Old Town, asked for community input on a new neighborhood name in 2021 (great minds think alike?), Parkin submitted a lengthy proposal for Old Town, which he says the association’s committee unanimously approved. But when the official board voted, it lost by one vote.
“We do occasionally get resistance from folks who have been in the neighborhood for a long time,” he concedes.
For now, Parkin is head of his own “quasi neighborhood association,” as he calls it, tasking himself with spreading the name to business owners and community members. He developed a website recounting the neighborhood’s history, whipped up batches of Old Town merch, and is making 40 plaques for historic businesses and buildings in the area. Old Town has nearly 1,000 followers on Instagram and more than 1,000 on Facebook. And every month, Parkin leads association meetings and a neighborhood meetup—a tour of a historical building or a happy hour at a local bar, for example—which slowly but surely increase community awareness.
“We want to do what North Loop’s doing,” he says. “I mean, look at North Loop, just killing it. Everybody bought into that name right away; people just adopted it. I think that’s what’s going to happen with Old Town, but it’s going to take longer.”
And a neighborhood with nearly 200 years of names and changes might just be willing to wait.