At HO ME in the HEAR T of the CITY Annette Atkins

286 or 75 years, from the 1840s to box factory, carpenter shop, three congestion became too bad and the Fthe 1920s, Minneapolis faced the grist mills, at least seven lumber market moved to its current location Mississippi River and the falls that mills, two planing mills, and the about ten blocks west. Father Louis Hennepin renamed St. Minneapolis Iron Works. 1 A milling town needed men Anthony. The city took its life and The roiling river brought to its (and their wives and children) to its livelihood largely from the water. banks and docks thousands of men, found and run and manage the The Mississippi hurtled millions of women, and children. The same mills, and it needed even more men logs downriver from the pine forests forces that made Minneapolis a and women to work in the mills and up north. Its mills sliced those logs milling capital made it a magnet for shops that serviced them. The city into lumber and crushed mountains people of all kinds. Some who needed coopers and blacksmiths. of wheat into flour. It moved tons of flooded into Minneapolis in the Some people did laundry, sewed, goods in and shipped tons out. It was nineteenth century left immediately tended other people’s and the boiler room, the engine room, to pursue hopes and ambitions families. Some made food or hats; the workroom of Minneapolis. It somewhere else. Theirs is the story others offered sex. Teachers, bankers, was the also the city’s front door. of the farms, small towns, and builders, glaziers, printers, lawyers, By 1870 Minneapolis’s 13 flour places beyond the city. ministers, entertainers, journalists, mills ground about 20 million Thousands, though, stayed put storekeepers, draymen, icemen, coal bushels of wheat. An 1873 map of and clustered in houses and rooms men, stable keepers, cabinetmakers, the “Manufacturing Interests at the near the river. Bridge Square, where roofers, and on and on. All of them Falls of St. Anthony” gives an idea of Nicollet and Hennepin Avenues met, lived cheek by jowl in a small, com - the area’s business intensity. The was long the doorway into Minne - pact, walking city near the mighty buildings include the Arctic, Union, apolis. The first bridge across the river that jumbled together houses, Cataract, Empire, Minneapolis, Mississippi, built right there in 1854 , shops, , businesses, Pillsbury, Zenith, Washburn, and carried people from St. Anthony, St. warehouses, families, factories, the Eastman and Gibson flour mills. Paul, and points east into Minneap - managers, misfits, laborers, servants, Then, there were the cooper shops, olis and the West. The first city hall stood right there and so did the Annette Atkins is a professor of history and central market until 1891, when Michael Blecker Professor in the Humanities at St. John’s University, Collegeville.

Sprin g/Summer 2003 287 Mr. Gale could walk to his law and real estate office about four blocks away at 229 Nicollet Avenue. 2 Their neighbors on one side included his brother’s family and the family of his widowed sister-in-law. On the other side lived Isaac Penny, a blacksmith from Maine, with his wife and two children. Mrs. Anna Demmon lived next door to them; a miller and a confectioner boarded with her. Other neighbors included a cooper, retail grocer, dry-goods merchant, two millers. Working- class and well-to-do, families and single people, residential, commer - cial, civic, and social spheres all merged to form late-nineteenth- century Minneapolis life. City life, though, must have got - The elegant villa at Marquette Avenue and Fourth Street, where the Gale family ten to be too much for the Gales. lived until the late 1880s When they built a second two decades later, they left the center of prostitutes, animals. To get to work house at Marquette (then called things. They only moved a dozen some people walked from upstairs Minnetonka) Avenue and Fourth blocks south and west, to Fifteenth to downstairs or from the back of Street. Other extraordinary mansions Street and Harmon Place, but in the the building to the front, or from built about the same time stood 1880s this was nearly the country - next door, or for a few blocks, maybe nearby—at Sixth Street and Nicollet side, on the edge of Loring Park even long blocks. People lived and Avenue, at Eighth Street and Hen - among elegant houses like their own. worked in the same neighborhood. nepi n Avenue, and at Sixth Street With this move they joined the exo - This was true of mill hands and and Seventh Avenue, for example— dus of upper-middle-class people mill owners and people such as but the Gale house was not nestled from the urban core to peace and Samuel C. Gale. in a quiet neighborhood of elegant quiet. George Pillsbury, a man of Gale, a Harvard-educated east - and extrav agant . The Gales real ambition, moved all the way to erner, had made his way to Minne - lived, worked, and slept surrounded Fiftieth Street, and others left the apolis in 1857 to practice law and by city life. They had only a short river city to live on lakes; Minne - deal in real estate. In 1861 he married walk to buy groceries and dry goods, tonka was especially nice. When the Susan Damon, and they settled in th e visit the post office, conduct busi - Gales built a house for their son heart of Minneapolis. By 1870 their ness at city hall, enjoy an opera, some years later, they located him household included three children— attend Plymouth Church, buy a another six blocks away at Twenty- ages eight, five, and two—two Bohe - piano, do their banking, catch the First Street and Stevens Avenue. 3 mian servants, and a nanny. They all horse-drawn streetcar that ran Who knows what pollution, noise, lived in a grand French villa-style alongside their house after 1879. congestion, ambition, or vision of the good life drove or lured the Gales and others out? It was the Previous Page: The well-traveled Hennepin Avenue Bridge in the bustling heart of path that prosperity laid down, one Minneapolis, about 1891. Painted ads for Washburn-Crosby’s “Royal” product and that until the last 25 years has char - for Flour City wholesale bakers (partially visible behind bridge tower) remind acterized urban life. As the upper passersby of the mills below the bridge. classes receded, the working and

288 Minnesota History Shops and restaurants line Marquette Avenue, served in the 1880s by the narrow-gauge steam trains of the Minneapolis, Lyndale, and Minnetonka Railway. A turret of the Gale house peeks over the background buildings. underclasses became more visible in Herself African American, she In 1903 that old Gale house on the neighborhoods around the Falls housed an exclusively black clientele Marquette was torn down to make of St. Anthony. They stayed amid of two railroad porters, three way for Northwestern National the activity, the jumbled life, the waiters, two married women—no Bank. Within ten years Mrs. John - buzz of city business. The city’s husbands present—and a five-year- son’s boardinghouse was gone and riverside birthplace was changing. old boy— no parent present. She Mrs. Ballard’s had been replaced by seems to have run a sometime a commercial building that housed y 1900 the Gales’ old house at haven, orphanage, sanctuary. 4 shops on the street level and the BFourth and Marquette had been turned into advertising space. The The Gale villa, about 1900, draped with advertising and soon to house a painter- single-family homes surrounding it paper hanger. In another three years, the building would be demolished. had also been abandoned or con - verted to different uses or razed. But lots of people still worked and slept in the changing neighborhood. Some stayed in boardinghouses. The one run by Mrs. Alice Ballard at 126 Fourth Street lodged a bootblack, a saloonkeeper, a bartender, and a young Irish cook, his wife, and their five-month-old son. Another board - inghouse on the block catered mostly to single women—a nurse, a grocery “saleslady,” and a dressmaker. Mrs. Clara Johnson around the corner ran yet another boardinghouse.

Sprin g/Summer 2003 289 All seven Hershmans posed outside their newly opened grocery at 705 Washington Avenue South in 1903. Young Maggie later labeled the people in this tattered family photograph.

25-room Belmar Hotel on the second, Frankie Hershman opened a gro - South Dakota, New York, Illinois, third, and fourth floors. 5 The yards cery store in 1903 at 705 Washing - and North Dakota, among them a and lawns that had surrounded ton Avenue. They all lived upstairs. 40-year-old Norwegian day worker these houses disappeared. The new Eager to improve themselves, they and his 19-year-old daughter; a buildings stretched to the edges of moved after a year—the store and Russian-born jeweler, his wife, and the property and shot straight up the family—two blocks to a bigger their five children; and Joseph and from the sidewalk. They signaled a and grander store with a grander Clara Dorfman, who in 1900 had significant change in Minneapolis name: South Side Grocery Company. blended his six children and her two life from the mix of the early days to Over the next three decades they into a new family and lived above an increasingly commercial city moved several more times, but never their second-hand furniture store at center with residents less affluent very far from their first location. 721 Washington Avenue. 6 and less likely to follow the path of Sometimes they lived above, some - The Dorfmans’ store stayed there prosperity trodden by the Gales. times next door, sometimes down for decades, though the family People such as the Hershmans. the street, but always near the shop. moved around. In 25 years they had Nathan and Anna and their children Their neighbors included a mix at least five different addresses, but Maggie, Minnie, Abigail, Rosie, and of people from Europe, Wisconsin, never very far away and not in any

290 Minnesota History discernible upward march. By 1915 the next four years before they both people who wanted full-time, year- the Dorfman children had jobs of disappeared from city records. 9 round, year-in-and-year-out work their own but were still living at often had a hard time securing and . Beatrice was a stenographer; inneapolis was a permanent keeping it. One analyst in the late Meyer a clerk; Ruby a sales clerk at Mhome to thousands of people 1920s observed that in Minneapolis, the fashionable Young and Quinlan, like these. A surprisingly large num - St. Paul, and Duluth, nearly one-half just five blocks from home. Did the ber of them worked at jobs that of businesses, employing nearly two- Dorfmans and the Hershmans stay were seasonal or temporary. In thirds of the workers, had irregular in central Minneapolis because 1900, U.S. census takers asked peo - employment patterns. Seasons, that’s what they could afford or, ple how many months they had economic cycles, changes in fashion, perhaps, because they were Jewish been unemployed during the previ - and bad luck all contributed to and would not have been welcome ous year. (The question itself sug - putting people out of work from elsewhere? 7 gests that less than full-year employ - time to time. Unemployment was a Just three blocks from the river, ment was common.) In several fact of life for workers. 10 the Hershmans and the Dorfmans boardinghouses along Hennepin Including many women. Thou - lived and worked in the vicinity of Avenue close to the river, various sands of them, too, cobbled together train depots and railroad yards, day laborers reported sporadic un - one thing and another. Clerking and mills and cafes, the Great Northern employment. Two carpenters had sales jobs, dressmaking and seam - Implement and the Case Threshing been out of work for three months stressing rose and fell with the sea - Machine Companies, nine other and five months; three porters, a sons and economic cycles. One study grocery stores, a cluster of small waiter, and a shoemaker each of the millinery trade described its shops, saloons, theaters, pool halls, worked ten months; an uphol sterer “whimsical irregularities.” Then , and boarding and lodging worked only eight. A bartender, there were the long-term trends that houses up and down Washington baker, and waitress reported work - left skilled and unskilled workers out Avenue and its cross streets. 8 ing all twelve months. Even those of jobs. In 1880 there were 19 milli - The neighborhood was home to men such as the warehouse worker Munsingwear factory workers, 1920, who needed inexpensive close to work who had arrived from Norway in 1902 when he was 21 years old and lived in a Minneapolis boarding - house until 1963, when the city relocated him. He never married or had children, as far as we know; he never “settled down” in a conven - tional American way. He neither moved up nor moved out. Another man, Otto Zastrow, came to Minne - apolis in 1904. In the next six years he lived at three different addresses and worked as a teamster and then as a stevedore. He eventually settled in an upstairs at 925 Washington Avenue, two blocks from the Dorfmans’ store. He mar - ried and worked as a clerk with the , Milwaukee and St. Paul Railroad for nearly two decades until he lost his job in 1930. Then he and his wife moved three times in

Sprin g/Summer 2003 291 nery businesses in the city center; worked at the Swedish Hospital, still most years, year around, but most by 1900 there were none. Other lived in the center of the city at 626 laborers weren’t ambitious or disci - economic shifts made for new jobs. Ninth Avenue. 12 plined in this way. On average, they In those same 20 years, the number Permanent residents like Verna worked eight out of twelve months, of clothing stores went from 14 to Zastrow, the Hershmans, and the a schedule that, according to one 58 and restaurants from 14 to 32 Dorfmans lived amidst thousands of study, many found to their liking. 14 (to 81 by 1930). 11 laborers who came and went. Their Whether those four nonworking Otto Zastrow’s sister, Verna, was jobs were cyclical and seasonal, so months came all at once or, more one of these women who needed they lived in Minneapolis cyclically likely, a month here and a month what central Minneapolis offered or seasonally. Some worked for part there, the workmen often headed to best—a place close to work where of the year out of town and then town when free. The woods may she could live cheaply. Women’s part in town. For decades Minneap - have been closer to the mines than wages were less than those of most olis was their landing spot, transfer either was to Minneapolis, but it men living in the center city; women point, temporary home. 13 These was easier to get from one to the had fewer places to stay and weren’t laborers made up the armies of men other via the city. Besides, many of welcome at the religious missions. who cut trees or harvested crops or those men must have wanted a dose For nearly 50 years Verna worked mined ore or built roads or railroads of city life between jobs. at the Swedish Hospital in Minne - or bridges. Their employers didn’t People such as 47-year-old Case apolis—as a maid, laundress, cook. hire the same number of people for #178, who turned up in a 1932 study She lived with her brother and sister- the same jobs from season to sea - of “casual laborers.” Mr. 178 had in-law from time to time and on her son. Workers got hired when they been born in Minneapolis and had own at half a dozen different ad - were needed. an eighth-grade education plus dresses. In 1950—she must have An ambitious and disciplined some engineering and bookkeeping been close to 70 years old—she still laborer might keep himself occupied, classes, an unusual accomplishment. But, like the others, he was what the Seasonal workers like these field hands binding wheat in the Red River Valley, about researchers called “occupationally 1900, came to cities such as Minneapolis between jobs. unstable,” and he preferred to be “on the move from place to place.” From 1900 to 1932 (aged 15 to 47), he worked as a cowboy in South Dakota, in a Minneapolis warehouse, on his father’s Minnesota farm, in Califor - nia at various odd jobs. He traveled coast-to-coast several times and to Mexico, working as a carpenter and machinist. He ran a movie house in Oregon. In between times he made his way back to Minneapolis where he took a machinist job and, no doubt, lived in one of the boarding or lodging houses around Washing - ton Avenue. Another more typical man, #77, who was about 67, had often worked for the railroad in the summer but had never been em - ployed for longer than seven months at any one job. He worked in lumber camps and harvest fields and went three times to Liverpool with boat -

292 Minnesota History African American sleeping car porters, 1910, could rent rooms in center-city boardinghouses. loads of cattle. He nonetheless iden - familiar lodging house, familiar bers grew rapidly. Flophouses of - tified himself as having worked eateries, even friends. 16 fered overnight guests a spot on the steadily all of his life. 15 The city’s old core adjusted to floor or perhaps a bunk, for which At the end of a job, these labor - accommodate these men. Businesses they paid nearly nothing and got ing men roared into Minneapolis grew up that thrived on their patron - next to nothing. In some buildings, with pockets full of money and big age. Among the most numerous were large rooms were partitioned into appetites for the city’s pleasures. boarding, lodging, or flop houses. smaller cells or cages. Walls, how - By one estimate, 250,000 men The railroad porter who boarded ever flimsy, provided some privacy. showed up in the city annually with Mrs. Johnson came and went Wire-mesh ceilings kept a person’s around the turn of the century. with his train but might well have belongings relatively safe from an Some men banked part of their kept his room while he was gone. intruder coming over the top and money, others sent a portion home. Seasonal workers rented by the week allowed for some ventilation in Many spent until it ran out, then or by the day. these windowless rooms. Whether a found another job at one of the hir - Boardinghouses usually included lodging or boarding or flophouse, all ing halls, of which there were 40 in meals; lodging houses were cheaper had shared bathrooms (as did most 1913. They might also return to a and provided less, and their num - hotels at the time). Given the labor

Sprin g/Summer 2003 293 Laborers passing the time outside a Bridge Square employment bureau that advertised jobs from Minneapolis to Montana, 1908 conditions for many of the men, and couldn’t have supported that going somewhere—walking briskly these accommodations may even many—but because boarding house and purposefully to and from work, have been a step up. and saloon life didn’t conflict. 17 shopping, perhaps carrying a mes - Many rooms, like those at the sage or making a delivery. Like these Belmar Hotel, were located above n 1908 Minneapolis Journal pho - three men in their work boots and street-level commercial operations, Itographer George Luxton snapped dirty work clothes, many of the sea - often saloons (the same couple who a picture of three men standing sonal laborers stood around in pub - ran the boardinghouse doing double around outside one of the hiring lic places, parks, on street corners duty as barkeepers). For 40 years halls (probably at 200 Nicollet Av - and curbs, watching the world go by. saloons flourished in central Minne - enue), just a block from Bridge And, they might have asked, why apolis, largely because an 1884 city Square, still the gateway into Minne - not? Most of them did outdoor work, ordinance confined them to that apolis. By the early twentieth cen - so even when they weren’t working neighborhood. A person walking tury, men like these were troubling they spent lots of time outdoors. from Hennepin Avenue to the Hersh- features on the Minneapolis land - Moreover, they were on vacation. mans’ store in 1903 would pass four scape, and so were the saloons that This was their time to catch up on dozen saloons. It wasn’t because the lined Bridge Square. When respect- the news, to gossip, to tell stories, to clients of the rooming houses re - able and hard-working citizens of get tips about jobs. quired so many taverns—they didn’t Minneapolis were outside, they were To people walking purposefully,

294 Minnesota History however, these men looked like judgment of critics who developed related industries catapulted Min - unproductive members of society. the habit of identifying the residents neapolis into resurgent growth and They weren’t busy, the preferred as alcoholics. In fact, many of the pride. Throughout the twentieth middle-class American posture. residents—temporary and perma - century, many saw the old neighbor - They appeared to be idle loungers nent—didn’t drink at all. 18 hood as a rebuke to that ongoing or, worse, idle drunken loungers. The Bridge Square neighborhood success story. Its people, it seemed, Certainly a lot of these men (and had been disturbing to many in Min - refused to take advantage of Minne - women) patronized the nearby neapolis at least since the late 1880s apolis’s opportunities to better saloons, and some certainly drank to when the Gales moved out. Minne - themselves. Their presence seemed excess. Some were, no doubt, chron - apolis was—and still is—a success provocative and challenging both. 19 ically rather than seasonally unem - story of a town. It blossomed and ployed. Fears and anxiety about prospered in the nineteenth and well here were multiple attempts to these idle men haunted many good into the twentieth centuries. When Tclean up the neighborhood. The Minneapolitans and seemed to signal the timber industry died and then two most passionate and committed the decline of the center city. These milling was seriously curtailed, came in the Progressive Era, about worries also blurred middle-class other businesses such as wholesaling, 1900 to 1916, and then again in the vision about who actually populated insurance, and finance took root and era of urban renewal, the late 1950s the neighborhood. For the next 75 grew. The Great Depression damp - and 1960s. years, the fear of alcohol—coupled ened development everywhere, but When Progressive reformers— with the fear of lounging men— World War II and the twin postwar some of the very people who had impaired the perception and the booms in computers and technology- moved out of central Minneapolis—

Brand-new Gateway pavilion and park at Hennepin and Nicollet, created to rejuvenate the declining neighborhood, about 1915

Sprin g/Summer 2003 295 looked at the city, they didn’t see a problem that they had misdiagnosed. the reformers, as did the fact that body of workers essential to Minne - Progressives had a clear idea of the Gateway’s females were on their sota’s economy; they didn’t see a the good life. It included family, own and flouting society’s moral functioning community that met the church, community, and work. It order. The Progressives’ first efforts residents’ needs or outsiders’ wants. required that people be committed focused on separating the women Instead, they saw the ills of industri - to improving themselves, their lot in from the men and getting women alization: congregations of unskilled life, their communities, their future. into their own boardinghouses, and sometimes unemployed labor - People who were not participating in supervised by good middle-class ers; degenerate men who lived in this good life might be dangerous to matrons. A reformer-initiated pro- degraded circumstances; women themselves as well as to the fabric of vision in a 1917 ordinance prohib - who engaged in prostitution or lived America. The Progressives reasoned ited lodging houses from taking in indiscriminately among men. The that better conditions could improve female guests. 23 reformers took offense at the alcohol, the lives of the residents and improve As an alternative, the reformers gambling, dance halls, pool halls, Minneapolis at the same time. Every - established a variety of accommoda - movie houses. They were scandalized one would be better off. 21 tions for women only. The Woman’s by the corruption in the city govern - The neighborhood around Wash - Hotel stood at 122 Hennepin Ave- ment that allowed such vices and ington, Hennepin, and Nicollet nue, right near the Hennepin Avenue conditions to thrive. 20 Avenues, where the city met the river, Bridge and across the street from Like Progressives in cities attracted a good share of attention. Gateway Park. In 1920, in addition throughout the United States, the Reformers focused initially on Bridge to the matron and her assistant, i t reformers took it as their duty and Square. Their chief complaints were moral obligation to solve these prob - the “low groggeries that attract the Woman’s Hotel above a mission “life- lems. They wanted parks and street loafer and the expectorating saving station” in the heart of the cleaned-up streets; they wanted transient.” So, in the mid-1910s they Gateway, about 1916 clean government and safer neigh - tore down City Hall, cleared out borhoods. They wanted people bet - about four square blocks of the “low ter integrated into a healthful, grow - groggeries,” residences, and busi - ing, improving city. Most of all, it nesses, including the hiring hall seemed, they wanted to get rid of where the three workmen once alcohol, which they passionately lounged, and reinvented the neigh - believed was the taproot of the borhood as the Gateway. Persuaded neighborhood’s problems. by the City Beautiful movement and By 1915 or so, the Bridge Square its classical impulses, the Progres - area was home to at least five distinct sives created Gateway Park with its cultures: the steady urban laborers— splendid pavilion at the heart of this a few married, most not—who lived troubled neighborhood. Dedicated near where they worked; the seasonal in 1915, the park pushed the edges laborers who came and went; the of the boardinghouse neighborhood people who catered to these laborers; back a bit but didn’t result in the the outsiders who dropped in for a hoped-for rejuvenation. In fact, the drink or something else and then park provided a lovely public space went home; and the chronic down- in which people could pass their and-outs who had nowhere else to days and talk to their friends—the go. These people shared the same opposite of what the Progressives space. The Progressives, like others had in mind. 22 before and since, presumed they Perhaps because so many of the shared the same habits. Through Progressives were women, they paid nearly all of the twentieth century, special attention to women’s condi - then, reformers set out to solve a tions. Women’s welfare concerned

296 Minnesota History Matron greeting guests, about 1918, in the Woman’s Hotel lobby, a genteel contrast to the building’s exterior and surroundings housed Sallie Larson, one of Verna ing Home on Tenth Street and the women being radicalized. In those Zastrow’s colleagues at the Swedish Transient Home for Girls at Seven - highly charged days before World Hospital; nurse Evelyn Kluck, 23, teenth Street and Stevens Avenue. War I, middle-class Minnesotans and her 16-year-old sister, a servant By 1930 the Woman’s Hotel had feared that organizations such as the in a private home; Hula Dahl, a 27- moved out to Tenth and Marquette. 24 Industrial Workers of the World year-old Norwegian hotel house - Part of the Progressives’ concern were gaining a foothold, especially keeper; and 78-year-old Helen Buck, was to get rid of prostitution. Local among the unskilled laborers of the who did not report any employment. historian David Rosheim estimated upper Midwest. All the more reason, Other women’s housing, though, that there were 30 brothels and 300 the reformers argued, to improve stood beyond the city’s core in order prostitutes around Washington the Gateway residents’ lot and con - to pull women out of the Gateway. Avenue in 1900. The Progressives’ nect them more securely to the good The Lutheran Hospice and Home efforts, especially from 1908 to 1910, life that America had to offer, so for Young Women, founded in 1906 did succeed in getting many prosti - that they would not be attracted to at 828 Sixth Street, provided accom - tutes off the street and driving their alien ideas. 26 modation for working and homeless trade underground. 25 The working people of Minne- women; it organized an employment If living conditions in the Gate - apolis were never won over by the bureau and even an orphanage. way concerned the reformers, so IWW in large numbers. Nor did There was also the Woman’s Board - too did the possibility of men and they much improve themselves,

Sprin g/Summer 2003 297 Unemployed men in Gateway park, July 1937 either. They lived on, and they got 60-year-olds and one 70-year-old, New York. In 1910 about 21,000 older. In 1900 a federal census taker the owner, lived there, too. 27 men had been employed in lumber - found six unmarried day laborers ing; by 1927 that number had and a musician living at 211 Nicollet rom 1920 to 1960 the Gateway dropped to 7,000. The 1920s spelled Avenue. Two were from Sweden, one F area distilled into a denser and depression for many people living (the musician) from Ireland, the rest denser concentration of white, on the margins in Minneapolis. 28 born in the United States. The old - working-class men on their own When hard times hit, they hit est was 34 and the youngest 28. with an increasingly distinctive way hard in the Gateway. Economic Twenty years later, 16 people lived of life. After 1919, when the Eight- swings had a greater impact on life at 211. Two were German born, the eenth Amendment to the Constitu - there than had the Progressives or rest American. They included mostly tion prohibited the sale and manu - labor organizers. Economic failure laborers, plus a janitor, teamster, facture of liquor, saloons formally pushed laborers out of seasonal and desk clerk, painter, cook, and one went out of business, as elsewhere, casual work but not necessarily out woman, the housekeeper. Two, in - but some found ways to persist. The of the neighborhood. In fact, it more cluding the housekeeper, were wid - greater change in the 1920s was the often and more effectively locked owed, the rest single. One resident dwindling of the timber trade and them in. was 28. Four were in their 30s, five the imminent eclipse of the Minne - Poverty intensified in the 1930s in their 40s, three in their 50s. Two apolis flour mills by those of Buffalo, as the depression settled in. For

298 Minnesota History those in the Gateway who had never The Union Gospel Mission and become only one neighborhood in a signed on to the American dream other evangelical organizations be - larger city, and an increasingly male (or had already signed off), living on came increasingly visible Gateway and disreputable one at that. As the the margins was familiar. But one institutions. In exchange for an city’s shadow, it housed much that tragedy of the depression was that exhortation or sermon, a man could Minneapolis wanted to ignore— people who had signed on—or tried secure a meal and a bed for the night , drugs, prostitution, homosexuality, to—were also pushed to the margins. even a reading room or resting place and gambling. It had once been the More and more of them found their during the day. For some, the life city’s heart; then, one layer at a way to the Gateway, some for the might not have been much harder time, one class at a time, people had cheap lodgings, some for the hiring than what they already knew. moved out. They turned their backs halls, some to nap in the parks and The missions picked up as much on the city (except when they wanted public squares. of the relief work as they could, and to breach society’s conventions and A Civil Works Administration then the city and state and the New rules). Inner Minneapolis along the building-by-building survey of Min - Deal government assumed a more river became an embarrassment, a neapolis in 1932 and 1933 offers a active role. During the 1930s most run-down, last-resort hole up, a snapshot of life in the midst of the public efforts were directed at help - better back room than a front porch. depression. The bank at the site of ing people hold on and survive, Mr. Gale’s old house at Fourth and offering some relief to a growing, n the 1950s—war over, federal Marquette now numbered among aging population of men in declining Ifunds available, and modern re - its neighbors a mix of small busi - health in a declining job market. forms in the air—the city’s attention nesses, cafes, pawnshops, movie The Gateway neighborhood, the turned again to solving what was seen theaters, and vacant or half-full original Minneapolis, gradually had as the perennial Gateway problem. hotels above the stores. Buildings were deteriorating from age and Aging single men inside Hennepin Avenue’s Union City Mission, 1925; hard times lack of care. Most by the 1930s hit the Gateway before the Great Depression. housed tenants; owners lived else - where. But the mix of rooms and businesses suggests that a way of life persisted in the neighborhood. It wasn’t the life that Minneapolis city fathers (or mothers) wanted people to be living, for the good of the peo - ple or for the good of the city. But in the 1930s and 1940s little could be done. So, cafes, pawnshops, second - hand stores, and other businesses survived or perished. After 1933 the bars returned, still limited by law to the Gateway neighborhood, and the area’s entertainments continued to lure outsiders: servicemen—not unlike the seasonal workers—who roared into town looking for a cheap place to stay and a good time; col - lege students out on a lark; travelers in between trains or buses. A few people continued to live in those rooms above the stores, in the cages and boardinghouses. 29

Sprin g/Summer 2003 299 Study groups, city boards, Chamber let Island in the Mississippi River Street, and the river. These properties of Commerce committees, the and making the Gateway into a cen - would be razed and replaced by Downtown Council, the Minnea- ter for government services. Plans something new and exciting. What polis Retailers, the Minneapolis for hotels, for economic develo p- that would be was not clear, but Downtown Business Association, ment, for a new city center danced parking lots were desperately needed even the Minneapolis Building and in reformers’ heads. A first step and would do in the meantime. 32 Construction Trades Council and included tearing down the Gateway Not unmindful of the residents, the Teamsters union all concluded pavilion and fencing the park, desig - the city in 1958 hired Theodore that the time for reform had passed. nating it for “eye enjoyment only,” Caplow, a University of Minnesota The Gateway had to go. What civic as a Minneapolis Star reporter wrote. sociologist, to study the Gateway boosters now desired was to replace There had been lots of talk before, neighborhood in anticipation of the the “cancerous Lower Loop” with “an but this time something was going clearance. He documented a way of imaginative, exciting and dynamic to happen. By the late 1950s plans life that maybe didn’t make sense to development,” a “beautiful entrance were coming together. 31 the city or to many outsiders but did to a beautiful city.” That became The plans involved the city pur - make sense and fit the needs of the the dream. 30 chasing—with a combination of state 2,783 men and 122 women he found Various plans circulated and and federal funds—some 175 to 225 there. Three-quarters of the men were dropped, including moving all properties in an area bounded by were over 50 and nearly half were the down-and-out residents to Nicol - Third and Hennepin Avenues, Third no longer in the labor market. Infir - mity, age, or the difficulty of getting Demolition of the Gateway pavilion, October 1953 unskilled-labor jobs after age 60 meant that their work years were over. The women, including Verna Zastrow, I suspect, spanned nearly the same range as the men, but most were at its younger end and more were still employed. 33 The population was 95 percent white, 75 percent native born, and only 5 percent currently married. Their residential stability surprised even Caplow, who reported that 1 in 6 “has lived at the same address for ten years or more ” and another 6 percent for more than 20 years. Seven men had lived at the same address for more than 30 years, and three had been in the same lodging house for more than 40. Even so, Caplow, like most observers through - out the twentieth century, labeled these people as homeless, a term that reveals more about the prejudices of people using it than about the people to whom it was applied. As early as 1911, a bleak portrait of lodging-house life had described Minneapolis’s “colonies” of mostly lumber-camp and agricultural laborers as homeless.

300 Minnesota History Even though a 1936 report showed that nearly 80 percent of Gateway relief recipients had lived there for at least five years, the agency respon - sible for them was called the Home - less Men’s Bureau until “homeless” was dropped because the men objected so strongly. 34 As Caplow himself later wrote, homeless people were not attached to society through any of the “six major types of affiliative bonds: fam - ily, school, work, religion, politics, and recreation.” It was this absence of bonds that reformers had long found so distressing and challeng - ing—even threatening. The Gateway was a neighborhood of people who rejected conventional society and a haven for those who rejected its norms for an evening or a weekend. This is what urban renewal had to remove—blight and this visible rejec - tion of conventional American life. It could not be that people wanted to live like this. Calling these people homeless, citing the health dangers Photographer Jerome Liebling documented “the struggle that so many faced in their of the lodging houses, and focusing attempts to hold on and make their way” as the blighted Gateway succumbed to on the filth in the neighborhood urban renewal; House of Charity, Minneapolis, 1959. allowed reformers to claim urban renewal as the only option. 35 was “essentially this community’s rest so they also had a bit of privacy. Caplow and his team of graduate home for its low-income residents.” 36 They had friends and people who students asked about 275 residents More important, as the Chicago could tide them over during the thin why they lived on skid row and found study reported, the neighborhood times at the end of a month. They their answers remarkably consistent provided “companionship and relief frequented the same eateries (often with the findings of a larger Chicago from a lonely old age” for people breakfast in one, dinner in another) survey. In that study, the draw of the who had spent their lives among where the waitresses “know most of residents’ way of life becomes most other laboring men. In this neigh - their customers and their prefer - evident—even compelling. There borhood the residents found a sense ences,” said Caplow. Most residents were practical reasons—cost, conve - of place, human companionship, spent much of their time in their nience, and, buried in the answers, like-mindedness, and acceptance, hotels, either in their rooms or in the familiarity. In Chicago, an old pen - too. They could dress in shabby lobbies, which they treated as their sioner received about $77 per month clothing, hang out, drink a little or living rooms. They patronized local in assistance ($71 in Minneapolis) a lot, and fit in. They lived around businesses including the second- and could pay for food and shelter for others who were partially or wholly hand stores, the barber college, the about $70 per month. For the more unemployed, among people without library. Almost 40 percent reported desperate, the Gateway was the place family ties. The older men tended to that they wouldn’t seek any improve - of last resort. Where else could they live in rooms or apartments—rather ments in their accommodations if go? Caplow observed that Skid Row than in the dormitories or cubicles— they moved. 37

Sprin g/Summer 2003 301 Contrary to popular belief, most lishments. Caplow and others argued were cleaner—fewer bugs, better of these men did not spend their that this inference was wrong, but toilets, walls that went to the ceiling, days in the bars. They couldn’t have to no avail. 38 more privacy, safer. But Judith afforded it, even if they’d wanted to. Martin and David Lanegran, who And, almost a third of them simply tarting in 1959, the City of Min - studied the effects of urban renewal did not drink. But this association of Sneapolis began to buy up prop - on the Gateway, argued that the residents with alcohol, forged in the erty in the Gateway and relocate process ultimately made hundreds public mind decades earlier, contin - businesses and residents. Over the of people homeless. What the re - ued to shape popular perceptions next two years, nearly 850 people formers had most objected to, they of both the problems and their solu - were moved, half of them into pri - finally accomplished. 39 tions. A typical Minneapolis Tribune vate rental housing, virtually all of Among those relocated was Case story in 1956 reported, for example, them outside the downtown. Within Study #1, a man identified as not that “forty-eight percent of the resi - four years, 34 families, 1,724 “unat - atypical. He had lived in the neigh - dential buildings are within one tached” males, and 40 “unattached” borhood since 1902 when he had block’s walking distance of 6 or more females (mostly maids and kitchen emigrated from Norway at the age bars and liquor stores,” with the workers who lived where they of 21. He could not get around much implication that the residents were worked) had been relocated. No by himself and was largely confined the ones frequenting those estab - doubt many of their new lodgings to his room. People brought him food; they probably cashed his social Room in a vanished “cage” hotel, included in a 1963 Minneapolis Housing and Rede - security checks, paid his bills, maybe velopment Authority progress report on clearing the city’s “notorious area” even brought him a drink or two and news from the streets. In 1962 he was moved into a foster home outside of the neighborhood. Al - though he probably got better and more regular food, one wonders if he might not have preferred to stay where he was. 40 Another resident, an 82-year-old “healthy, pleasant, neat old gentle - man,” who had lived in a cage hotel for ten years, seemed pleased to move. His caseworker reported, however, that after several months he reappeared at the relocation of - fice and asked to move back. He had not been able to find “roast pork and applesauce like he could get on the avenue.” A third man of “advanced senility” was sent first to the public hospital. When released he went back to the Gateway. After a time he was sent to a private hospital, then to a nursing home. One summer day, he escaped and walked back to the Gateway, to a different hotel and “to his old habits.” By 1963 most of the properties that the city bought had been torn

302 Minnesota History Not long ago a poet gave a read - ing at the Minnesota Center for the Book Arts, just a block south of where the Hershmans’ first grocery store once stood. He remembered that when he was young and day - dreaming in a writerly sort of way, his mother warned that if he weren’t careful he’d end up on Washington Avenue—the fate of those who lived at the margins of society. So, he joked, he wished that his mother were alive to see that coming to Washington Avenue now meant that he’d made it.

Notes I’m indebted to Tracey Baker of the Min - nesota Historical Society for help with photographs, Bob McCune for his guid - ance in the Minneapolis City Archives, and Stephen Nelson and Fr. Rene Mc - Graw for their careful reading of the man - uscript. I’ve been especially helped by David L. Rosheim’s 1978 book, The Other Minneapolis. Summer visitors enjoy West River Parkway, which fronts the old mill district and 1. Theodore C. Blegen, Minnesota: A continues under the latest Hennepin Avenue Bridge. History of the State (Minneapolis: Univer - sity of Minnesota Press, 1975), 340. The map is in the collection of the Minnesota down and replaced with parking goals—to increase the number of Historical Society (MHS), St. Paul. 2. Here and below, Charles W. Nelson, lots. As Minneapolis Star reporter legitimate businesses, to revitalize “Minneapolis Architecture for the Elite: A Frank Murray wrote earlier, “Ever the neighborhood—took time to be View of the Gilded Age of the 1880s,” Hennepin History 52 (Winter 1993): 8–9; since Minneapolis discarded its realized. Now, some 40 years later, United States Manuscript Census, 1870, lumberjack shirt and slipped into a the process is underway. In Septem - Hennepin Co., microfilm, roll 5, Ward 3, p. dinner jacket, it has tried to shake ber 2003 the Minnesota Historical 36–37, MHS; Minneapolis City Directory, 1880–81. Neighborhood layout determined off the unwelcome attentions of its Society will open Mill City Museum from maps and photographs. Minneapo - first love–the Gateway District.” The in the midst of Mill Ruins Park. The lis’s street and avenue names usually in - 41 clude directional terms. Those named in reformers had finally succeeded. Guthrie Theater is planning to move this article are “South.” With the era of urban renewal, to a new riverside setting. Hundreds 3. Nelson, “Minneapolis Architecture,” Minneapolis gained some of the of elegant for well-off 13. When Gale moved his office a few years later, he didn’t move far (and not toward clean-up that it wanted, though not young, middle-aged, and older people his house), but to 126 Fifth Street; Minne - as much as many had hoped. The have risen near the river that the city apolis City Directory, 1890, vol. 1, p. 486; 1895–96, p. 386; 1915, vol. 1, p. 730. city could no longer be said to have a once more faces. No longer an in - 4. U.S. Manuscript Census, 1900, Pop - skid row, as the neighborhood had dustrial river, no longer the bringer ulation, Hennepin Co., roll 767, enumera - come to be called. Minneapolis and taker of goods and supplies, no tion district 51, p. 248B, 249A. See also Thomas E. Reinhart, “The Minneapolis could boast of uniting major interest longer the powerhouse of the city, Black Community, 1863–1926,” typescript, groups to eliminate much of the no longer its workroom. Once again 16–17, 23, MHS. 5. Minneapolis City Directory, 1905; blight that had corroded the historic aiming to be the front door—though Civil Works Administration, Building and core near the river. Some of the city’s not to a boardinghouse. Housing Survey, City Planning Commis -

Sprin g/Summer 2003 303 sion, Minneapolis, 1933, manuscript, found that nearly 30 percent of the resi - Minnesota State Archives, MHS; Curtis B. Minneapolis City Archives, City Hall. dents did not drink and 34 percent were Akenson, “Selected Facets of Community 6. U.S. Manuscript Census, 1900, roll “moderate” drinkers (did not imbibe rou - Influence on Political Power in the Rede - 767, enumeration district 54, p. 283A. tinely). The 38 percent who routinely velopment of the Minneapolis Lower Loop” 7. Minneapolis City Directory, 1905, drank at least once per week were labeled (Ph. D. diss., University of Minnesota, 1910, 1915, 1920, 1925, 1930. “heavy” drinkers. 1962), 60–70; Minneapolis Star, Feb. 19, 8. Sanborn Fire Insurance Map, Min - 19. Howard J. Karger, The Sentinels of 1952, p. 17. neapolis, 1912, microfilm roll 8, vol. 3, Order: A Study of Social Control and the 31. Minneapolis Star, Sept. 30, 1953, sheet 250 and contiguous, MHS. Minneapolis Settlement House Movement, p. 35, July 9, 1954, p. 15. 9. Dorothy O. Holtz et al., “Report on 1915–1950 (Lanham, MD: University Press 32. For the range of properties to be the Relocation of Residents, Businesses, of America, 1987), 53–60. purchased, see, for example, Akenson, and Institutions from the Gateway Center 20. Alice W. Solenberger, One Thousand “Selected Facets of Community Influence,” Project Area” (Minneapolis Housing and Homeless Men: A Study of Original Records 65–66; HRA, Gateway Center Progress Redevelopment Authority [HRA], Nov. (New York: Russell Sage Foundation, Report, n. p. 1963), 19–20; Minneapolis City Directory, 1911), 330–34; Karger, Sentinels of Order, 33. HRA, General Report, 36. 1904–06, 1910, 1915, 1920, 1925, 1930–35. 53–70. 34. HRA, General Report, 23, 73, 79, 10. U.S. Manuscript Census, 1900, 21. Karger, Sentinels of Order, 137–38. 80, 82; Solenberger, One Thousand Home - Population, Hennepin Co., roll 766, enu - 22. Minneapolis Journal, Mar. 28, less, 330–34; Paul M. Segner, Minneapolis meration district 33, p. 276B, 277A, 277B; 1908, p. 4; Jane Jacobs, The Death and Unemployed: A Description and Analysis Tillman M. Sogge, Seasonal Irregularity of Life of Great American Cities (1961; of the Resident Relief Population of the Employment in Minneapolis, St. Paul and reprint, London: Pelican, 1972), 35. City of Minneapolis from 1900 to 1936 Duluth, University of Minnesota, Additional 23. Frame, “Women Workers,” 10. (Minneapolis: Board of Public Welfare, Publications of the Employment Stabiliza - 24. Lynn Weiner, “‘Our Sister’s Keepers’: Division of Relief, 1937); “Manual of the tion Research Institute, Nov. 1931, p. 5. The Minneapolis Woman’s Christian Men’s Bureau of the Division of Public 11. Mary Van Kleeck, A Seasonal Indus - Association and Housing for Working Relief, Department of Public Welfare,” try: A Study of the Millinery Trade in New Women,” Minnesota History 46 (Spring Minneapolis, Jan. 15, 1935, p. 1, MHS. York (New York: Russell Sage Foundation, 1979): 189–200; Frame, “Women Work - 35. Howard M. Bahr and Theodore 1917), 25; HRA, A General Report on the ers,” 10–11; U.S. Manuscript Census, 1920, Caplow, Old Men Drunk and Sober (New Problem of Relocating the Population of Hennepin Co., Population, roll 833, enu - York: New York University Press, 1973), the Lower Loop Redevelopment Area meration district 65, p. 28; Minneapolis 3–7, 39, 229. (1958), 17. City Directory, 1930. 36. Caplow, quoted in Minneapolis 12. Minneapolis City Directory, 25. Rosheim, Other Minneapolis; Tribune, Dec. 14, 1959, p. 6. See also, 1905–55; Tasslyn Frame, “Women Workers Frame, “Women Workers,” 15. HRA, General Report, 61, 83–86. at St. Anthony Falls,” Hennepin History 53 26. The truckers’ strikes in the 1930s 37. HRA, General Report, 84, 117, 126, (Spring 1994): 5, 7; Elizabeth Faue, Com - did take place partially in the Gateway, as 127. munity of Suffering and Struggle: Women, much because of the warehouses just north 38. HRA, General Report, 148–51; Men, and the Labor Movement in Minne - of Hennepin Avenue as the presence of Minneapolis Tribune, Jan. 8, 1956, p. 7B. apolis, 1915–1945 (Chapel Hill: University radical laborers. 39. Holtz, “Report on Relocation of of North Carolina Press, 1991), 60. 27. U.S. Manuscript Census, 1900, roll Residents,” 13–14; Judith A. Martin and 13. Faue, Community of Suffering, 23. 767, enumeration district 49, p. 227A, and David A. Lanegran, Where We Live: The 14. Alvin H. Hansen, Marion R. Trabue, 1920, Hennepin Co., Population, roll 834, Residential Districts of Minneapolis and and Harold S. Diehl, Duluth Casual Labor enumeration district 89, p. 6A. St. Paul (Minneapolis: University of Min - Group, University of Minnesota, Bulletin 28. Hansen, Duluth Casual Labor, 11; nesota Press, 1983), 50; Martin Anderson, of the Employment Stabilization Research Rosheim, Other Minneapolis, 57. The Federal Bulldozer: A Critical Analysis Institution, vol. 1, no. 3 (Mar. 1932), 42–45. 29. Civil Works Administration, Build - of Urban Renewal, 1949–1962 (Cambridge: 15. Hansen, Duluth Casual Labor ing and Housing Survey, City Planning MIT Press, 1964), 218–21. Writing while Group, 42–46. Commission, Minneapolis, 1932, manu - the urban renewal of the 1960s was still 16. David L. Rosheim, The Other Min - script, Minneapolis City Archives. underway, Anderson (p. 219) was bitterly neapolis: Or, The Rise and Fall of The 30. “A Plan for the Redevelopment of critical of its efforts, arguing that they were Gateway (Maquoketa, IA: Andromeda the Lower Loop Area,” City Planning generally carried out “for the benefit of Press, 1978), 81; Minneapolis Star, Sept. 28, Commission, Feb. 1952, Minneapolis City people who do not live in run-down areas.” 1953, p. 8. Archives; HRA, Gateway Center Progress 40. Here and below, Holtz, “Report on 17. Rosheim, Other Minneapolis, 40; Report No. 1 (Sept. 1961), n. p., in Minne - Relocation of Residents,” 19–22. Minneapolis City Directory, 1903. apolis Published Records and Reports of 41. Minneapolis Star, Sept. 22, 1953, p. 1. 18. HRA, General Report, 150, which Minneapolis City Agencies, Hennepin Co.,

The photo on p. 303 is courtesy the Greater Minneapolis Convention and Visitors Association; all others are from the MHS collections. The images on p. 291 and 293 are by Charles J. Hibbard; p. 294 by George Luxton for the Minneapolis Journal; p. 295 by Charles Gibson; p. 297 by Lee Brothers; p. 298 and 300 by Minneapolis Star-Journal-Tribune; and p. 299 by Norton and Peel. Page 301 is a Jerome Liebling fine art photo; the quote is from Jerome Liebling: The Minnesota Photos (St. Paul: Minnesota Historical Society Press, 1997), 68.

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