Boosterism, Reform, and Urban Design in Minneapolis, 1880-1920

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2015-08-18 Making a Model Metropolis: Boosterism, Reform, and Urban Design in Minneapolis, 1880-1920

Murray, Shannon

Murray, S. (2015). Making a Model Metropolis: Boosterism, Reform, and Urban Design in Minneapolis, 1880-1920 (Unpublished doctoral thesis). University of Calgary, Calgary, AB. doi:10.11575/PRISM/26815 http://hdl.handle.net/11023/2391 doctoral thesis

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Making a Model Metropolis:

Boosterism, Reform, and Urban Design in Minneapolis, 1880-1920

Shannon E. Murray

A THESIS

SUBMITTED TO THE FACULTY OF GRADUATE STUDIES

IN PARTIAL FULFILMENT OF THE REQUIREMENTS FOR THE

DEGREE OF DOCTOR OF PHILOSOPHY

GRADUATE PROGRAM IN HISTORY

CALGARY, ALBERTA

AUGUST, 2015

In 1883, the Minneapolis Park Board commissioned Horace Cleveland to develop a system of parks. Cleveland delivered more than lines on a map. He urged Minneapolitans to recognize the important roles that aesthetics and environment played in developing a successful city. This became part of a foundational ethos for civic leaders and social reformers who worked to cultivate an identity for Minneapolis as a beautiful city that would, by design, evade the slums and overcrowding of older cities and to set it apart from all others. The collaboration between Cleveland and the Park Board was but one project of middle- and upper-class civic leaders and social reformers who positioned themselves as stewards of the city’s social and physical development. Though their motivations occasionally diverged, they shared the same goal: to help Minneapolis avoid the perils of urbanization and make it a model metropolis. Combining programming with environmental interventions, they targeted workplaces, homes, schools, sites of consumption and leisure, and city parks. Using studies on contemporary conditions produced by civic leaders and social reformers, personal papers, and plans for civic space, this dissertation examines the sites social reformers and civic leaders targeted and the ways that they sought to reform the people by re-forming the city. This dissertation examines both physical and ideological developments in the process of city formation in Minneapolis. It situates Minneapolis as engaged in and contributing to national and international ideologies on labor, education and schools, consumption, leisure and recreation, urban design, and housing. It interrogates how the city’s eastern-born civic leaders and boosters conceptualized an identity for Minneapolis that transcended its location on the edge of the West. Unlike many other municipalities during this time, civic leaders and social reformers attempted to guide rather than control the behavior of the city’s working class. In so doing, they built a network of stewardship that developed programming and redemptive places to entice Minneapolitans away from “deleterious” venues with “base” content and used environmental interventions to reconfigure the city into an uplifting and beautiful place.

Acknowledgements I have left the acknowledgements to the end, thinking it would be simple to show my gratitude to all those who have supported me throughout this process. These are, however, the hardest words to write. So many people have come in and out of my life over these past few years who have helped me grow as a scholar and as a person. I have learned that support comes from unexpected places, so it is important to always keep an open mind and heart.

My great friend and frequent editor, Amy McKinney, often said that it takes a village to get through a PhD. She is the mayor of my village and I would have never made it through without her kindness and support. Robyn Gifford and Kris Radford have gone from office mates to dear friends who have shared this entire process with me. I look forward to our next adventures and travels when none of us has a draft to get back to. During my time at the University of Calgary, I have been lucky enough to become friends with some of my colleagues. Matt Bucholtz, Mikkel Dack, Will Pratt, Stuart Barnard, Andrew McEwen, Melanie Wedel, and Beau Cleland (and Aylin Atilla) have made good conference travel buddies, offered thoughtful feedback, and helped make the (many) years of being a student fun. Christine Leppard provided support and motivation during my last year of writing and I am lucky to count her as a friend after all these years.

My supervisor, Elizabeth Jameson, has pushed me to grow as a scholar and a person. From a naïve Master’s student to a slightly more informed PhD, I could not have navigated this process without her. She has offered unwavering support throughout my time as a student, and I am grateful for her guidance. David Monteyne changed how I looked at history and the practice of research. This dissertation could not have been done without his influence. I would not have had the confidence to even apply to graduate school without my undergraduate mentor, Kurt Hackemer. Sometimes I cursed him for this courage, but he helped me through several panics and forced me to keep my eyes on the prize.

iii My family has been extremely supportive throughout my time graduate school. My mom has been an excellent archives assistant (despite shaky photographer hands). My dad never asked me about my “paper” or my progress, which I know was out of love and understanding, not disinterest. Significant portions of my research would not have been possible without my sister. I’m very grateful she cared enough to make the introduction and my work is much improved because of it. Sherrie Blaney’s kindness (and frequent baking and meal deliveries) helped make Calgary my new home and I am thankful for all that she has shared with me.

Most importantly, I owe deep gratitude to my partner and best friend, Ryan Blaney. His endless patience and unconditional love throughout the many ups and downs of my PhD program provided me with much needed support and stability.

iv Table of Contents

Abstract……………………………………………………………………………………ii Acknowledgements ...... iii Table of Contents ...... v List of Figures and Illustrations ...... vi Introduction………..……………………………………………………………………..1 Chapter One: From the Mill City to Minneapolis…………………………………....35 Chapter Two: Civic Stewardship and the Open Shop…………………………..…...75 Chapter Three: Schools and Education in the City………………………...…….....110 Chapter Four: A “City of Homes”…………………………………………………...166 Chapter Five: Landscapes of Consumption and Redemption…………….………..202 Chapter Six: Parks to Recreation...... 274 Conclusion...... 333 Bibliography...... 349

v List of Figures and Illustrations

Figure 1.1: Two-page spread from a booster pamphlet, announcing Minneapolis's “progress” from a reservation to a city…………………………………………..67

Figure 1.2: Minneapolis: The City of Lakes and Gardens……………………………….72

Figure 2.1: “Who’ll Steer the Ship?”…………………………………………………...104

Figure 3:1: “Senior.”……………………………………………………………………125

Figure 3.2: “Whither?”………………………………………………………………….126

Figure 3.3: “Nationality of Parents.”...... 136

Figure 3.4: Breakdown of 111 girls and 192 boys who left school to work…………………………………………………………141

Figure 4.1: “Windowless wall. Apartments lighted only by windows in front and rear. Buildings contain 25 dark rooms.”……………………………………………..187

Figure 4.2: “Dark, unventilated rooms and toilets in buildings.”………………………188

Figure 4.3: “Combination toilet and bedroom entirely dark located in basement. Flashlight photograph. Bed blurred through nearness to camera.”……………..190

Figure 4.4: “Ten rooms depend entirely on this lot line court, three feet, eight inches wide, for light and air. Present ordinance permits such court to be only four feet wide for a four-story building.”………………………………………………...191

Figure 4.5: Image of Bohemian Flats showing relative position to housing on top of the bluffs……………………………………………………………………………193

Figure 4.6: Image showing Bohemian Flats residences descending toward the river, underneath the railroad bridge………………………………………………….194

Figure 5.1: “Gigantic lamp which was to light the city, Bridge Square,” approximately 1884……………………………………………………………..……………...207

Figure 5.2: “Tried and Found Guilty of Gross Immorality,” 1911 broadside………….221

Figure 5.3: Interior and exterior shots of the Minneapolis YWCA…………………….238

vi Figure 5.4: Interior and exterior images of the Minneapolis Central YMCA………….241

Figure 5.5: Voegeli’s Drug Store……………………………………………………….243

Figure 5.6: Donaldson’s Department Store, with Voegeli’s visible in the bottom right corner………………………………………………………………………...…244

Figure 5.7: Dayton’s Department Store (left) on Nicollet Avenue……………………..250

Figure 5.8: Streetscape of Butler Brothers Warehouse………………………………....252

Figure 5.9: The Nicollet Avenue corner shared by Dayton’s (left) and Donaldson’s (right), with bustling street and sidewalk traffic………………………………..253

Figure 5.10: Employment Department of the Munsingwear factory…………………...263

Figure 5.11: Interior images from Munsingwear; from top to bottom: rest room, recreation room, and library………………………...... 265

Figure 6.1: Map of Minneapolis showing Park System………………………………...285

Figure 6.2: Map showing Minnehaha Parkway and Minnehaha Park………………….297

Figure 6.3: First Floor Plan of Pavilion at Minnehaha Park……………………………298

Figure 6.4: Basement Plan of Pavilion at Minnehaha Park…………………………….300

Figure 6.5: Refectory Plan for Minnehaha Falls………………………………………..301

Figure 6.6: Site of Logan Park, Enhancement of Cleveland’s 1883 Plan………………309

Figure 6.7: Children Gathered on a Porch……………………………………………...313

Figure 6.8: An Alley Filled with Garbage……………………………………………...314

Figure 6.9: Yard with Garbage…………………………………………………………315

Figure 6.10: Brick Block Play Ground…………………………………………………316

Figure 6.11: Children of the Brick Block………………………………………………317

Figure 6.12: First Ward (Logan) Park Original Plan………………………………..….324

Figure 6.13: “Suggestive Plan for the Transformation of Logan Park into a General Recreation Ground”..…………………………………………………………...326

vii Figure 6.15: Proposed Arrangement of the Athletic Field at the Parade...... 329

Figure 6.15: Map Showing Locations and Types of the Recreational Activities………327

Figure 7.1: The Sixth Avenue Artery…………………………………………………..335

viii Introduction

You are always welcome in Minneapolis. It is a city famed as much for its hospitality as for its beauty and its commercial greatness. -“Minneapolis,” a 1915 booster pamphlet1

You will find Minneapolis a city in which commerce and beauty have formed a happy combination. It is big as a manufacturer and distributor, yet it has not developed in material welfare at the expense of its natural gifts. It is a city of culture as well as one of industry. It is a city of character, a city with a future. It is a city of progressive ideas – a good place to visit and a good place to establish a business and a home. -“Minneapolis, Where You are Always Welcome,” a 1912 booster pamphlet2

In the early-twentieth century, Minneapolis boosters found no shortage of

magnanimous compliments for the young city. The above excerpts highlight the points of

pride that the city’s nineteenth-century founders worked to instill in their settlement: a

natural, beautiful, commercially-successful city. Civic leaders and boosters cultivated an image of Minneapolis as a city unlike any other, a city without antecedent. Through

planning and the development of a network of stewardship that saw civic leaders and

social reformers partner to address social issues, Minneapolis was supposed to evade the

urban decay as seen in the East and avoid becoming a boom town like so many cities in

the West.

The high level planning, stewardship, and guidance developed by civic leaders

and social reformers could not control the ways in which Minneapolitans navigated the

city. In December 1906, seventeen-year-old Thora Thoresen began a new diary.3 She was

1 Minneapolis Civic and Commerce Association, “Minneapolis,” 1. Minnesota Historical Society Archives F613.M15 M514 1915. 2 Minneapolis Civic and Commercial Association, “Minneapolis, Where You are Always Welcome,” 5. Minnesota Historical Society Archives F613.M15 M58 1912z. 3 Thora Thoresen, “Diary” (January 15, 1907). Hennepin History Museum Archives B.20.15.

1 reading Owen Meredith’s book of poetry Lucile in addition to newspapers and pop culture magazines. She made no mention of attending school, writing instead about her job, shopping, and going to the Young Women’s Christian Association (YWCA) gym with friends. She rode the street car to work at a dress shop, where she was a seamstress.

Occasionally, she grumbled about her employer making her do company errands and the fact that the sewing room in which she labored was often so cold she had to wear a jacket. Outside of work, Thoresen was happy to spend her hard-earned wages, heading to the Glass Block – the opulent downtown location of Donaldson’s department store – as well as the Orpheum for shows; these outings earned her a chastisement from her mother, though she did not specify why.4 She mentioned the names of friends and neighbors, some of whom, like her friend Litta, were Norwegian, but she had engaged in an ethnically eclectic social circle.5 Thoresen, along with her younger sister and Litta, frequented the YWCA’s gym as well as programs the organization sponsored such as talks delivered by traveling ministers.

Though it only covered a few months, the diary offers a small window into the ways a seventeen-year-old woman moved through and experienced Minneapolis in the early-twentieth century. Her omissions are also telling. Thoresen did not write about the booster vision of Minneapolis becoming a model metropolis that civic leaders had crafted. She also did not discuss employers’ efforts to establish the open-shop principle or even, despite her complaints about her work environment, her potential to join in any broader labor movement. And, although a participant in them, Thoresen did not discuss

4 Thoresen, “Diary,” January 19, 1907. 5 Thoresen, “Diary.” Names like Pearson, Sullivan, Sather, Eriksen, Percy, and Robertson all appear, alongside her coworker whose first name is only given, Raghnild (commonly Norwegian).

2 the YWCA in terms of its being a redemptive place that she frequented to feel uplifted.

She did not see the city as a series of intersecting systems that she had the power to guide, but the civic leaders and social reformers who developed spaces and programs to entice Thoresen and thousands like her certainly did. Whether or not she was aware of it,

Thoresen’s movements and activities along with those of other working-class

Minneapolitans influenced the ways in which the city was formed and the ways in which civic leaders and social reformers developed stewardship plans. Between 1880 and 1920,

American cities were sites of upheaval and redemption, contestation and collaboration, prescription and negotiation. In Minneapolis, civic leaders and social reformers turned to environmental interventions to rationalize the urbanization process, guide the development of Minneapolitans’ characters, and develop their city into a model metropolis.

American Urban History

In the late-nineteenth century, Americans were struggling with the role cities would play in the country’s future. Corruption and bossism contaminated civic politics, industrialism polluted urban environments, unsafe working conditions, and the presence of unsanitary living conditions and poverty made urbanization a fearsome prospect.

Could these adverse byproducts of city-building be expunged? Could they, perhaps, be avoided? In the late 1890s, one writer from Cincinnati, Charles Frederic Goss, publicized a new word – philopolism – that was meant to capture a feeling similar to patriotism, but with the subject of love and pride being a city rather than a nation. Philopolism, Goss hoped, might inspire urban factions to overcome their differences and unite in a shared

love for their city. Responding to bossism, corruption, and deep ethnic and class

differences in his city, Goss argued that: “A city must be adored before it can be redeemed…it is philopolism alone…that is to work the redemption of our city.”6 Goss’s

book was intended to inspire civic leaders to aspire to develop cities into sites of social

harmony and physical beauty. He stated: “It is not so much grandeur that produces

philopolism as that philopolism produces grandeur.”7 It is unclear whether Minneapolis

civic leaders read Goss’s work, though the notion of civic pride resonated in many towns

and cities throughout the country and gave rise to efforts to define a new name for the

concept of loving one’s city.8 The turn of the twentieth century represented a critical time for American city development, as many cities looked for ways to order the process of city building and redress the issues of overcrowding, corruption, and sanitation.

The development (and redevelopment) of American cities has received treatment

from historians, particularly in works from the mid-to-late twentieth century. With roots

in the foundation of sociology, urban history developed from city biographies to

examinations of how the physical environment of the city interacted with, affected, and was affected by its inhabitants. For many decades, the city has served as a venue for urban history, though recently there have been calls to bring the city back into urban

6 Charles Frederic Goss, The Philopolist: OR, City Lover (Cincinnati: The Robert Clarke Company, 1898), 18. For more on the divisions and issues facing late-nineteenth century Cincinnati, see: Zane L. Miller, Boss Cox’s Cincinnati: Urban Politics in the Progressive Era (New York: Oxford University Press, 1968), particularly Part III: “Philopolism and the New Urban Discipline,” 111-147. 7 Goss, The Philopolist, 18. 8 In 1909, The New York Times ran a series of letters to the editor that discussed the merits of different words that would mean the love of place. One individual, stating that she was looking for a word that might conjure the feelings of patriotism but targeted at a particular place rather than a country, used the Latin term for town, oppidum to develop a new word, “oppidism.” The writer favored it for its applicability to country towns as well as larger cities, another replied that philopolism was, truly, more appropriate, stating that “Philos, love; polis, city – isn’t that a more expressive word?” Gertrude W. Orvis, “The Cost of Living: Domestic Excitements,” The New York Times, December 31, 1909: 8; Albert W. Terry, “A ‘Eumoric’ Oppodist: Has a ‘Good Time’ Seeking Room for the Fourth Dimension,” The New York Times, January 31, 1910: 6; W. J. L., “Philopolism,” The New York Times, January 3, 1910: 8. None cited Goss.

4 history.9 The earliest urban histories, termed urban biographies, “comprehensively [told] the ‘story’ of a single city,” but did not necessarily delve into analysis of historical processes that occurred there.10 Stephan Thernstrom and Richard Sennett’s 1969 edited collection Nineteenth-Century Cities: Essays in the New Urban History has been cited as one of the main catalysts for the school of new urban history. The work challenged urban biography and sought to locate the various social networks in different cities and to contextualize cities in the broader structures of nineteenth-century America.11

New urban history had its own struggles, particularly a lack of synthesis. As

Timothy Mahoney noted: “the general tendency to use analyses of individual cases to comprehend a spatially selective, diverse, and complex process such as urbanization has led to, at best, an episodic, fragmented, and simplistic understanding of urban development.”12 There were exceptional synthetic works, such as Lewis Mumford’s The

City in History, which presented a broad overview of urbanization and city history.13

There were also early urban histories that placed the events of one city’s past into broader

contexts, and they are still considered the foundation of the study of urban history. Zane

9 James Connolly, “Bringing the City Back in: Space and Place in the Urban History of the Gilded Age and Progressive Era,” The Journal of the Gilded Age and Progressive Era 1:3 (July 2002): 258-278). 10 Eric H. Monkkonen, America Becomes Urban: The Development of U.S. Cities & Towns 1780-1980. (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1988), 24. Raymond Mohl in his article “New Perspectives on American Urban History” stated that Arthur M. Schlesinger’s “The City in American History” was the earliest American urban history, though academics in other fields had studied cities since the late nineteenth century. Raymond Mohl, “New Perspectives on American Urban History” in The Making of Urban America, 2nd Edition Raymond Mohl, ed., (Lanham, MD: SR Books, 1997), 336; Arthur M. Schlesinger, Sr., “The City in American History,” The Mississippi Valley Historical Review 27:1 (Jun., 1940): 43-66. 11 Stephan Thernstrom and Richard Sennett, eds., Nineteenth-Century Cities: Essays in the New Urban History (New Haven: Yale University Press, 1969). Thernstrom’s work presented longitudinal mobility studies of an industrialized city that sparked many historians’ to undertake further mobility studies and other demographic analyses. 12 Timothy Mahoney, “Urban History in a Regional Context: River Towns on the Upper Mississippi, 1840- 1860,” The Journal of American History 72:2 (Sep., 1985): 318. 13 Lewis Mumford, The City in History: Its Origins, Its Transformations, Its Prospects (New York: Harcourt, Brace & World, 1961).

Miller’s Boss Cox’s Cincinnati, Roy Lubove’s The Progressives and the Slums, as well as Sam Bass Warner Jr.’s Streetcar Suburbs and The Private City demonstrated how city

forms and spatial distributions affected and were affected by race, class, gender,

economics, and politics.14

Early pioneers of more synthetic approaches to urban history like Theodore

Hershberg’s work on Philadelphia in the late 1970s built on these foundations and began showing the city as a process and presented experience, action, and the environment as interwoven.15 In the mid-1980s and early 1990s, some historians began to incorporate space within the city itself in their analyses as a factor in how events unfolded.16 As they worked to bring the city back into urban history, others sought to build syntheses by linking urban areas to wider regions and relating particular histories to broader conceptual and theoretical frameworks, showing the growing scope of what was considered to be urban history. Though early community histories were criticized for being too myopic in scope, regional and synthetic works were called out for “often stop[ping] short of treating individual cities as distinctive places, an approach that can add substantially to our understanding of the urban experience,” and thus while they were considered less fractious than studies that focused on one city, some saw regionalist

14 Miller, Boss Cox’s Cincinnati; Roy Lubove, The Progressives and the Slums: Tenement House Reform in New York City, 1890-1917 (Pittsburgh: University of Pittsburgh Press, 1962); Sam Bass Warner, Jr., Streetcar Suburbs: The Process of Growth in Boston (1870-1900) (Cambridge: President and Fellows of Harvard College, 1962); Sam Bass Warner, Jr., The Private City: Philadelphia in Three Periods of Its Growth (Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press, 1968). 15 Bas van Heur, “New Urban History” Encyclopedia of American Urban History, David Goldfield, ed. (Thousand Oaks, CA: Sage Publications, 2007), 537-8; Theodore Hershberg, “The New Urban History: Toward an Interdisciplinary History of the City,” Journal of Urban History, 5 (November 1978): 3-40. 16 Roy Rosenzweig, "Eight Hours for What We Will”: Workers and Leisure in an Industrial City, 1870- 1920 (Cambridge, UK, 1983); Francis G. Couvares, The Remaking of Pittsburgh: Class and Culture in an Industrializing City,1877-1919 (Albany, 1984); William Cronon, Nature’s Metropolis: Chicago and the Great West (New York: W.W. Norton and Company, 1992). Of course, a prime example of the regional framework being employed in the southern context is David Goldfield’s work. David Goldfield, Region, Race, and Cities: Interpreting the Urban South (Baton Rouge: Louisiana State University Press, 1997).

histories as lacking in the detail of cities-as-process works of new urban history.17

Perfecting this balance between the macro and the micro still plagues urban histories.

Urban historians in the 1990s sought not only to provide a better level of synthesis in

their field, but also to reconceptualize the role of the city in urban history and integrate it

into their analyses rather than simply use it as a venue.18 Louise Tilly noted that this period saw historians who “moved decisively beyond the more structural accounts of the past and used the history of social change in a specific city as a way to talk about cultural change.”19 In his article “Bringing the City Back In,” James Connolly echoed Tilly and

called for urban historians truly to integrate the city in their studies. He added that

looking at the “making and remaking” of spatial patterns would offer “a unique way to

approach questions about social relations, identity formation, and the exercise of

power.”20 This dissertation sought to keep the city as a central subject and show the ways

in which its residents formed, re-formed, and reformed it. As a result of this focus on one

specific city, it has some elements of the city biographies that were the foundation of

urban history. However, this work endeavored to situate Minneapolis in larger regional,

national, and international historiographical frameworks so as to avoid the myopic focus

that affected early city biographies.

The period between 1880 and 1920 was one of intensification of the presence of

women in public, the blurring of their private and public roles, and the ways in which

17 Connolly, “Bringing the City Back In,” 272. 18 Monkkonen, America Becomes Urban, 26. 19 Louise Tilly, “The ‘New Urban History’ Where is it Now?” City and Society 12:2 (2008): 100. A prime example of such a work was Lizabeth Cohen’s Making a New Deal, which examined the ways in which various ethnic groups in several Chicago neighborhoods reacted to the Depression and the New Deal: Lizabeth Cohen, Making a New Deal: Industrial Workers in Chicago, 1919-1939 (New York: Cambridge University Press, 1991). 20 Connolly, “Bringing the City Back In,” 276. Connolly defined “spatial patterns” as “products of conflict and negotiation among the many groups and interests active in the city.”

cities responded to their presence.21 Assessing the city as a process and integrating its

formal changes into historical narratives presented an opportunity better to incorporate

women into urban history. Christine Stansell’s 1987 work City of Women pointed to the

ways in which the city fragmented women’s experiences, but also enabled subordinate

populations, like the poor women living in the Bowery on whom she focused, to develop

communal networks and spaces in which they undermined New York City’s white male

hegemony.22 Other historians, such as Mary Ryan and Lori D. Ginzberg, furthered the

study of women and public space in the nineteenth century, demonstrating that women

often carved out public niches for their own use even during a time of supposed gender

segregation.23 In 2000, Sarah Deutsch published Women and the City, a study of the

contestation of the “gendered ideology of urban space” as women increasingly worked

“outside the home and frequent[ed] the streets in their leisure time.”24 Deutsch’s book

remains a significant work of urban history as she merged her gender analysis with

spatial assessments. She highlighted the ways in which human action affected changes in

the urban landscape, stating that “space does not have independent agency. Its meaning

or power is determined by the way groups of people organize their social, political,

economic, and other interactions…Urban spaces were designed, appropriated, or

reappropriated by different parties.”25 These designs and appropriations highlighted the

21 Noralee Frankel and Nancy S. Dye, eds., Gender, Class, Race and Reform in the Progressive Era (Lexington: The University Press of Kentucky, 1991). 22 Christine Stansell, City of Women: Sex and Class in New York, 1789-1860 (Urbana: University of Illinois Press, 1986). 23 Mary Ryan, Women in Public: Between Banners and Ballots, 1825-1880 (Baltimore: The Johns Hopkins University Press, 1990); Lori D. Ginzberg, Women and the Work of Benevolence: Morality, Politics, and Class in the Nineteenth-Century United States (New Haven: Yale University Press, 1990). 24 Sarah Deutsch, Women and the City: Gender, Space, and Power in Boston, 1870-1940 (New York: Oxford University Press, 2000), 12. 25 Deutsch, Women and the City, 5-6.

limits of ideologies and reflected the ways in which social groups interacted with one

another. They positioned civic form as something that historians should consider as

evidence of changing social, political, and economic relations.

Daphne Spain also situated the city as a central element in her analysis of women

engaged in voluntary work.26 She discussed women’s work to parlay their prescribed

domestic roles into positions as “municipal housekeepers,” which provided opportunities

to grow their informal and formal political powers. Working in voluntary associations, women developed “sites of assimilation,” which Spain termed “redemptive places,” that were “liminal places that…filled certain needs by combining characteristics of public and private space” which “redefined the boundaries between charitable and municipal responsibility for poverty”27 Jessica Ellen Sewell built on Ryan, Deutsch, and Spain in

her work Women and the Everyday City.28 Focusing on San Francisco between 1890 and

1915, Sewell argued that when women increasingly went into public spaces as workers and consumers, the city’s form responded to their presence and new spaces that catered to women “created new possibilities for women’s everyday use of public space.”29

In her study of the male gendered landscapes created by Young Men’s Christian

Association buildings in American cities, Paula Lupkin argued that “in the increasingly

large, urbanized, and mobile society at the turn of the twentieth century, space was an

important tool for constructing identity, negotiating change, and inscribing unified

cultural values.”30 Lupkin, Ryan, Ginzberg, Deutsch, and Sewell demonstrated that those

26 Daphne Spain, How Women Saved the City (Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press, 2001). 27 Spain, How Women Saved the City, 24, 27. Italics in original. 28 Jessica Ellen Sewell, Women and the Everyday City: Public Space in San Francisco, 1890-1915 (Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press, 2011), xxiv. 29 Sewell, Women and the Everyday City, xxiii. 30 Paula Lupkin, Manhood Factories: YMCA Architecture and the Making of Modern Urban Culture (Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press, 2010), xvi.

who were not formally in power still contributed to formal reconfigurations in cities.

Examining reformers’ and civic leaders’ rhetoric about how changing environment can

improve or enhance working-class lives reveals much about the contemporary

understanding of the connection between space and its inhabitants, and about how space

can reflect transformations in social relationships.

This dissertation assessed the ways in which Minneapolis's form reacted to women’s public presence. Driving the changes were social reformers seeking to develop and program redemptive places for women, especially those engaged in wage work, and civic leaders who believed that public entertainment spaces, particularly parks, were essential for preventing urban declension. Downtown Minneapolis underwent transformations between 1880 and 1920 that accommodated women’s presence in public.

Programs, such as Travelers Aid, were developed to “save” women from the city.

Hydroelectricity was used to power a light mast that was intended to eradicate shadows in which seamy individuals might hide. Nicollet Avenue became a consumer destination and “women’s mile” due to the presence of department stores, which were destinations for and employers of respectable women. Social reformers attempted to create their own redemptive places to entice working-class women away from popular entertainment venues. In these and other ways, Minneapolis civic leaders and social reformers used programmatic and formal interventions to accommodate the presence of women in the city.

Americans and Cities

The environment loomed large in American identity during the nineteenth century. During the Gilded Age, American conservationists and environmentalists had worked to preserve tracts of “disappearing” environments, particularly in the West. Often inspired by the Transcendentalist movement, these advocates helped reconceptualize the environment as something to be exalted rather than exploited.31 During the Progressive era, the conservationist and environmentalist movements continued, and had received support from the executive and legislative branches of the federal government. The creation of national parks and the promotion of a “strenuous life” helped popularize the idea that people had to get out of cities and experience nature. While many upper-class

Americans were able to take advantage of new routes to Yellowstone, the vast majority of urban workers were more limited in their options for exposure to the natural environment. Exhortations to city-dwellers to escape the hustle and bustle of urban conditions were accompanied by calls to improve city environments as well, often in the form of building new parks. From conserving and preserving large tracts of western lands to carving out green spaces in cities, it became apparent that environmental quality – built, natural, or otherwise – had become a central factor in the way many Americans were thinking about the world around them. Many progressive reformers began to emphasize space in their initiatives, and none was more essential to the questions of gender roles, citizenship, and civic improvement than that of homes. They represented a critical space in the crusade to save cities and citizens.

31 Galen Cranz, The Politics of Park Design: A History of Urban Parks in America (Cambridge: MIT Press, 1982), 7.

While some historians suggested that cities threatened Americans in the

nineteenth century, others argue that cities elicited a range of reactions both domestically

and internationally. Andrew Lees noted that in the eighteenth- and early nineteenth-

centuries, cities were a source of uneasiness in England, France, and Germany as well as

the United States.32 In all cases, people’s disdain for cities was actually a reaction to

similar urban conditions: overcrowding, lack of sanitation, poor housing, etc. The true

source of commonality among American reformers and between them and their European

counterparts was their disgust at city conditions. There were indeed a great number of

Americans who feared cities, but they were countered by an equally large population who

saw cities as the height of civilization. Those who favored cities, particularly those who

Lees identified as “moderate conservatives, ‘new liberals,’ and socialists,” tended to

believe that cities “contribut[ed] to material well-being, to cultural vitality, and to both freedom and morality.”33

The Gilded Age saw cities with extreme disparity of conditions where

ostentatious display of wealth was encouraged while many people struggled to keep a

roof over their heads and food on their tables. Progressive era cities, helmed by moderate

conservatives, new liberals, and in some cases socialists, were supposed to be different.

These cities were to put a check on Gilded Age excess and complement rather than

detract from the republican ideals of the United States. The environment had been central

in developing the “rugged individualist” American character, and, with adjustments,

32 Andrew Lees, Cities Perceived: Urban Society in European and American Thought, 1820-1940 (Manchester: Manchester University Press, 1985), 10. 33 Lees, Cities Perceived, 190.

cities could be made into environments that would nurture republican values and cultivate

a new ideal American for the twentieth century.

Examining the role of the environment is crucial in understanding how cities were

shaped and understood in the transition from the late-nineteenth to the early-twentieth

century. When it became clear that urbanization would not slow and would be one of the

most formidable “forces of modernization,” critics of cities began to understand that it

was an exercise in futility to avoid urban developments and instead sought ways to

influence the creation of social and physical space.34 Minneapolis social reformers and

civic stewards were also influenced by the Social Gospel movement, which “attributed

poverty to social, economic, and political conditions rather than to the personal failings of

individuals.”35 While transatlantic thought currents certainly influenced urban reformers, the way their work was done varied.

The many iterations of social Darwinism also contributed to the ways people

thought about urban environments. Some wondered: if creatures were so sensitive to their

surroundings, could an improved environment help produce improved species? This

application was intertwined with developments in the scientific thought that began

linking sanitation, environment, and social and corporeal health. Progressive social

reformers, in seeking to order the chaos of cities, improve sanitation, and resolve these

poor environmental conditions, turned to yet another emerging field of work: city

planning. The field was just coming into its own in the early-twentieth century. In the nineteenth century, it was a combination of scientific and romantic approaches to organizing the city; the blend would become the foundation of the profession. Frederick

34 Gillette, Jr., Civitas by Design, 1. 35 Spain, How Women Saved the City, 7.

Law Olmsted was, then as now, best known for his landscape designs but had been

incredibly influential in defining planning as a practice distinct from architecture or

engineering. He wrote that planning was to consider any element that “may conceivably

become a part of the city or affect the city’s future,” adding that the field must “embrace

the most diverse branches of specialized science and technique applied to urban affairs,

including countless phases of engineering, sanitation, economics, and finance, and every

art which can minister to the happiness and welfare of an urban population.”36 The city

thus required balancing done by professionals. It could not be a grouping of independent

enclaves, and would only function with expertly-orchestrated “phases.”

American planning made its international debut at the 1893 Chicago World’s Fair.

There, architects and planners collaborated on the “White City,” so-called primarily for its materials, but the extension was made to its morals. Powered by electricity, the installation was to showcase how cities could, with infrastructural updates, improve their aesthetics and create an environment that inspired inhabitants to improve their behaviors accordingly. The White City was nearly devoid of persons of color and was barely attended by the working-class people who built it and dwelt outside its walls.37 Still, the

Chicago World’s Fair was considered “the defining architectural and planning event of the late nineteenth century,” effectively kicking off the City Beautiful movement, whose

“disciples believed that elegant design could combat the poverty, squalor, and political

36 John Nolen, ed., City Planning: A Series of Papers Presenting the Essential Elements of a City Plan (New York: D. Appleton, 1916), 2-3. 37 David Silkenat, “Workers in the White City: Working Class Culture at the World’s Columbian Exposition of 1893,” Journal of the Illinois State Historical Society (1998-) 104:4 (Winter 2011): 266-300. Silkenat argues that those who worked on building the Exposition formed a working-class consciousness based on their shared experience in the project. This consciousness existed outside of the city’s industrial and ethnic identities. See page 267.

14 corruption of the time.”38 While the implementation of true City Beautiful plans was varied across the country (no American city fully adopted a City Beautiful plan), the concept was an important modifier of social Darwinism. The movement’s emphasis on clean, well-ordered, efficient environments were seen as ideal for rationalizing urban growth and providing an improved environment that would help to raise a better citizenry.

Elements of planning had been in place in the U.S. long before the turn of the twentieth century. In the developing West, planning in the form of town plotting was used as a tool for ordering and establishing American control over new territory. The powers expressed in determining the process and ultimate form of a humane city, however, complicated city reform and spoke to greater class, ethnic, and gender issues. In antebellum Manhattan, Catherine McNeur argued that the city’s bourgeois looked for ways to expand their city in an orderly manner while ridding the vicinity of the shanty houses the working-class occupants of which kept livestock and subsistence gardens.39

This ultimately exacerbated class tensions and reinforced the bourgeois hegemony developing in the city.

During the Progressive era, planning emerged as a more mature profession that, influenced by contemporary intellectual currents, projected a new conception of cities. In his introduction to John Nolen’s City Planning, which was published as part of a National

Municipal League series, Olmsted declared that planners must “be stimulated by this conception of the city as a social organism, whose future welfare is in large part

38 Daphne Spain, How Women Saved the City (Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press, 2001), 17. The City Beautiful movement will be discussed in further detail in Chapter Six. 39 Catherine McNeur, Taming Manhattan: Environmental Battles in the Antebellum City (Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 2014).

determined by the actions of the people who compose the organism today and, therefore,

by the collective intelligence and will that control those actions.”40 Borrowing from

Olmsted and other practitioners’ rhetoric, American urban reformers saw the existing city

“as an arena critical to the fate of the nation and its democratic spirit” and therefore “their

planning vision…addressed the entire city, not simply one or another of its aspects.”41

Such a conception relied on seeing cities as a social as much as physical structures.

Rather than a collection of strangers tied together via the labor economy, the idea of a

social city engenders a spirit of communality and inter-dependence. Howard Gillette aptly described urban reformers’ work in promoting the idea of the social city:

Distressed by the ways urban density fostered anonymity and social differences at the cost of solidarity, reformers sought new means to bring together the ‘people’…Through interventions in public spaces as well as private living conditions, they sought to enhance both sociability and knowledge among strangers. Their goal was not simply better people. Ultimately, they sought to shape civitas – the community of citizens – through design.42

Cultivating and maintaining civitas put humanity in cities and this, as many civic actors – particularly in Minneapolis – believed, was integral to making American cities work.

This dissertation asserted that Minneapolis's civic leaders and social reformers were not afraid of cities, and fit in with Lees’ new liberals and moderate conservatives who saw cities as a cultural achievement. It demonstrates that civic leaders and social reformers

40 Nolen, ed., City Planning, 3. 41 Jon Peterson, The Birth of City Planning in the United States, 1840-1917 (Baltimore: The Johns Hopkins University Press, 2003), 3. 42 Gillette, Jr., Civitas by Design, 1.

used spatial reconfigurations and environmental interventions as tools to create a more

social city and guide Minneapolis's social and physical development.

The Era of Progressives

The Progressive era has been characterized as a period of rapid change, which

ushered the United States into a modern era but brought with it countless challenges to

American society. The progressives’ motivations have been the subject of much historical

investigation, and consensus is difficult to find. In a tumultuous period of economic

recovery, labor unrest, challenges to gender roles, reconceptualizations of childhood,

urban crises of housing and health, rural crises of credit and production, changes in travel

and communications, and rising consumer expectations and opportunities, questions of

power and control arose in both the public and private spheres. Richard Hofstadter

contended that the closing of the frontier and a move toward urbanization caused status

anxiety, acutely felt by those in the middle classes who “feared that their stewardship of

American society was being usurped by robber barons and bureaucrats.”43 Hofstadter

portrayed reformers as the major agents of change, and showed progressives as white,

middle class, relatively well educated, and although they experienced some success

agitating those in political office to legislate reforms, they were ultimately unsuccessful

in establishing a new progressive hegemony.

Gabriel Kolko dissented from Hofstadter, instead arguing that “the dominant fact

of American political life at the beginning [of the twentieth century] was that big business

43 Richard Hofstadter, The Age of Reform: From Bryan to F.D.R. (New York: Vintage Books, 1955), 135.

led the struggle for federal regulation of the economy.”44 Facing reform initiatives from

middle-class progressives, big business entered the regulatory ring believing that “the

best way to thwart change was to channelize it.”45 The Establishment, as he termed this

elite group, had learned their lessons in the Gilded Age with purely laissez-faire business

practices and sought to protect their capital by being proactive on regulatory legislation,

often to insure that it was ultimately toothless. Again, the upper classes became involved

in social and political change in large part to protect their position in society.

Robert Wiebe’s Search for Order portrayed Americans emerging between 1877

and 1920 from “island communities” to a more interwoven nation with many urban

centers.46 Wiebe also discussed the progressive movement, characterized by the

emergence of the middle class, who, unnerved by the chaos of rapid change, sought to

implement order to ensure greater predictability and maintain control. Wiebe’s emerging

middle class was not exactly the same population suffering from status anxiety in

Hofstadter’s work, though they were similarly eager to solidify their newly-attained

position in society and tried to categorize and control the changes brought by

modernization. Progressives established voluntary organizations dedicated to cleaning up

civic affairs as well as municipal, state, and federal bureaus that would rationalize and

regulate social, political, and economic processes which previously had little formal

44 Gabriel Kolko, The Triumph of Conservatism: A Reinterpretation of American History, 1900-1916 (New York: The Free Press, 1963), 57-58. 45 Kolko, The Triumph of Conservatism, 57-58. This argument also built on Robert Wiebe’s 1962 work in which he argued that businessmen (and they were all men in his study) had varied responses to reforms, but were particularly engaged in regulations pertaining to finance and public infrastructure. Robert Wiebe, Businessmen and Reform: A Study of the Progressive Movement (Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 1962). 46 Robert H. Wiebe, The Search for Order, 1877-1920 (New York: Hill and Wang, 1967).

governance. Building this network of bureaucracy meant dismantling island communities

as a means to instill order in a chaotic, modern society.

The progressive movement mobilized Americans – particularly in cities – to make sense of and repair the “dislocations wrought by massive industrialization, the rise of the corporation, and rapid urban growth.”47 Roy Lubove characterized the movement

as “an elite rather than a mass movement…designed to centralize rather than diffuse

power.”48 Women were central actors in the movement; they positioned themselves as

stewards of the public realm. Largely bereft of official political power, women took on

issues of sanitation, education, recreation, working conditions, and health in cities.

Engaged women were typically in the middle- and upper-classes who believed that cities, as well as their inhabitants, needed saving. Though the progressive movement appeared

“sharply limited by a middle-class bias that sought less to eliminate injustice than it did to restore an idealized vision of established principles…it nonetheless sought through active government intervention to assure that the democratic system offered its citizens the chance of a decent life.”49 These traits were apparent in progressive programming in

Minneapolis as social reformers and civic leaders used programming and environmental interventions to improve their city and the lives of its inhabitants.

John Whiteclay Chambers’ Tyranny of Change offers a broad, comprehensive synthesis of the various factors affecting life in the Progressive era.50 Chambers argued

47 Nancy S. Dye, “Introduction,” in Gender, Class, Race and Reform in the Progressive Era, ed. Frankel and Dye, 1. 48 Roy Lubove, Twentieth-Century Pittsburgh: Government, Business, and Environmental Change (New York: John Wiley & Sons, 1969), 20. 49 Howard Gillette, Jr., Civitas by Design: Building Better Communities, from the Garden City to the New Urbanism (Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press, 2010), 5. 50 John W. Chambers, The Tyranny of Change: America in the Progressive Era, 1890-1920 (New Brunswick, NJ: Rutgers University Press, 2000).

that the progressives were not rallying against the status quo and were not trying to

establish themselves and their ideology as political hegemony. Building on Wiebe,

Chambers claimed that concurrent social, political, and economic changes undermined

stability and rationality in American society and that progressives sought leadership to

control it, and, yes, to establish order. The progressives in Tyranny of Change were

generally young, optimistic, and educated, middle- and upper-class white people, but they were not one singular political group. Chambers contended that the progressive movement was not uniform, but rather was characterized as a movement with an array of actors who were linked by their shared conception of a modern America governed by a socially responsible interventionist federal government.

Municipal housekeeping was, as Spain argued, “an early form of environmental activism” as women worked to clear cities of literal pollution – such as garbage and sewage – as they “also tried to alleviate the symbolic pollution posed by strangers,” which was seen in programming and education efforts to assimilate newcomers to their particular set of values and behaviors.51 Because of the association of social reform and

women’s roles as housekeepers, men who engaged in social reform often found

themselves “denigrated as sexless – they were eunuchs or neutered – or as members of a

perverse ‘third sex.’”52 Environmental reform was particularly problematic for male

reformers because “beauty, health, future generations…were traditionally the province of

women” and men were supposed to “sound rational, practical, and – above all –

unsentimental.”53 Because of this gendered conception of public-based social work, few

51 Spain, How Women Saved the City, 18. 52 Adam Rome, “‘Political Hermaphrodites’: Gender and Environmental Reform in Progressive America,” Environmental History 11:3 (2006): 440. 53 Rome, “‘Political Hermaphrodites,’” 443.

men would accept being termed a “social reformer.” As a result, when men became

involved in matters of municipal housekeeping, they were acting not as social reformers

but as civic leaders, a group primarily made up of politicians, employers, and capitalists.

In Minneapolis, civic leaders included the economic elite whose families had been

among the first white settlers in the city as well as professors from the University of

Minnesota, religious leaders, and business owners. The city’s social reformers included

women graduating from the social work program at the University of Minnesota who

would lead settlement houses and perform studies of city conditions. In an era when

people became increasingly reliant on the opinions of experts, civic leaders frequently turned to the expertise of these women. Social reformers also had informal training through organizations like the YWCA. In some instances, they were the daughters of prominent civic leaders, but that was the exception rather than the rule. Some of the social reformers working in Minneapolis in the period under consideration had moved to the city simply to help establish particular programs, but the bulk were untrained middle- class women with interest in social outreach. This dissertation employed Spain’s redemptive places and Gillette and Lubove’s concept of environmental intervention to explain the actions of social reformers and civic leaders who sought to instill order in their city.

After the turn of the twentieth century, “businessmen and business organizations…discovered a practical relationship between economic and community affairs, one that stimulated their involvement in hitherto neglected aspects of civic life.”54

In other words civic leaders realized that they could get ahead of potential government

54 Lubove, Twentieth-Century Pittsburgh, 20.

21 intervention if they supported and channeled reforms that catered to their particular values. The middle-class generation that came of age during the Gilded Age became a crucial agent of change during the Progressive era. Many became involved in efforts aimed at “solving the ‘class problem.’” In their attempt to do so, “they devised methods and programs they hoped would overcome barriers to individual opportunity.”55 The progressive actors – social reformers and civic leaders alike – “became the first generation to embrace environmental intervention as a means of improving both the social and physical attributes of cities.”56

The Progressive era was an age of reform, in which there were many searches for order, women and men saved cities, and conservatism triumphed in some areas while failing in others. Nearly every work on the Progressive era defines it as a period of change occurring so rapidly that people struggled with how to absorb, mold, and constrain it. In Minneapolis, these efforts were clear in the actions of civic leaders and social reformers seeking to build and perfect their city. They worked to construct, shape, and re-form the city through environmental interventions and social reforms, with the ultimate goal of using space and programming to engender certain behaviors in their target populations. This dissertation operated on Kolko’s assertion that businessmen turned to legislation as a means of social reform in an effort to ensure that any changes were favorable to their bottom lines. As will be seen in the fight for housing reform, the legislation that civic leaders backed was criticized for being toothless by social reformers because there was no mechanism for immediate change to residential conditions. For

55 Shelton Stromquist, Re-inventing “The People”: The Progressive Movement, the Class Problem, and the Origins of Modern Liberalism (Chicago: University of Illinois Press, 2006), 2. 56 Gillette, Jr., Civitas by Design, 5.

their part, the working class negotiated the built environment with their own interests in

mind. They may have attended lectures, purchased a membership in an association, or

joined a sports team that practiced and played in public parks, but this did not necessarily

mean that they consumed reform uncritically.

Labor, the Working Class, and Leisure

The working class’s economic strategies reflected broader changes in labor and

industry during the Progressive era. As labor unions began to get traction, many

industries sought to mechanize skilled laborers’ work so as to devalue their positions and

take away any bargaining chips workers might have had. Early labor histories centered on

male, skilled, and organized laborers in relation to capitalists and the state.57 In the late

1960s, the new labor and working-class history began to look at workers at work and in

their communities. Inspired in part by E.P. Thompson’s The Making of the English

Working Class, these historians assessed working-class life using social and cultural

history approaches.58 These works demonstrated the new working-class history approach of examining workers’ behavior, culture, and consciousness at and away from work.59

Community studies became a cornerstone of the early labor and working-class histories.

The approach allowed historians to interrogate deeply issues of social and economic

57 The Wisconsin School of Labor History was practiced by labor economists whose interests lay in organizations and telling the teleological story of how American workers may have experimented with all- inclusive unions like the Knights of Labor, but they eventually understood that they had to make peace with capitalism, organize as skilled workers, and negotiate to protect their wages and job control. John R. Commons, Philip Taft, Selig Perlman, et. al., History of Labor in the United States. Vols. 1-4 (New York: Macmillan, 1918-1935). 58 E.P. Thompson, The Making of the English Working Class (New York: Pantheon Books, 1964). 59 Herbert Gutman, Work, Culture, and Society in Industrializing America: Essays in American Working- Class Culture (New York: Vintage Books, 1976), xii; David Brody, Steelworkers in America: The Nonunion Era (Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 1960).

23 mobility, working-class economic strategies, gender roles, and the development, stagnation, or disappearance of working-class consciousness.60 While community studies

allowed for greater depth, they were often narrowly focused on a specific industry, place,

and time which made generalizing conclusions difficult and served to fragment the field.

David Montgomery’s Workers’ Control in America and The Fall of the House of Labor

focused on workers’ lives at the point of production and assessed the ways in which

workers maintained autonomy through changes in technology and management

strategies.61 Studies by Rick Halpern, James Barrett, and Roger Horowitz followed one industry – meatpacking – in Chicago and examined how employers sought to exploit racial and ethnic tensions in the community to divide workers at the point of production and slow unionization.62 Their works showed the relationship between community and the point of production while highlighting the many contingencies of workers’ ethnic and racial identities and how those identities were manipulated by employers.

Women’s reproductive and productive labor was often missing in early labor histories. There were early books on women workers, but few had considered women’s

60 Stephan Thernstrom, Poverty and Progress: Social Mobility in a Nineteenth Century City (New York: Atheneum Press, 1973); Alan Dawley, Class and Community: The Industrial Revolution in Lynn (Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 1976); Daniel J. Walkowitz, Worker City, Company Town: Iron and Cotton Worker Protests in Troy and Cohoes, New York, 1855-1884 (Urbana: University of Illinois Press, 1978); Thomas Dublin, Women at Work: The Transformation of Work and Community in Lowell, Massachusetts, 1826-1860 (New York: Columbia University Press, 1979). 61 David Montgomery, Workers' Control in America: Studies in the History of Work, Technology, and Labor Struggles (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1980); David Montgomery, The Fall of the House of Labor: The Workplace, the State, and American Labor Activism, 1865-1925 (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1987). 62 James R. Barrett, Work and Community in the Jungle: Chicago’s Packinghouse Workers, 1894-1922 (Urbana: University of Illinois Press, 1987); Roger Horowitz, “Negro and White, Unite and Fight!”: A Social History of Industrial Unionism in Meatpacking, 1930-1990 (Urbana: University of Illinois Press, 1997); Rick Halpern, Down on the Killing Floor: Black and White Workers in Chicago’s Packing Houses, 1904-1954 (Urbana: University of Illinois Press, 1997).

24 work in and out of the home.63 Early assessments of women workers using class, gender, and ethnicity as main categories of analysis were presented in Milton Cantor and Bruce

Laurie’s edited book Class, Sex, and the Woman Worker.64 Alice Kessler-Harris’s Out to

Work foregrounded working-class women’s experiences in the nineteenth and twentieth centuries as she presented the lives of women workers, waged and unwaged, organized and unorganized.65 Subsequent studies emerged that examined the roles and intersections of gender and class in workers’ lives, some expanding beyond waged workers by delving into family lives as well.66 Works from Dana Frank and Elizabeth Faue highlighted women’s roles in cultivating, coordinating, and maintaining community support for unions.67 Faue identified women’s work “as mothers, consumers, and community members” who “took to the streets to defend the family against the encroachments of capital” not as “the extension of domesticity to the political realm” but as “new forms of

63 Robert W. Smuts, Women and Work in America (New York: Columbia University Press, 1959); Edith Abbott, Women in Industry: A Study in American Economic History (New York: Arno and The New York Times, repr. 1969). 64 Milton Cantor and Bruce Laurie, eds., Class, Sex, and the Woman Worker (Westport, Conn.: Greenwood Press, 1977). 65 Alice Kessler-Harris, Out to Work: A History of Wage-Earning Women in the United States (New York: Oxford University Press, 1982). 66 Mary Blewett, Men, Women, and Work: Class, Gender, and Protest in the New England Shoe Industry, 1780-1910 (Urbana: University of Illinois Press, 1988); Ava Baron, ed., Work Engendered: Toward a New History of American Labor (Ithaca: Cornell University Press, 1991); Tamara Hareven, Family Time and Industrial Time: The Relationship Between the Family and Work in a New England Industrial Community (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1982); Laurie Mercier, Anaconda: Labor, Community, and Culture in Montana’s Smelter City (Urbana: University of Illinois Press, 2001). 67 Elizabeth Faue, Community of Suffering and Struggle: Women, Men, and the Labor Movement in Minneapolis, 1915-1945 (Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 1991; Dana Frank, Purchasing Power: Consumer Organizing, Gender, and the Seattle Labor Movement, 1919-1929 (New York: Cambridge University Press, 1994). Lizabeth Cohen also situated women as central to her cultural analyses of ethnicity, consumerism, and class politics in Chicago. See: Lizabeth Cohen, A Consumers’ Republic: The Politics of Mass Consumption in Postwar America (New York: Alfred A. Knopf, 2003); Lizabeth Cohen, Making a New Deal: Industrial Workers in Chicago, 1919-1939 (New York: Cambridge University Press, 1991).

25 protest that pointed to the emergence of class politics in the urban sphere of social reproduction.”68

The advancement of consumer culture in the early twentieth century meant greater access to more affordable goods and people with money to spend were lured out of their homes to popular entertainment venues. Working-class historians have assessed

the ways in which consumer culture and recreation affected the lives of workers and their

families. Leisure activities were steeped in classist expectations, and one person’s

recreation – going to the movies, dining out – was often reliant on another person’s labor.

Roy Rosenzweig’s groundbreaking Eight Hours for What we Will investigated the

changing uses of working-class leisure time and was clear in putting working-class agency at the forefront of his analysis.69 Cultural approaches to working-class consumerism and leisure brought historians’ focus away from just work, union or community halls, and home.70 The rise of consumer culture gave rise to new consumer spaces, such as department stores, that became sites of conspicuous consumption and conspicuous leisure and the process of occupying and navigating these sites was tied to classed, racial, and gendered identities.71 This dissertation focused on a specific city, but

68 Faue, Community of Suffering and Struggle, 9. 69 Roy Rosenzweig, Eight Hours for What we Will: Workers and Leisure in an Industrial City, 1890-1920 (Cambridge: University of Cambridge Press, 1983). 70 Lewis A. Erenberg, Steppin’ Out: New York Nightlife and the Transformation of American Culture (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1984); Joanne Meyerowitz, Women Adrift: Independent Wage Earners in Chicago, 1880-1930 (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1987); Kathy Peiss, Cheap Amusements: Working Women and Leisure in Turn-of-the-Century New York (Philadelphia, 1986); Laurence Levine, Highbrow Lowbrow (Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 1988); David Nasaw, Going Out: The Rise and Fall of Public Amusements (New York: Basic Books, 1993); James W. Cook, The Arts of Deception: Playing with Fraud in the Age of Barnum (Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 2001). 71 Susan Porter Benson, Counter Cultures: Saleswomen, Manager, and Customers in American Department Stores 1890-1940 (Urbana: University of Illinois Press, 1986); William Leach, Land of Desire: Merchants, Power, and the Rise of a New American Culture (New York: Pantheon Books, 1993); Jennifer Scanlon, Inarticulate Longings: The Ladies’ Home Journal, Gender, and the Promises of Consumer Culture (New York: Routledge, 1995). Women’s work and the growth of consumer culture will be discussed in Chapter Five, where more historiography on these subjects is discussed.

26 it was not a holistic community study as it examines six specific sites. It examines the contemporary intellectual conceptions of consumerism, leisure, and recreation and places the programming that was established into a broader historiographical network.

Why Minneapolis

Today, the city of Minneapolis is often pointed to as one of the most

“progressive” cities in the country. It is a creative class city that has been praised for everything from high literacy rates to its park system to its LGBT-friendly culture.72

These designations are determined by varying interested parties who set their own criteria for awarding their “honors,” but being named to these progressive lists means that people often gloss over the city’s more dubious honors, like once being named the most anti-

Semitic city in the country, having the highest murder rate in the country, being the site of major conflicts between capital and labor, and the city’s less-than-ideal record on

LGBT rights.73 Elizabeth Faue, studying the 1934 Minneapolis teamsters strike, noted that despite employers’ attempts to crush unionization and diminish the power of the city’s rank and file, the labor movement there was resilient. She linked its Depression-era resurgence to women’s productive and reproductive work and the development of a union

72 Jocelyn McClurg, “Minneapolis Ranked most Literate City,” USA Today, April 10, 2015. Minneapolis has never ranked lower than fifth place on this list; On Minneapolis being a “creative class” city: Ann Markusen, “Urban Development and the Politics of a Creative Class: Evidence from the Study of Artists,” Environment and Planning 38:10 (2006): 1921-1940); on the “creative class” concept: Richard Florida, The Rise of the Creative Class (New York: Basic Books, 2002); on “best parks” recognition: Kevin Duchschere, “Minneapolis, St. Paul tie for Title of Best City Parks,” Star Tribune, May 20, 2015; on LGBT community, Minneapolis was ranked the most gay-friendly city in the United States in 2011 Mike Albo, “Gayest Cities in America,” Advocate Magazine, January 12, 2011. 73 Laura E. Weber, “‘Gentiles Preferred’: Minneapolis Jews and Employment, 1920-1950,” Minnesota History 52:5 (Spring 1991): 166-182; Dirk Johnson, “Nice City’s Nasty Distinction: Murders Soar in Minneapolis,” The New York Times, June 30, 1996; William Millikan, A Union Against Unions: The Minneapolis Citizens Alliance and Its Fight Against Organized Labor, 1903-1947 (St. Paul, Minnesota Historical Society Press, 2001); Faue, Community of Suffering and Struggle; Kevin Ehrman-Solberg, “The Battle of the Bookstores,” Southwest Journal, June 26, 2014.

27 culture in the community, and argued that the Left found support in the Minneapolis

Scandinavian community.74

Like other places, Minneapolis was and is not simply progressive or regressive, and these sometimes contradictory designations make Minneapolis a fruitful site for studying contested urban sites and experiences. Its twin, St. Paul, has received excellent treatment from Mary Wingerd, whose Claiming the City was an analysis of the intersections of the environment, religion, civic identity, and the formation of that city’s political, social, and economic relationships. Noting that she had not intended for “‘great men’” to appear so prominently in her work, Wingerd stated that she “came to understand that the social text of the city was woven from multiple negotiations over power. To illuminate those negotiations, it was essential to explore the social and economic influence exerted by those individuals with the capacity to make an impact on ordinary people’s lives.”75 As in Wingerd’s framework, this dissertation sought to show the experience and beliefs of “ordinary” Minneapolitans as much as possible, but two related problems arose: sources were very difficult to unearth, and the city’s working class was rarely in control of the public (and many times private) spaces they inhabited. As a result, this dissertation relied mostly on sources created by social reformers and civic leaders themselves. In the few instances of primary documents written by working-class

Minneapolitans, such as Thora Thoresen’s diary, they have been included to help add texture to the analysis. Many historians group the Twin Cities together, but Wingerd

74 Faue, Community of Suffering and Struggle, 2, 20. 75 Mary Lethert Wingerd, Claiming the City: Politics, Faith, and the Power of Place in St. Paul (Ithaca: Cornell University Press, 2001), 7.

demonstrated that despite some shared elements, Irish Catholic St. Paul’s history differed

from that of Yankee Protestant Minneapolis.76

This dissertation examined the process of city making and considers both physical

and ideological developments. It situates Minneapolis as engaged in and contributing to

national and international ideologies on labor, schooling and schools, consumption, urban

design, and housing. It also interrogates how the city’s eastern-born civic leaders and

boosters developed specific rhetoric and used early urban design principles to give

Minneapolis an identity that transcended its location on the precipice of the West. Where

Catholicism played a significant role in St. Paul’s civic identity, Minneapolis's mostly

Protestant leaders operated with Social Gospel principles that “attributed poverty to

social, economic, and political conditions rather than to the personal failings of

individuals,” and influenced civic leaders and social reformers to become activist

stewards of social and physical development.77

Minneapolis could have been an unremarkable settlement on the Mississippi

River. By the time treaties had opened the territory for European settlement in the late

1850s, St. Paul was already a thriving merchant city that controlled the navigable head of the river and would be made state capital when Minnesota became a state in 1858.

Minneapolis was settled by men who harnessed the power of St. Anthony Falls.78

Lumber and flour milling helped grow the city and, as will be discussed, civic leaders and

boosters worked to carve out a distinct identity for the Mill City. It was a gateway city,

76 Wingerd, Claiming the City, 2-5. James Connolly specifically mentioned Wingerd’s work (then in dissertation form) in his call to bring the city back into urban history as a work that did well to integrate “ideas about place into U.S. urban history.” Connolly, “Bringing the City Back In,” 27. 77 Spain, How Women Saved the City, 7. 78 Lucile M. Kane, The Falls of St. Anthony: The Waterfall that Built Minneapolis (St. Paul: Minnesota Historical Society Press, 1987), 136-137.

but not the Gateway City – a title already taken by St. Louis.79 With St. Paul located only

a few miles away, Minneapolis would not be the first “spearhead” of progress on the

northwestern frontier, either.80 However, the city would develop a large natural

hinterland, with civic leaders positioning Minneapolis as the capital of a northwestern

empire.81 Developing later than St. Paul changed Minneapolis's role significantly. In an

article detailing the Twin Cities’ rivalry, Wingerd noted one of the key differences

between them: “Minneapolis is the first city of the West and St. Paul is the last city of the

East.”82 Carl Abbott also noted the western distinction of Minneapolis, stating that

Minneapolis and St. Paul were “easterly sited but westward-looking.”83 Minneapolis's

late settlement, westward gaze, and (relatively) eastern location all factored into the ways

in which early boosters and civic leaders crafted the city’s identity and how they formed

and re-formed civic space.

Chapter Overviews

Early civic leaders and boosters in Minneapolis endeavored to set their city apart.

As in other cities, Minneapolis civic leaders would establish lyceums, theaters, and an art

museum in an effort to display the city’s cultural maturity. But civility did not end with

these institutions; it also meant developing a city that would, through the work of civic

79 Carl Abbott, How Cities Won the West: Four Centuries of Urban Change in Western North America (Albuquerque: University of New Mexico Press, 2008), 41-43. 80 Richard C. Wade, The Urban Frontier: The Rise of Western Cities, 1790-1830 2nd ed. (Chicago: University of Illinois Press, 1996), 1. 81 Charles Rumford Walker, American City: A Rank and File History of Minneapolis (Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press, 1937), 22-23. 82 Mary Lethert Wingerd, “Separated at Birth: The Sibling Rivalry of Minneapolis and St. Paul,” OAH, February 2007, http://archive-org.com/page/2744790/2013-08- 28/http://www.oah.org/pubs/nl/2007feb/wingerd.html (accessed on May 3, 2015). 83 Abbott, How Cities Won the West, 49.

stewards and environmental interventions, avoid working-class unrest or large urban

slums like those in older cities. Civic leaders and social reformers targeted five sites for

reform: workplaces, homes, schools, consumer spaces, and parks. Between 1880 and

1920, Minneapolis civic leaders and social reformers developed a network of stewardship

that sought to reform Minneapolitans and re-form the city in an effort to protect it from

the perils of urbanization. Though their motivations often diverged, they shared a

common goal of making Minneapolis a model metropolis.

This dissertation is organized in six chapters. The first chapter, “From the Mill

City to Minneapolis” explores the establishment of boosters’ ideal vision for Minneapolis as a civilized settlement, and the challenges to this ideal as Minneapolis grew. It explores the ways in which their expressions of power manifested in changes to the city’s form and how civic leaders adopted a booster vision of a beautiful, healthy, financially successful city without antecedent. Chapter Two, “Civic Stewardship and the Open

Shop” follows two strikes, in 1902 and 1903, in the flour mills in which capital and labor clashed over reduced hours. The strikes had significant ramifications for Minneapolis, as mill owners, allied with national anti-union organizations, took extensive steps to establish the open shop principle in the city. Flour mill employees’ efforts to get the eight-hour day for all workers suffered from intra-class divisions and an industrial union too inexperienced to support its members through the 1903 strike in particular. These two chapters also cover the coalescence of power among the elites who positioned themselves as civic leaders and stewards of the city’s development.

The third chapter, “Schools and Schooling in the City,” traces the partnership of civic leaders and social reformers in an effort to implement elements of vocational

31 curricula in public schools and to use these spaces as sites of assimilation. In

Minneapolis, social reformers were almost exclusively middle-class women, though some elite women were also part of reform projects. The YWCA spearheaded many reform initiatives, but it received support from the Women’s Co-Operative Association and from women who had graduated from social work programs at the University of

Minnesota seeking ways to put their training into practice. Social reformers supported merging vocational and classical liberal education courses of study to entice students to stay in school longer and to equip them with skills so that they might have better control over their futures. Civic leaders saw vocational education as an opportunity to have public schools train a skilled, pliant workforce that would graduate ready to work in the city’s open shops. Though their motivations were sometimes in conflict, social reformers and civic leaders partnered to bring vocational curricula to the city’s school system, sharing in the belief that education was a necessary foundation for a model metropolis.

Chapter Four, “A City of Homes,” examines initiatives to regulate housing conditions.

Once again, social reformers and civic leaders partnered in an effort to elevate civic conditions and the lives of Minneapolitans. Both groups saw housing as the crux of a great city. Clean domestic spaces with ample access to air, light, and water prevented the spread of disease and contributed to cultivating upstanding citizens. More shrewdly, civic leaders also saw the importance of housing aesthetics to the city’s future: dilapidated housing and slums were conditions that detracted from the city’s potential value.

Together, these chapters show the growing network of stewardship in Minneapolis as civic leaders and social reformers overcame their various differences and worked together on projects that would improve their city and make Minneapolis a model

metropolis. The network of stewardship included efforts from social reformers and civic

leaders working on projects that dealt with civic and social health with the ultimate goal

of improving the city which intersected, such as in the efforts to alter school curricula and

buildings.

The fifth and sixth chapters broadly address public spaces, which civic leaders

and social reformer sought to reconfigure in an attempt to guide the city’s formal

development as well as Minneapolitans’ public behaviors. Chapter Five, “Landscapes of

Consumerism,” surveys the development of commercial entertainment and consumerism

in Minneapolis and the ways in which the presence of institutions like movie theaters and

department stores altered public space. As the eight-hour day became more prevalent in the city, workers had more time to spend on leisure, and they embraced new popular entertainments which, in turn, catered to them. Social reformers targeted movie theaters as deleterious entertainments because, although their interiors may have been clean and elegant, the content on display was often deemed questionable. Department stores, though more respectable venues, further developed the landscape of consumerism in

Minneapolis. Owners employed new advertising techniques and carved out spaces that would entice women into their stores. The appearance of consumer venues in which the working class could spend free time and money prompted social reformers to develop redemptive places that would bring workers, particularly women, under their guidance.

As seen in Thora Thoresen’s diary, the YWCA was successful in attracting working women, but her presence at lectures and gyms did not preclude her from going to department stores and movie theaters in the rest of her free time. “Parks to Recreation,” the final chapter, follows the planning, development, and reconfigurations of the city’s

parks. The Park Board, a group of socially-minded civic leaders, oversaw three iterations of park form between 1883 and the 1910s: pleasure grounds, which were sites of passive repose; recreation parks, which incorporated elements of popular leisure like dining rooms, bicycling, and live music; and active parks and playgrounds, which saw the introduction of play equipment, spaces divided to hinder unorganized play, and an emphasis on guided, organized play. These three iterations were the result of local reformers and the Park Board translating national and international ideologies on the roles of parks and play in cities through a local lens. Minneapolis parks were designed to be accessible spaces in which citizens of all classes could spend their leisure hours, and, through environmental interventions and the adoption of social reform programming, the

Park Board worked to ensure that this intention became a reality. Together, these sites – work, home, school, consumer venues, and parks – show the ways in which the efforts and intentions of social reformers converged and diverged. Positioning themselves as stewards of the city’s social and physical development and combining programming with environmental interventions, Minneapolis's civic leaders and social reformers endeavored to make Minneapolis a model metropolis.

Chapter One: From the Mill City to Minneapolis

The city of Minneapolis is a man in his late thirties who made a tremendous success at twenty-five…He is not quite sure of himself. And yet – he is pugnacious and still young with plenty of blood in him. His friends wonder where he is going next. Minneapolis isn’t like any other city. -Charles Rumford Walker, American City: A Rank and File History of Minneapolis, 19371

Charles Rumford Walker came to Minneapolis to study the city’s labor conditions in the wake of the 1934 teamsters strike and in the throes of the Depression. In the

introduction to his book, he proclaimed that the city’s success in the past had imbued it

with characteristics that made it a quintessential American city. These characteristics

included its role as an “imperial city” that catered to both farmers and bankers, being

populated by “fair-haired, blue-eyed Scandinavians,” and being a city that quickly made

the “transition from barbarism to maturity…in a little more than forty” years.2 This was

precisely the image of Minneapolis its early civic leaders wished would take hold.

Industrial development of St. Anthony Falls had taken place for over a decade before the

entire territory that would become Minneapolis was completely opened for white

settlement. Developed initially as a lumber milling center, the city’s industrialists worked

to make it attractive for more settlers and capital. To do this, they had to find ways to set

it apart. In the post-Civil War era, there was no shortage of cities growing in the old

Northwest being boosted as places with unlimited growth potential. Complicating

Minneapolis's development was that it sat less than ten miles from St. Paul, the state

capital, a bustling commercial center, and a well-established city of the Northwest. These

1 Charles Rumford Walker, American City: A Rank and File History of Minneapolis (Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press, 1937), 1. 2 Walker, American City, 2, 3, 9.

35 factors combined to make Minneapolis unlikely to develop into anything more than a mill city without significant intervention and stewardship by its early civic leaders.

Before examining how Minneapolis was built, then, it is essential to ask why it

was built. Certainly, the city’s founders could have erected a company town on St.

Anthony Falls while basing their capital ventures out of St. Paul. Or, city founders could

have organized a settlement like Pullman, Illinois – a company town located within a few

miles of Chicago, which was touted as a nearly ideal plan in the 1880s. While city

founders were almost all involved in flour or lumber milling, their corporate vision was

of Minneapolis, a booming metropolis, not of the Mill City, a single-industry town. There

was much more capital in diversifying and preventing burnouts or collapse. The city’s

mills were destroyed in an explosion in the 1870s, and in the subsequent rebuilding it

became clear that developing Minneapolis as a city independent from St. Paul was

desirable. Implementing new technology, mill owners changed the nature of labor by de-

skilling or even replacing employees’ work while also altering Minneapolis’s relationship

with its broad hinterlands. In an attempt to mitigate urbanization issues that plagued older

cities, civic leaders hired Horace William Shaler Cleveland, a pioneering landscape

architect, to make a master plan for development that would set it apart from other

western cities and put it on a path of urbanization and growth. After census fraud and

municipal corruption thrust Minneapolis into national headlines in 1903, civic leaders

attempted to address the city’s marred reputation and sell theirs as a rationalized,

functional, profitable, and beautiful modern metropolis by emphasizing its natural

aesthetics and industrial accomplishments.3

3 Lincoln Steffens, “The Shame of Minneapolis,” McClure’s (January 1903), 227-239.

36 Before Minneapolis was founded, it was a site of spirituality for local natives. It lay at the northeastern edge of Sioux territory and the southern edge of Ojibwa territory.

Minnehaha Falls and St. Anthony Falls were communal spiritual spaces visited by different bands of the Sioux and Ojibwa. Although tribes had skirmishes and all-out wars with one another, these were two peaceful sites. Europeans first saw the falls in 1680, when Father Louis Hennepin was kidnapped by a group of Sioux and brought to the area near St. Anthony Falls.4 In the following century, European interaction was uncommon and ad hoc. Voyageurs and couriers du bois working for the Northwest Trading

Company traded and developed relationships with the natives in what would become

Minnesota Territory. In the early-nineteenth century, westward encroachment of the

American border and waning fur trade left the territory’s natives in a difficult position.

Their main source of trade was increasingly unreliable and competition among tribes increased as each tried to extend its economy. Old rivalries between the Sioux and

Ojibwa bands led the United States federal government to establish Fort Snelling in

Mendota in 1819. The fort had an Indian agent who helped facilitate trade relationships between the tribes and the U.S. government and the troops garrisoned there pushed back wayward Americans who wanted to move beyond the border into “Indian territory.”5

Mounting debt and a fear of being overtaken like tribes in the East led the Dakota to engage in treaty talks. They sold the portion of their land east of the Mississippi River in

1837 in exchange for payments and protection from the United States.6 White settlers

44 Father Louis Hennepin was traveling with a group of Sioux in 1680, when he became the first European to see the St. Anthony Falls. He named it “for his protector, St. Anthony of Padua.” Lucile M. Kane, The Falls of St. Anthony: The Waterfall that Built Minneapolis (St. Paul: Minnesota Historical Society Press, 1987), 1-2. 5 Guy Gibbon, The Sioux: The Dakota and Lakota Nations (Malden, Mass: Blackwell Publishers Ltd, 2003), 5. 6 Gibbon, The Sioux, 5.

37 moved in quickly to stake a claim on St. Anthony Falls. Early entrepreneurs erected crude

lumber mills on the east side of the Mississippi, all the while waiting for war or treaty to

open the rest of the West.

In 1851, the Treaty of Traverse des Sioux was signed with several Dakota tribes.

It opened land west of the Mississippi to the Missouri River and south into Iowa, save for

a strip of reservation land along the Minnesota River. Frederick Jackson Turner identified

the treaty as being a watershed moment for Midwest settlement, stating that the land

opened brought a new “column of pioneers” and massive European and American

population growth.7 North of Fort Snelling, St. Paul was established at the navigational

head of the river and quickly became a commercial and warehousing center. By the time

Minnesota reached statehood in 1858, its white population was just over 150,000 with

cities cropping up all along the Mississippi River.8 Many factors made the new state

attractive for settlers, but the environment was its biggest draw. Soil with high fecundity

dominated south and west of the Minnesota River, while mineral deposits spanned from

the arrowhead, in the northeast corner of the state, westward. For Minneapolis, of course, the falls determined the city’s location. Early American settlers used them for power; by the 1840s there was extensive build-up including early settlers’ dams, the power from which was used to operate lumber mills.9 The swirling waters were ideal to power

industry, but they made that section of the Mississippi non-navigable. Just below the falls

7 Frederick Jackson Turner, "The Significance of the Frontier in American History," in Martin Ridge, ed., History, Frontier, and Section: Three Essays by Frederick Jackson Turner (Albuquerque: University of New Mexico Press, 1993), 62-71. Turner first delivered "The Significance of the Frontier" as a paper at the American Historical Association meeting in Chicago, July 12, 1893, coinciding with the World's Columbian Exposition in that city. 8 Rhoda R. Gilman, “Territorial Imperative: How Minnesota became the 32nd State” in The North Star State: A Minnesota Reader, Anne J. Aby, ed., (St. Paul: Minnesota Historical Society Press, 2002), 56. 9 John O. Anfinson, “Flour Power,” Minnesota History, 58:5-6 (2003): 257. 9 Annette Atkins, "At Home in the Heart of the City,” Minnesota History, 58:5-6 (2003): 289.

38 was “a rock-filled channel that frightened even courageous captains accustomed to the treacherous” river. 10 As a result, Minneapolis would be dependent on its neighbor’s transportation system, though civic leaders would not accept this subordinate position for much longer.11

The young Minneapolis saw much industrial growth in the late-nineteenth century, which would lead to changes in the city’s form. High production could not have been achieved had it not been for a series of disasters and rebuilds of the milling waterfront. The increase of waterwheels and mills had detrimental effects on the falls.

The river became congested with logs floating in wait to be milled and with various industrial debris. Wanting to expand the industrial capacity of the falls as much as possible, in 1869 the city allowed a tunnel to be carved between Minneapolis and the town of St. Anthony. The thin limestone barrier between the river and the interior of the tunnel was not strong enough and, during excavation, it collapsed taking dozens of mills with it and threatening to reduce the falls to ambling rapids.12 Over the next several years, the Army Corps of Engineers worked to protect the cataract and falls, placing a concrete apron to ensure the falls – and the industrial power source of Minneapolis – would stay in place.13 Just two years after the completion of the Corps’ work, another accident threatened the city’s industrial future: on May 2, a spark in the Washburn A mill ignited an explosion so colossal that a full one-third of the mills on the west bank were

10 Robert M. Frame, Millers to the World: Minnesota’s Nineteenth Century Water Power Flour Mills (St. Paul, MN: Minnesota Historical Society Press, 1977), 41. 11 Frame, Millers to the World, 41. 12 Anfinson, “Flour Power,” 258. 13 Shannon Pennefeather, ed., Mill City: A Visual History of the Minneapolis Mill District (St. Paul: Minnesota Historical Society Press, 2003), vii.

39 decimated.14 Both of these events threatened the falls’ viability and industrialists’ source

of power (both kinetic and socio-political). In considering how to rebuild the west side of

the river, mill owners made several significant changes. A number of technological

improvements were incorporated, some of which would be labor-savers, leading to a general de-skilling of work in the flour mills; others were safety features to prevent future destruction.

Northwestern Consolidated, Washburn-Crosby, and Pillsbury, the three largest flour mills, outfitted their new operations with machines that performed the LaCroix method, which featured a middlings purifier that took the “imperfections” out of milled spring wheat.15 With the rebuild of the falls and the mills on the west side of the river,

Minneapolis moved more toward flour milling as its main industry. Historian John

Anfinson stated that “while lumber initially yoked the falls, flour would become its master,” and by the 1880s that transition was complete.16 Flour mills’ dominance over

Minneapolis’s economy was apparent; in 1890, they produced over seven million barrels

of flour – thirty-five times the amount produced two decades earlier.17 By 1900, flour

milling made up 46 percent of Minnesota’s economy and an even larger proportion of

Minneapolis’s economy.18 The state accounted for 14 percent of the United States’ grain

14 Theodore Blegen, Minnesota: A History of the State (1963; repr., new chapter by Russell Fridley, Minneapolis: University of Minneapolis Press, 1978), 352. 15 Joseph Hart, “Lost City,” City Pages June 11, 1992, 2. Leftover dust and wheat chaffe stayed in the flour, which were referred to as “middlings.” The purifier blew flour into the air, sifting away the “middlings” from edible flour, thus enabling mills to produce higher quantities of flour from the same or less quantities of wheat than before. 16Anfinson, “Flour Power,” 261. 17 David B. Danbom, “Flour Power: The Significance of Flour Milling at the Falls,” Minnesota History 58:5/6 (Spring – Summer 2003): 273. 18 Peg Meier, Bring Warm Clothes: Letters and Photos from Minnesota’s Past (St. Paul: Minnesota Historical Society Press, 2009), 191.

40 output, the majority of which was being processed in Minneapolis.19 As they developed,

Minneapolis’s mills set and broke new records seemingly every week.20 The decision to adopt the LaCroix method and build mills around new machinery went beyond attempting to increase production. The west side rebuild would fundamentally change the nature of work in the city’s largest industry. The labor-saving technology put in place increased output while cutting the number of skilled workers required to operate the mills. The flour milling process became more compartmentalized as machines replaced semi-skilled jobs. The vacuums essential for the LaCroix method were also a safety feature, as less flour dust flew in the air. This meant that workers were breathing in less of it and, a more direct concern at the time, there was less highly-flammable dust settling

throughout the mill. As the twentieth century neared, mill owners were well aware that

they needed to attract a large pool of unskilled laborers lest supply and demand not be in

their favor.

Compartmentalizing and de-skilling labor in the mills facilitated flour’s ascension

into Minneapolis’s dominant industry, and the increases in production and transportation

had significant effects on the hinterlands. The Red River and Minnesota River valleys in

western Minnesota, eastern Dakota Territory, and southern Manitoba had the ideal soil

and climate for growing large quantities of spring wheat. Due to high gluten levels,

19 Frame, Millers to the World, 78. 20 Robert Frame, “Pillsbury A Mill, Minneapolis and other Pillsbury Mills: Production,” Minnesota Flour Milling Research Files. Minnesota Historical Society Archives, Robert M. Frame Papers, 147.E.10.10(F). In just under a decade, the Pillsbury A mill alone beat its own record by more than 6,000 barrels per day. In 1900 producing over 16,000 barrels daily was viewed as another record to beat by Washburn-Crosby and Northwestern Consolidated. The Pillsbury, Washburn-Crosby, and the Northwestern Consolidated mills had a record-breaking year in 1902, averaging 225,000 barrels of flour a week. “Minneapolis and the Northwest,” Weekly Northwestern Miller, September 21, 1902. The average weekly output in 1903 was approximately 122,000 barrels, while they produced 315,390 barrels a week during April 1901. Such a higher production rate in 1901 compared to 1903 was likely due to a combination of factors like the size of farmers’ wheat crops and harvest success.

41 spring wheat produced more flour per grain than soft winter wheat. However, it was problematic due to its hard husk which left many “imperfections” in the final product.

Adopting the LaCroix method solved this issue, and farmers in Minneapolis's hinterlands were strongly encouraged to grow spring wheat.21 Although the mills had initially been serviced by overland roads that led to St. Paul for national distribution, the explosion and rebuild gave an opportunity for millers to integrate railroad service into their facilities.

Mills’ growth led city industrialists to look toward expansion and diversification of industry. Mill owners were not content to ship to St. Paul or Chicago for rail access, so they built their own line and had a strong partnership with the Great Northern Railway, operated by St. Paulite James J. Hill. Reconstruction allowed the millers to incorporate the new rail into their operations, changing the nature of Minneapolis’s relationship with its hinterland as well as its twin city, and setting it on a course of development that only the boosters had imagined previously. Minneapolis industries had long been reliant on transporting their goods using roads to St. Paul where they were shipped on the

Mississippi or via rail to outside markets or to Duluth where goods were shipped east via

Lake Superior. Wanting a way to receive wheat and ship flour that was unencumbered by winter (which froze lakes) and avoided tariffs set by others (like when shipping through

Chicago), the millers combined to establish the SOO Line in 1887 that went through

Wisconsin and Michigan’s Upper Peninsula, where it connected to the Great Lakes at

Sault Ste. Marie.22 The introduction of rail changed how flour was packaged, as it was easier to pack rail cars with flour in sacks than in barrels, and suddenly the city had a

21 Hart, “Lost City,” 2. 22 Kenneth M. Hammer, “Genesis of a Miller’s Road: The Minneapolis, St. Paul, and Sault Ste. Marie,” Railroad History 146 (1982): 23.

42 burgeoning textile sector. Hill also began adding spur lines to his Great Northern that would bring rail access to farmers in the West. This meant that farmers did not have to rely on roads or rivers to get their product to market.23 Moreover, owing to the relationship between Minneapolis's millers and Hill, the development of spur lines almost forced farmers to send their products to Minneapolis for processing.24 Rebuilding and furnishing mills with the latest technology required significant capital investments and, once again, rather than constantly looking outside Minneapolis for support, millers brought in banks to get them required credit.25 Banking, textiles, and rail were directly tied to the flour mills’ expansion, but dozens of other tertiary and secondary industries flourished with milling’s success. The mills were Minneapolis’s backbone, and the capitalists behind them took prominent roles in defining the city’s image, helping shape the cityscape, and contributing to reform efforts throughout the period under investigation. Men like John S. Pillsbury, John Crosby, William D. Washburn, and

William H. Dunwoody – all affiliated with major milling concerns – helped cultivate the ideal image of Minneapolis.

To build this milling outpost into something more than Lowell-West, early civic leaders needed more than industrial presence. Urbanization was at once compelling and confounding. To some it represented the future, modernity, and progress while others saw it as a collection of congested streets, confused people, contaminated land, and corrupt leaders. Capitalists were aware that industrial growth without attendant population growth was not in their interest. Not only would it dampen their production capabilities, it

23 Blegen, Minnesota History, 343. 24 Hammer, “Genesis of a Miller’s Railroad,” 24. 25 Danbom, “Flour Power,” 278, 281, 283.

43 also put negotiating power in the hands of workers. In the 1870s, Minneapolis had

expanded territorially and was not able to find enough workers to keep mills open to meet

demand. But technology that deskilled mill jobs and the broader industrial growth experienced even before the turn of the twentieth century meant that Minneapolis employers required a large stream of labor to maintain production. Being an open-armed

recipient of immigrants and rural-to-urban migrants was not ideal, though, in their view.

Civic leaders were well aware of the issues plaguing cities that had experienced unbridled capital development like New York, Boston, Philadelphia, and even nearby Chicago; impressive though these cities were, they were also a cautionary tale. Civic leaders in the late-nineteenth century had a vision for their city beyond an industrial center, and positioned themselves as stewards of civic development.

Early civic leaders coalesced their power and influence by joining various social and commercial clubs. Almost all of the men driving development shared a Yankee background and were, at some level, involved with flour. In 1883, John S. Pillsbury founded the Minneapolis Club; its membership was a mixture of political and industrial figures who actively guided the city’s early development.26 W.C. Edgar, editor of the

trade paper The Northwestern Miller, wrote a history of his beloved Minneapolis Club. In his opening statement, he characterized its importance:

The history of the Minneapolis Club reflects the industrial and social development of the place in which it is situated and of which it has always been, inconspicuously and unofficially, but nonetheless emphatically, the representative body of its citizenship. It has never departed from its character as a purely social organization, either to initiate or to promote civic enterprises; nevertheless, within its walls, the influence of its members, expressed and exercised informally, has actually been the

26 William Millikan, A Union Against Unions: The Minneapolis Citizens Alliance and Its Fight Against Organized Labor, 1903-1947 (St. Paul: Minnesota Historical Society Press, 2001), 75.

44 determining factor in practically all of the important movements that have contributed to the city’s welfare and progress since it was organized, and the Minneapolis Club always has been, more than any other body, the true exponent of the spirit of the community in which it exists.27

When the club was founded, the flour mill renovations were yielding incredible

results and the city’s prospects seemed unlimited. The Minneapolis Club was not alone,

though it was the most influential group with the broadest reach. Just over a decade after

the Minneapolis Club was founded, the Minneapolis Miller’s Club was founded. The club

was restricted by industrial affiliation, and although its purpose was also “purely social,”

the members discussed everything from where to buy wheat for the coming year to

legislation that concerned milling and business.28 The early settlers in Minneapolis were entrepreneurial men with money and means who arrived before boosters could come in and sell the site of a potential city as they did for other developing settlements in the

West. In Minneapolis’s case, its capitalists would be its boosters. “It is a self-evident truth that business makes business,” the Minneapolis Tribune proclaimed in its review of city growth in 1882.29 The article reviewed Minneapolis’s growth from an “Indian

reservation just opened for settlement” in 1849 to the “most promising city in the

country,” averring that due to the combination of the “shrewd” character of its

businessmen and the city’s natural advantages, there would be no stopping its growth in

the future.30 Social clubs fostered increasing connections among civic leaders, which

facilitated the development of a shared vision for what Minneapolis would become.

27 William C. Edgar, Loring M. Staples, and Henry Doerr, Minneapolis Club: A Review of its History (Minneapolis: The Minneapolis Club, 1990), 5. 28 W.C. Edgar, “Miller’s Club,” June 5 and August 7, 1894. Club Minute Book and Article, 1894, 1896, 1942, Minnesota Historical Society Archives P1214. 29 “Minneapolis in ’82 A Glance at its Marvelous and Unprecedented Growth,” Minneapolis Tribune, January 1, 1883, 5. 30 “Minneapolis in ’82,” Minneapolis Tribune, 5.

45 Whether meetings were intended to be social or purely business, clubs brought together civic leaders from various sources of power, and it was their collective vision for

Minneapolis that was sold later by boosters. These civic leaders with Yankee roots would, ultimately, cement Minneapolis’s early identity by hiring a landscape architect to

develop a loose development plan and environmental as well as economic and social

interventions as a means to set their city apart. One element standing in Minneapolis’s way was St. Paul’s very existence. Minneapolis may have had “unlimited” water power to run industry, but St. Paul remained the major trading center in the area. The “Silver

City” had a monopoly on river traffic, rail yards other than the SOO Line lay within its limits, and most distributing and warehousing for the new great northwest was located there. Further, while this would be a point of contention well into the twentieth century,

St. Paul was the capital and thus was better known throughout the country than its upstart neighbor. It was imperative that Minneapolis’s civic leaders implement changes to demonstrate that it was not a boom town, nor would it be the lesser twin city.

The same year the Minneapolis Club was founded, perhaps the most influential body of civic actors in the city was also established: the Park Board. Led by Charles

Loring, civic-minded industrialists like George Brackett (former mayor and involved in flour milling), John S. Pillsbury (flour milling), Benjamin F. Nelson (paper and pulp milling), Daniel Bassett (banking,) and Dorilus Morrison (water power and milling)

lobbied for the board to be established and, along with seven other men, comprised the

first set of officers for the Park Board.31 Despite lingering opposition at the city level, in

31 First Annual Report of the Board of Park Commissioners of the City of Minneapolis (Minneapolis: Harrison & Smith, Printers, 1883), 2. There were also three ex-offficio members, including Mayor Albert A. Ames.

46 early 1883 the state legislature passed “An Act Providing for the Designation,

Acquisition, Laying Out and Improvement of Lands in the City of Minneapolis for a

System of Parks and Parkways; and for the Care and Government thereof.”32 Like social

clubs, the Park Board helped a growing network of civic stewards cultivate shared vision

for what form this new city would take as it grew. Unlike social clubs, the Park Board

was given a mandate and funding to act on its vision. Controversially, the Minneapolis

Park Board was comprised of only appointed men who, without needing to consult City

Hall, could “issue city bonds, condemn land and raise park funds through a tax levy.”33

Such power in an entity outside of City Council and electoral control was worrisome for

many. The power to raise money independently and acquire land was in the hands of “the

wealthy elite” who comprised the first Board.34 Despite their class standing, board members were early advocates of city-wide beautification that was not exclusive to the neighborhoods in which they themselves lived.35 The Park Board still had powerful

political opponents in the city, including Mayor Alfred Ames, but its capitalists were

supportive of a venture that they saw as at once beautifying and making more valuable

the city in which they lived.

The Park Board immediately elected Loring to be the first president of the Parks

Board. A New Englander, he had made his fortunes in warehousing and mill management

in Minneapolis’s very early years. He was a hobby horticulturalist and his wife was

especially active in gardening and arborist societies. Minneapolis parks historian David

32 First Annual Report of the Board of Park Commissioners of the City of Minneapolis, 3. 33 Smith, City of Parks, 23. 34 Smith, City of Parks, 24. 35 Smith, City of Parks, 24. The Park Board and its changing motivations will be discussed more in Chapter Six.

47 Smith stated that when Loring was named president of the Parks Board, “the elite of the city named him to a position of far greater power [than the mayor] in shaping the future of the city.”36 Indeed, it was Loring’s hand that guided much of Minneapolis's physical development for more than two decades. His concept of a city was not one of hustle and bustle, tenements dominating the streets, and capital hurriedly changing hands. Rather, he was a lifelong advocate for keeping natural elements in the city to promote both urban aesthetics and economics. The establishment of a powerful Park Board and the appointment of Loring to lead it reflected civic leaders’ conviction that Minneapolis could become a civilized city on the Mississippi. The role of planning and design in

Minneapolis’s growth suggests that civic leaders did not want to build another mill or company town and, instead, opted for less coordinated development of the city into a metropolis on the banks of the Mississippi.

In the late-nineteenth century, cities were chaotic scenes. Americans had long been associated with nature and wilderness, claiming that the frontier imbued them with a strong, independent spirit. But in 1893 at the Chicago World’s Fair, with the White City glowing nearby, Frederick Jackson Turner reported a tenuous finding from the 1890 census: the frontier was closed.37 As stone storefronts replaced shanty wood structures in new cities and ever-higher buildings dotted the skylines of older cities, urbanites began to question what this new landscape held in store for them. Well after the turn of the twentieth century, cows, pigs, and chickens lived in people’s backyards, blocks away from wholesalers and grocers who sold the already-processed animals’ products. People often kept farm animals out of economic necessity, but the density of urban living soon

36 Smith, City of Parks, 23. 37 Frederick Jackson Turner, "The Significance of the Frontier in American History.”

48 meant that the cost of public health would trump the cost of meat, eggs, and milk. With agrarian-based movements taking root all around it, Minneapolis turned instead to urbanization. It would be a metropole to the vast region of Grangers and Populists to its west and south, and nature would play an important role in its development.

The development of scientific thought in the late-nineteenth century affected how people thought of the environment. Charles Darwin’s writing on habitat and evolutionary changes was distorted into pseudoscience as Social Darwinism. The concept posited that regardless of living condition or social status, the fittest organism in any niche would survive and become stronger over time while the weak would die off. It lent itself well to late-Gilded Age thinking, as America’s wealthy used it to justify withholding structural reform to aid the growing numbers of poor. Many in the upper classes saw the plight of the poor as none of their concern. But the closing of the nineteenth century brought a number of shifts in American mentality toward the urban poor. Not everyone accepted

Social Darwinism wholesale. In Minneapolis, environmental determinism took a stronger hold than Social Darwinism. The theory, also borrowing from Darwin, suggested that one’s environs determine one’s character development. Environmental determinism was especially popular among proponents of city planning and landscape architecture and could be seen in the City Beautiful movement as well as city natural movements.

Building clean, beautiful spaces would contribute to cities being healthier environments overall that would, ideally, raise better citizens. It played a significant role in the way

Minneapolis's civic leaders decided to develop the city.

49 Company Towns and Corporation Cities

Minneapolis civic leaders were likely aware of other city typologies when they were in the process of determining the form their city might take. They had capital connections in cities throughout the United States, and the Minneapolis Club and Miller’s

Club had members in cities such as New York, Philadelphia, and Chicago. So many of the city’s civic leaders were from New England – home of company towns that were designed, constructed, and controlled by one or several companies - that the fact that

Minneapolis was developed with an eye toward becoming a metropolis is in itself interesting. When debating the name of the new settlement, Lowell was a frontrunner.38

That people pushed for Lowell as a name during Minneapolis’s settlement in the 1860s

suggests a sentiment for New England mill towns. The Massachusetts city had been

designed and constructed to accommodate the Merrimack River as a power source for

textile mills, its main industry. In her study of company town designs, Margaret Crawford

termed it a “corporation city,” noting that it differed from early company towns like

Paterson, New Jersey in that there was no comprehensive plan presented at the outset.39

Rather, the developer, Kirk Boott (who also planned Homestead, Pennsylvania),

“organized a single industrial unit” for “mills and housing, leaving the land outside the

factory boundaries, labeled ‘town,’ to be subdivided into lots and sold for commercial

development.”40 Boott’s plan meant that the town developed in an ad hoc fashion, but

with nearly identical structures along the Merrimac River owned by different companies.

38 Jocelyn Wills, Boosters, Hustlers, and Speculators: Entrepreneurial Culture and the Rise of Minneapolis and St. Paul, 1849-1883 (St. Paul: Minnesota Historical Society Press, 2005), 129. Wills wrote that one early industrialist and booster in particular envisioned Minneapolis as a Lowell of the West, but with flour replacing textiles as the main product. 39 Margaret Crawford, Building the Workingman’s Paradise: The Design of American Company Towns (New York: Verso, 1995), 24. 40 Crawford, Building the Workingman’s Paradise, 24.

50 The town’s founders “had no ‘urban vision’ of a coherent community.”41 And although it

was celebrated as a genteel working environment, especially for young women,

eventually the apparent social harmony was disrupted when immigrant workers were

used to undercut wages in the 1840s. As a result, the women working there had few

options other than accepting the wage and housing cuts or leaving the corporation city to

find work elsewhere. It was perhaps the breakdown of corporation cities that steered

Minneapolis’s civic leaders away from following their patterns. Although popular, many

argued that Lowell carried with it baggage that a new city need not adopt. Ultimately, the

Dakota word for water and the Greek word for city were combined into Minneapolis.42 It

was an amalgamation of local, natural features with external, man-made classification

that would be reflected in the city’s subsequent development.

By the turn of the twentieth century, company towns and corporation cities

existed throughout the United States. They generally fell into four broad categories,

defined by architectural historian Leland M. Roth. The earliest were bare-bones

settlements owned directly by the company. The second type were towns with a similar

“prosaic plan” but featured more distinct designs while the closely-related third type, with its “curvilinear street system” was laid out by professional planners but “housing and other construction [was] left up to speculative builders.”43 The fourth type was most

common after 1900, and it mixed “professionally planned buildings and professionally

designed street plans,” effectively combining comprehensive visions with private capital

41 Crawford, Building the Workingman’s Paradise, 23. 42 Warren Upham, Minnesota Geographic Names: Their Origin an Historic Significance (repr. with introduction by James Taylor Dunn, St. Paul: Minnesota Historical Society Press, 1969), 223. 43 Leland M. Roth, “Three Industrial Towns by McKim, Mead & White,” Journal of the Society of Architectural Historians (38:4 December 1979 pp. 317-347): 320.

51 investments driving development.44 As Minneapolis was establishing its Park Board and

determining the plan for its built environment in the early 1880s, a new example of

company town was opening just outside Chicago that would serve as a warning of the

many potential hazards – at least for a city’s elite – of intrusive and prescriptive design.

Perhaps the most infamous example of a company town is Pullman, Illinois.45

Developed by George Pullman, the town was located several miles outside Chicago.

Opened in 1881, Pullman was a planned model city with comprehensive sewer, water,

and gas mains in addition to a local water source, farms, dairies, and ranches serving it.46

George Pullman’s creation was part paternalism and part economics. He firmly believed

that by providing adequate housing and recreation opportunities and shielding his

employees from dubious influences, he could have a highly productive, contented, and

virtuous workforce populating an ideal settlement. Pullman’s outlook was in line with

many paternalist reformers of the late-nineteenth century who believed that by

“reorganizing haphazard individual paternalist and philanthropic ‘improvements’ into

systematic social programs’” there was potential to “transf[orm] slumdwellers and

factory workers into respectable American cities.”47 These improvements often took the form of environmental interventions, which emphasized the role of spatial reconfiguration in broader efforts of civic stewardship and paternalism.48

44 Roth, “Three Industrial Towns by McKim, Mead & White,” 321. 45 Stanley Buder, An Experiment in Industrial Order and Community Planning, 1880-1930, The Urban Life in America Series, ed. Richard C. Wade (New York: Oxford University Press, 1967). Especially pages 49- 76. 46 Almont Lindsey, The Pullman Strike (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1942), 40. 47 Crawford, Building the Workingman’s Paradise, 48. 48 Roy Lubove, Twentieth-Century Pittsburgh: Government, Business, and Environmental Change (Pittsburgh: University of Pittsburgh Press, 1969), 20.

52 Pullman’s location – near, but not adjacent to Chicago – was selected purposely to

“eliminate all debasing influences.”49 The town butted up against Lake Calumet and company-owned land for hundreds of acres to prevent outside influences from Chicago filtering in. Its nearly two thousand tenements were constructed with varying architectural styles in an “attempt to give plastic quality and variety in form” to otherwise

“uninspired design.”50 The uniformity was “relieved somewhat by the beauty of trees and shrubbery” and the construction of larger estate homes outside the workers’ residential district.51 The tenements were designed to accommodate families in utilitarian dwellings which, regardless of varying rents and added amenities, all had the same basics installed.

This was a major step in worker housing, as tenements were being built in most major cities, but few provided running water and proper ventilation. However, the housing came at great cost to workers’ autonomy. During its early years, outsiders viewed

Pullman as a utopia – a settlement that benefitted employer and employees mutually. The city was progressive in some ways, but taken as a whole was emblematic of America in the Gilded Age: attractive on the surface, problematic underneath. The amenities built for

Pullmanites “would ultimately benefit George Pullman, as a healthy and loyal work force would be more productive less likely to unionize, and less likely to complain if wages were lower than at competitors’ factories.”52

The jewel of Pullman was the town square and Arcade, placed intentionally so that those riding on the train past the city would view it as a frontispiece. Although a

49 Lindsey, The Pullman Strike, 49. 50 Robert M. Lillibridge, “Pullman: Town Development in the Era of Eclecticism,” Journal of the Society of Architectural Historians (12:2 October 1953): 19. 51 Lindsey, The Pullman Strike, 44. 52 Jonathan Bassett, “The Pullnman Strike of 1894,” OAH Magazine of History 11:2 (Labor History, Winter 1997): 34.

53 comprehensively-planned, almost fully-contained company town, Pullman encountered its share of problems. After the panic of 1893, the rail car company slashed wages while

keeping rent and food costs the same or higher levels. This led to broad worker

frustration and, eventually, a massive strike in 1894 that crippled the western half of the

country by effectively shutting down rail service. During the strike, the Arcade and town

square spaces were redefined. The area became a site of strike mobilization as well as a

staging ground well as for the National Guard. The federal government’s intervention

crushed the strike, but labor unrest and the potential for working-class uprisings in other

cities persisted.

Minneapolis’s short distance from St. Paul could have served as a buffer zone that

could have enabled a Pullman-esque company town to develop. Though the city would

have a mixed economy closer to the turn of the twentieth century, its early years were

dominated by lumber milling and, given the mills’ reliance on the waterfalls for power,

could have been controlled by the few early investors. The city’s location was determined

by the location of St. Anthony Falls, which powered the mills and would provide the

energy for the country’s first hydroelectricity plant in 1882.53 However, just because industry had to be located in Minneapolis, it did not mean that the city’s capitalists could not simply reside in nearby St. Paul while their product was manufactured in the Mill

City. This was, in fact, common practice for many company towns. But this did not happen. The decision against using this type of planning typology shows that

Minneapolis’s civic leaders were not interested in absolute control over a distant mill city. Rather, by having in place a planning scaffolding within which the city would be

53 Kane, The Falls of St. Anthony, 136-137.

54 developed, civic leaders laid the environmental groundwork for social and labor relations

to come. They, as civic stewards, would develop the social, economic, and physical

frameworks for Minneapolis, but they would not control every decision, action, or space

within it. The downfall of Lowell and Paterson as well as devastating strikes in Chicago,

Pullman, and Homestead during the 1890s provided a reminder of the pitfalls of the first

two of Roth’s company town typologies and the intention of civic leaders to have

absolute control over a city’s spaces and population.

Minneapolis civic leaders rejected the notion of building a company town, but

still favored environmental interventions as means of civic stewardship. Aesthetics and a

clean city meant more than a nice location in which to live; they meant higher capital

investments, more settlers, and were the promise of a modern city that could mitigate the

negative aspects of urbanization. The role of planning in the city’s history is central to

understanding the development of its built environment as both a political and social

process. The early stages of planning were not a negotiation over public space – they

were dictations of how the city would develop. Although not a comprehensively-planned

new settlement like Pullman, Minneapolis would receive a governing ethos as well as a

tacit guide for physical development from Horace Cleveland and his plan for a park

system in the city.54 Cleveland’s plan would provide a scaffolding within which the Park

Board, cooperating with private citizens, were to develop a city. Although “to plan a

water supply, a park system, a subdivision, or a campus was not to plan a city,” each of

54 Horace W.S. Cleveland, Suggestions for a System of Parks and Parkways, for the City of Minneapolis (Minneapolis: Johnson, Smith, & Harrison, 1883). David Smith noted that although the Park Board had hired Cleveland to make a park system plan, it took almost a decade before it was acted upon. Smith, City of Parks, 25. However, as will be shown in Chapter Six, Cleveland’s park ideologies would be firmly entrenched in many Park Board leaders and help to guide its early land development and park usage directives.

55 these things were incorporated into Minneapolis’s “urban fabric” and comprised the built environment in which people interacted.55 By considering how planning was used,

Minneapolis the city becomes less of a venue in which events occurred and more of an

actor in its own history.

Landscape architecture as a profession was only just emerging in the 1880s,

boasting a few more than a dozen practitioners. Most were employed in estate or

cemetery design, not city planning. The country’s most prominent example of public

landscape design, Central Park, had only been completed in 1873.56 It was designed by

Frederick Law Olmsted and Calvert Vaux, whose careers shaped the profession and how

Americans thought about cityscapes. Cleveland had entered the design competition for

Central Park in 1857, ultimately losing to his contemporaries Olmsted and Vaux. Central

Park would receive criticism for its lack of accessibility and for the fact that the city’s bourgeoisie “saw in such a project not only a chance for capital accumulation through rising real estate prices, but also a way to create a space removed from the disorderly city.

The park would symbolize the material wealth of the city.”57 Cleveland was among the critics of Central Park, and in the 1860s he left New York for Chicago. There, he helped define a new aesthetic that would be a competitor to the City Beautiful movement that debuted at the 1893 Chicago World’s Fair which emphasized broad-scale design interventions and a commitment to neo-classical aesthetics. A “city naturalist,” Cleveland

55 Jon A. Peterson, The Birth of City Planning in the United States, 1840-1917 (Baltimore: The Johns Hopkins University Press, 2003), 26. 56 The land had been dedicated in the 1850s, but its construction slowed significantly during the Civil War. 57 Sven Beckert, The Monied Metropolis: New York City and the Consolidation of the American Bourgeoisie, 1850-1986 (New York: Cambridge University Press, 2001), 50.

56 argued that cities of the West should immediately set aside land to be made into public

spaces as they grew.58

Cleveland articulated his ethos in his 1873 book, Landscape Architecture as

Applied to the Wants of the West. 59 Using Chicago as a cautionary tale, the book

articulated the difference between ornamentation solely for aesthetics and his vision of

landscape architecture that merged form and function. The foundational text literally

defined the field: “Landscape Architecture is the art of arranging land so as to adapt it

most conveniently, economically and gracefully, to any of the varied wants of

civilization.”60 Cleveland was no fan of ornamentation just to beautify a space; many

pages of his book were dedicated to chastising cities for having no comprehensive plan

then, after industry and dwellings had taken over the landscape, attempting to address the

environment by squeezing small parks onto expensive land or placing statues on

boulevards. Cleveland wrote that Chicago’s “founders were always sanguine of her future

destiny, and from an early day declared their conviction that she would become one of

the leading commercial cities of the country.”61 This was not unlike Minneapolis’s early

civic leaders, but with one major difference: Minneapolis took action based on

Cleveland’s text. After the Chicago fire, that city began rebuilding and spent millions to

put in squares, parks in wealthy areas, and boulevards, though Cleveland argued it was

too late to revolutionize the Windy City.62 These ornaments would not affect any

substantive changes for most of the city’s population and, worse, the cost of acquiring

58 Shen Hou, The City Natural: Garden and Forest Magazine and the Rise of American Environmentalism (Pittsburgh: University of Pittsburgh Press, 2013), 188. 59 Horace William Shaler Cleveland, Landscape Architecture, as Applied to the Wants of the West: With an Essay on Forest Planting on the Great Plains (Chicago: Jansen, McClurg, & Co., 1873). 60 Cleveland, Landscape Architecture, 17. Italics in original. 61 Cleveland, Landscape Architecture, 36. 62 Cleveland, Landscape Architecture, 45.

57 land for parks after a city matured was so expensive such that it prohibited his plans from

being implemented.

Landscape Architecture sparked broad interest in Cleveland’s approach to city-

building. He was commissioned by St. Paul civic leaders to make a plan for their city in

the 1870s and designed the park and boulevards for Minnehaha Park in 1878. When he

visited the Twin Cities again in 1882 for a speaking engagement, he was courted to make

a plan for Minneapolis as well. Loring had a copy of Landscape Architecture, which had

influenced his thinking about civic development.63 Among the most influential arguments

Cleveland posed was that by planning for a city’s future (especially by hiring him as a

landscape architect), western settlements could set themselves apart and present theirs as

an advanced settlement. He claimed that in an ideal situation, upon arrival in a planned

city, a traveler of the West would be “astonished at finding such a population, supplied

with all the refinements and luxuries of civilization, in the regions whose names have

always been synonymous in his mind with scenes of savage loneliness.”64 Undoubtedly this struck a chord with Minneapolis’s city founders. Already successful at developing industry, it was crucial that they build a reputation for the city that would eschew anything frontier or “savage.” After all, the city had made headlines only twenty years earlier for its association with the Dakota War of 1862. Cleveland revealed his plan in

1883, and stayed in Minneapolis until 1897 working on plans to unite the Twin Cities, which he argued would amalgamate soon enough so they should have a cohesive plan.

His influence on the city both in physical layout and in ethos cannot be overlooked. He

63 David Dierdauer, “The Legacy of Theodore Wirth and How He Shaped the Minneapolis Park System” unpublished, November 2000, 1. James K. Hosmer Reading Room, Hennepin County Public Library. 64 Cleveland, Landscape Architecture, 77.

58 constantly urged Minneapolis’s civic leaders to acquire as much land as possible for

future parks because once a city began to grow, land would only go up in value. Further,

his plans and the parks he designed would become the major focal point of future booster

pamphlets and a foundation for the city’s twentieth-century development.65 His plans and

the ways in which his ethos was acted upon will be discussed in further detail in Chapter

Six.

A Census War and the Shame of Minneapolis

In the 1880s, Minneapolis grew rapidly while St. Paul’s growth evened out and

slowed a bit, resulting in a tightening of the race to be Minnesota’s premiere city. By

1890, the cities had grown close enough in industrial output and population to be called

twins, but – typical of siblings – they still battled for supremacy. In what would become a

national debacle, both cities padded their 1890 federal census returns in an effort to be

seen as the superior city of the Northwest. When the returns were made public, it was apparent that Minneapolis and St. Paul had adjusted their population numbers and both cities charged the other with fraud. The so-called “census war” highlighted the fierce

competition between them and the importance placed on growth in western cities. Both

cities’ newspapers covered the debacle, each with hyperbolic language that hinted at

jealousy and bitterness. Nationally, The New York Times ran stories that followed the

evolution of the census wars, from the initial accusations to formal charges and beyond.

Publishing articles mostly with St. Paul bylines, the Times presented the census war to a

national audience as a spat between jealous siblings. While the two sides bickered, the

65 Minneapolis Civic and Commercial Association, “Minneapolis, Where You are Always Welcome,” 21. Minnesota Historical Society Archives F613.M15 M58 1912z.

59 Times published the 1890 results as initially reported, which placed Minneapolis as the seventeenth largest city in the United States and St. Paul as the twentieth.66 A recount had already been issued by the time the article appeared, and The Times acknowledged it, though ultimately concluded that regardless of how it turned out, Minneapolis was the up-and-comer, the more modern of the twins:

No prudent person will interfere in the quarrel between the twins, but there can surely be no offense in noting that Minneapolis has established its own claim for the ‘biggest’ percentage of increase known for cities of that size, and has much surpassed St. Paul as Chicago has surpassed St. Louis.67

The capital city continued its protests for most of 1890. Like children, both cities pointed at each other asserting injustices had been done, all the while claiming their own innocence in the matter. Once the recount became national news, both cities had a stake in keeping the trials in the headlines, each waiting to exonerate itself and show that – with the real numbers – it was the dominant Minnesota city. One of the few Minneapolis bylines The Times picked up in reporting the census wars exemplified the image of control each city was exercising in the local and national presses. The article “Fighting over the Census: St. Paul Jealous of Minneapolis and Charges Fraud,” featured a

Minneapolis writer claiming that “the matter [of the recount] is regarded here as a great game of bluff, and a carrying out of the original St. Paul idea of discrediting, if possible,

66 “Censuses of the Cities” The New York Times, June 25, 1890. 67 “Censuses of the Cities” The New York Times, June 25, 1890.

60 the Minneapolis returns before the country.”68 As the story unfolded, though, it became

apparent that both cities had, in fact, engaged in fattening their census returns.

In the end, Minneapolis had added more than 25,000 fictional inhabitants while

St. Paul was guilty of adding a little over 2,000.69 With its 164,736 actual inhabitants in

1890, though, Minneapolis still surpassed St. Paul’s 133,156.70 The adjusted numbers did

knock Minneapolis down a few notches on the nation’s largest cities list, but it bumped

St. Paul off of it entirely. None of the more than twenty accused enumerators were

charged with fraud in the scheme. It was ultimately decided that they were following

printed orders handed to them to count anyone in any place who did not indicate that their

dwelling was elsewhere, and “no man could commit a crime by following an act of

Congress.”71 Minneapolis was both the most fraudulent actor and the victor in the 1890

census war; its public image was boosted by national coverage and although both cities

were outed for fraudulent census reporting, Minneapolis’s undoctored numbers still

placed it well ahead of its twin. Beyond image and publicity, the recount was crucial in

the political arena, as the “census guided legislative and congressional reappointment.”72

Two years after the debacle, Minneapolis hosted the Republican National Convention and

its political power appeared to eclipse that of Minnesota’s capital.

The census war was not Minneapolis’s last encounter with national infamy.

Mayor Albert Alonzo “Doc” Ames would have an incredible impact on Minneapolis’s

development as he drew national attention for his corruption; the fallout would be a

68 “Fighting over the Census: St. Paul Jealous of Minneapolis and Charges Fraud” The New York Times, July 23, 1890. 69 “Minneapolis Discouraged” The New York Times, September 14, 1890. 70 “Twin Cities’ Census: Minneapolis leads St. Paul in the Returns” The New York Times, August 21, 1900. 71 “The Enumerator Acquitted: Peace once more may Reign in St. Paul and Minneapolis” The New York Times, January 24, 1891. 72 Jack El-Hai, “The Census War,” American Heritage (July/August 1990): 106.

61 catalyst for the adoption of progressive reform. Ames, son of early Minneapolis settler,

state Representative, and parks skeptic Alfred Elisha Ames, was elected mayor as a

Democrat in four different decades, beginning in 1876, with his nineteenth-century tenure

ending in 1889. Described both as a drunk and a goodhearted man, he was usually found

in saloons and often offered his medical services to the poor in exchange for political

support instead of money. Ames was in and out of local and state politics, but he could

not stand being politically powerless for long. In 1900 he switched the donkey for an

elephant and was once again elected mayor, this time as a Republican.73 Upon being

elected, Ames hired his brother, Fred W. Ames, a disgraced colonel who had served in

the Philippines who once avoided court martial only due to his brother’s political

connections.74 Together, the Ames brothers instituted a gambling scheme that involved placing a known criminal as chief of detectives and letting go police officers known to be too honest.75 By 1902, Minneapolis – like many cities during this time – had more

saloons than churches, and opium dens, prostitution, and gambling venues proliferated

alongside them.76

It was not unusual for cities to have a section of town in which vice operated

without much interference. St. Paul had broadly embraced bawdiness. Historian Mary

Wingerd noted that St. Paulites did not fight the existence of alcohol, prostitution, and

gambling much because of the importance of the “vice economy” in attracting business to

73 Iric Nathanson, “The Shame of Minneapolis: Civic Corruption 100 Years Ago” (Hennepin History 62:1): 15. 74 Lincoln Steffens, “The Shame of Minneapolis,” 9. 75 Steffens, “The Shame of Minneapolis,” 9-10. 76 Iric Nathanson, Minneapolis in the Twentieth Century: The Growth of an American City (St. Paul: Minnesota Historical Society Press, 2010), 44-45.

62 that city.77 St. Paul allowed vice throughout its downtown, but Minneapolis was more

prudish than its older sibling and preferred to contain it away from “decent” areas and

sections that were easily viewed by travelers. Nicollet Island, situated in the center of the

Mississippi River right downtown, provided a physical barrier between rowdy and

respectable and was an early destination for vice. Under Ames’ scheme, vice moved far

beyond the island, though. He set up “patrol lines” in which such activity was effectively

legal, so long as a kickback was made to local police officers and to the mayor himself.

The “patrol lines” were a type of zoning, preventing seamy activities from penetrating

into “decent” sections of the city. Within the patrol lines, “disorderly houses were

practically licensed by the city, the women appearing before the clerk of the Municipal

Court each month to pay a ‘fine’ of $100.”78 Ames even went so far as to order the city’s

physicians to visit “disorderly houses” monthly to check on the women’s health – for a

$5 to $20 fee of course. There should be no illusions that Ames was truly concerned with

the health of the women or their customers. Such visits went rather quickly from

occasional medical inspections to perfunctory knocks on the door and an exchange of

cash.79 While Ames’ scheming with prostitution was egregious, it was not until he lost

control of his network of criminals that Minneapolitans took issue with the corruption. As

more criminals began running side schemes on top of Ames’ heavy-handed kickbacks,

vice, gambling, drugs, and alcohol proliferated and became a blight on the city both

socially and physically. Ames could have been one of the many American city bosses of

77 Mary Wingerd, Claiming the City: Politics, Faith, and the Power of Place in St. Paul (Ithaca: Cornell University Press, 2001), 49, 112. 78 Steffens, “The Shame of Minneapolis,” 10. 79 Steffens, “The Shame of Minneapolis,” 11.

63 this era whose iron grip on civic affairs plunged cities into political and social crises.80

However, his tenure as mayor was cut short by one crusading citizen and a grand jury.

Hovey C. Clarke, foreman for a special grand jury in the summer of 1902,

crusaded against Ames’ corruption and fought criminals at every level in City Hall.

Described as “a transplanted New Englander with something of a Puritan streak,” Clarke

indicted Fred Ames and a number of police officers throughout the summer. Albert Ames

resigned and went east for a “health retreat” in Indiana, evading any court appearances

until 1903, at which time the Minnesota Supreme Court overturned a guilty verdict and

Ames was allowed to live free in Minneapolis for the remainder of his life.81 It was

during the Grand Jury that Lincoln Steffens arrived to report on what had occurred for

McClure’s Magazine. His article was a major piece of muckraking journalism, and was

grouped with his work on several other cities; the works would collectively come to be

known as The Shame of the Cities.82 Steffens wrote scathing reports of cities like

Pittsburgh, where corruption ran so deep that to redeem the city would take much more

than a grand jury. Comparatively, Minneapolis received a soft touch. As Iric Nathanson

noted, so many remember the corruption, the depravity, the immorality of Ames’

twentieth-century tenure in office that they often forget the second half of Steffens’ title:

“The Rescue and Redemption of a City that was Sold Out.”83 Steffens concluded that

80 Many cities during this time suffered political fracturing and experienced bossism and corruption. See: Zane L. Miller, Boss Cox’s Cincinnati: Urban Politics in the Progressive Era (New York: Oxford University Press, 1968); Lyle Dorsett, The Pendergast Machine (Lincoln: University of Nebraska Press, 1980); Kevin P. Murphy, Political Manhood: Red Bloods, Mollycoddles, & the Politics of Progressive Era Reform (New York: Columbia University Press, 2008). 81 Nathanson, “The Shame of Minneapolis,” 20, 25, 27, 30. 82 Lincoln Steffems was a muckraking journalist who exposed corruption in cities throughout the United States and published his exposés in McClure’s. His works were an important catalyst for social reformers “municipal housekeeping” efforts. See: Lincoln Steffens, The Shame of the Cities (New York: McLure, Philips, & Co., 1904). 83 Nathanson, “The Shame of Minneapolis,” 13.

64 “Minneapolis should be clean and sweet for a little while at least,” and he was correct – at least on the City Hall side.84 In the next election, Minneapolitans voted for James C.

Haynes, a progressive-minded Democrat who ushered in an era in which the city worked with social reformers and industrialists to develop a network of stewardship and enact civic reforms. The entire scandal was a catalyst for reform, much of which would focus on the links between environments and social conditions. Civic leaders and social reformers would develop a network of stewardship that targeted issues such as labor conditions, school curricula, housing, public entertainments, and recreation. These five issues involved spatial reconfigurations that spoke to broader conflicts over exertion of power. The Doc Ames vice scandal was a catalyst for more than municipal cleanup; the negative attention it garnered also mobilized boosters to change the conversation about the Mill City. They sought to create a new, twentieth-century identity for Minneapolis that would move beyond past indiscretions and pitch it as the best location for laborers and investors alike.

Boosterism

Boosters in Minneapolis presented theirs as an ideal city with the perfect location.

William Cronon’s Nature’s Metropolis assessed booster literature for Chicago, and two elements of Chicago boosterism appeared in Minneapolis’s literature: the “doctrine of natural advantages” and the concept of the “central city.” Cronon explained boosters’ vision of “‘high destiny’ of the western city,” where the city being sold would be the next center of power for the country, becoming the “central city.”85 The doctrine of natural

84 Steffens, “The Shame of Minneapolis,” 21. 85 Cronon, Nature’s Metropolis, 39, 41.

65 advantages had three elements: “all the resources of a region” around the central city, the

many “transportation routes that would guide those resources to their natural

marketplace” and “global climatic forces” that combined to create “great urban

civilizations elsewhere” in the past. 86 Minneapolis capitalized on the central city and doctrine of natural advantages consistently. The story of the mill reconstruction and its

attending effects on crops and transportation in the western hinterlands was recounted in

many pamphlets.87 While Cronon’s boosters consistently pointed to Rome or Thebes

when comparing their up-and-coming city, Minneapolis’s seemed to avoid such

associations – indeed it was even rare for them to refer to other American cities,

suggesting that they wished to position Minneapolis as a city without antecedent.88

The idealized Minneapolis was a new American city, whose Indian origins rolled

into white settlers with little conflict and the existence of industry there seemed as natural

as the falls themselves. One pamphlet from 1915 (figure 1.1) featured a two-page spread with the bold headline: “An Indian Reservation Sixty Years Ago: Today, A Giant Among the Cities of the United States.”89 Highlighting its “Indian” roots and its rapid growth into

a metropolis emphasized the city’s Americanness; that New Englanders took the territory

natives had not cultivated and harnessed it to build a great western city fit into

Americans’ notions of progress and civilization overtaking the frontier. The most active

booster group at the end of the nineteenth century and especially in the early-twentieth

century was the Commercial Club, which eventually became the Minneapolis Civic and

86 Cronon, Nature’s Metropolis, 36. 87 Minneapolis Commercial Club, Fifty Facts and Then Some Forceful Figures about Minneapolis: The Mighty City. Minneapolis Commercial Club, 10 January 1910. Minnesota Historical Society F613.M15 F43 1910. 88 Cronon, Nature’s Metropolis, 43-44. 89 Minneapolis Civic and Commerce Association, Minneapolis, 9-10. Minnesota Historical Society Archives F613.M15 M514 1915

66 Commercial Association (MCCA). Many of them were part of the group of capitalists

that shifted Minneapolis from a small lumber milling center to a multi-industry

metropolis and they had a personal stake in its continued success. More practically, their

factories required laborers. A number of the men in the MCCA were also members of the

Miller’s Club and Minneapolis Club, reflecting just how centralized political and social

capital had become in less than twenty years.90

Figure 1.1: Two-page spread from a booster pamphlet, announcing Minneapolis's “progress” from a reservation to a city. Source: Minneapolis Civic and Commerce Association, Minneapolis, 9-10. Promotional materials accentuated elements of the doctrine of natural advantages

to show that Minneapolis and it alone would be the next central city of the United States.

One claimed the land “from the Great Lakes to the Pacific Ocean, and from far beyond

the Canadian border deep into the Southwest” as the “Minneapolis territory,” adding that

the city was “the logical market for this large and fast growing empire.”91 A 1908

pamphlet, published in a national magazine by newspaper man and self-proclaimed

Progressive James Linn Nash clearly speaks to both concepts. Titled “Shifting

90 Comparison of the men’s names listed in the Minneapolis Club’s history with that of the Miller’s Club papers and the names listed as founding members of the Civic and Commerce Club as found in William Millikan’s A Union Against Unions, 387-388 and William C. Edgar, Loring M. Staples, and Henry Doerr, Minneapolis Club: A Review of its History (Minneapolis: The Minneapolis Club, 1990), 168-169. 91 Minneapolis City of Lakes and Gardens, 6.

67 Commercial Center of Gravity,” the pamphlet was, without ever naming it, challenging

Chicago’s role as the commercial powerhouse of the West.92 It balanced river and mill

district images with those of parks and the commercial district, claiming that

Minneapolitans had taken “advantage of the prodigality of nature” by both harnessing the

falls for industry and installing a large park system.93 Materials published outside of

Minneapolis, too, highlighted its central city status. “Minneapolis, Metropolis of the

Great North West” was published in 1900 by a press in Buffalo, New York.94 Buffalo

and Minneapolis would become competitors in flour milling and shipping, but as far as

boosters were concerned, attracting the potential investors in upstate New York and New

England would be advantageous to Minneapolis’s commercial development. The

pamphlet’s rhetoric combined the doctrine of natural advantages and the central city

concept. Emphasizing Minneapolis’s centrality, the pamphlet focused on the many transportation links the city had and how close it was to the raw material it processed. It claimed that investing in Minneapolis was investing in a capital powerhouse: “For it has the vast wealth of the great North West behind it and the rich resources of that great region have made the city the lusty young giant that it is.”95 With pages of large black- and-white pictures, Minneapolis: Metropolis of the Great North West presented a city with highly developed industry, architecturally grand buildings, and places of respite like

Minnehaha Falls. The text asserted the city as a capital of the Northwest, going so far as

92 James Linn Nash, “Shifting Commercial Center of Gravity,” Minnesota Historical Society Archives F613.1915 N368 1908. 93 Nash, “Shifting Commercial Center,” 165. 94 Minneapolis: Metropolis of the Great North West; In Views that show its Possessions in the Architecture of Commerce and of the Arts, in the Beauties of its Parks, Lakes, Boulevards and Waterfalls (Buffalo: W.G. MacFarlane and Union and Times Press, 1900). Minnesota Historical Society Archives F613.M15.M56 1900z. 95 Minneapolis: Metropolis of the Great North West.

68 to present a picture of the Minnesota capitol building without noting that the structure

(and the power that went with it) was located in St. Paul.96

Another common theme of boosterism in western cities in the late-nineteenth

century was “the accelerating transition of western cities from imitators of eastern culture

and outposts of eastern capital to innovators that compete with Boston, New York,

Washington, Toronto, and Chicago as centers of economic, social, and intellectual

change.”97 Presenting a city as a competitor to older urban centers required going beyond

the doctrine of natural advantages and central city theory. This boosterism required

presenting a city’s cultural capital in addition to its economic and natural status. An

emphasis on cultural civility was prominent in western cities like Minneapolis, Seattle,

and Denver, where “civic leaders…created public libraries, hired European musicians to

lead nascent orchestras, [and] donated the gleanings from European tours to new art

museums.”98 Indeed each of these had been founded in an effort to establish a civilized

cultural landscape. T.B. Walker’s art museum, the Ordway, the lyceum and athenaeum –

all were supported by capitalists who had interests in developing the city to make it

palatable to outside investors and to cultivate a city they themselves wanted to live in.

These institutions were initially established to demonstrate that Minneapolis had

all of the amenities of an established eastern city, but as it grew they took on new

purpose. In 1910, the Civic Club produced a spartan brochure filled with one-sentence

‘facts.’99 Featuring neither illustrations nor photos, the bi-fold document presented two

96 Minneapolis: Metropolis of the Great North West. 97 Carl Abbott, How Cities Won the West: Four Centuries of Urban Change in Western North America (Albuquerque: University of New Mexico Press, 2008), 10. 98 Abbott, How Cities Won the West, 10. 99 Minneapolis Commercial Club, “Fifty Facts and Then Some Forceful Figures about Minneapolis: The Mighty City.” Minneapolis Commercial Club, 10 January 1910. Minnesota Historical Society F613.M15 F43 1910.

69 columns, one outlining what Minneapolis “has” and the other what Minneapolis “is.” In the “has” column, facts about population, valuation, and debt appeared alongside facts about infrastructure (sidewalks, a new city hall, paved streets), concluding with stating that the city “has the lowest death rate among the large cities in the world.”100 On the opposite page was a continuation of the facts with the addition of qualitative claims relating to the presence of culture: “Minneapolis is...home to the University of

Minnesota…the tenth city in the world in bank clearances…a city of character – a city with a future.”101 Thus, cultural capital was seamlessly integrated with commercial capital in booster pamphlets.

The city’s aesthetics and natural beauty were presented as civilizing factors that were integral to commercial and social health. Civic leaders’ vision for their city was one of commercial greatness, but also one that used landscape architecture and planning to build a city that mitigated the negative aspects of urbanization and provided an environment which civilized its citizenry. Using the city’s youth to its advantage, one booster pamphlet explained that Minneapolis “possesses all the advantages of older communities without the defacing scars of age.”102 “Minneapolis, Where You are Always

Welcome” contained photos and colorful drawings to sell the city. Again promoting the industrial-environmental balance, it claimed that “you will find Minneapolis a city in which commerce and beauty have formed a happy combination,” adding that “it is a city of culture as well as one of industry.”103 Their ideal was that Minneapolis would be seen for its cultural virtues and that they would elevate it beyond the “Mill City,” to a level of

100 Minneapolis Commercial Club, “Fifty Facts and Then Some,” 2. 101 Minneapolis Commercial Club, “Fifty Facts and Then Some,” 3. 102 MCCA, “Minneapolis: Where You are Always Welcome,” 5. 103 MCCA, “Minneapolis: Where You are Always Welcome,” 5.

70 respectability only cities in the East had earned to this point, but with conditions that far surpassed the drudgery found in eastern urban centers. In a subtle, yet important, adjustment, this pamphlet never used the “Mill City” moniker and instead opted for

“Minneapolis: The City of Lakes and Gardens,” which was supported by richly colored images (figure 1.2).104 Industrialists worked to push the city’s identity beyond a western town on the Mississippi. Industrial developments alone did not sell a city. It may have helped with attracting laborers, but it did not ensure that a city would last beyond the boom of an industry. Civic leaders, particularly those of the Minneapolis Civic and

Commercial Association that published many of these pamphlets, wanted their city to be more than a company town or corporation city. It should be a model for others – one where culture and capital grew together in a city with a rationalized design that prevented slums and blight.

104 MCCA, “Minneapolis: Where You are Always Welcome,” cover and 21.

Figure 1.2: Minneapolis: The City of Lakes and Gardens. Source: MCCA, “Minneapolis: Where You are Always Welcome,” cover image. The various pamphlets mixed rhetoric common to other booster literature like the doctrine of natural advantages, the central city concept, and the competitor to older cities.

However, Minneapolis’s booster literature claimed that the integration of aesthetics and natural beauty set it apart. Continuing Cleveland’s legacy from Landscape Architecture, the MCCA underscored the advantages of a city planned with natural space in mind.

From pitching health benefits, like a low death rate, to the look of a city not overwhelmed by industry and cramped tenements, booster pamphlets showed an idyllic Mill City. But visions and ideals do not always compare favorably to lived reality. Although the city did

72 maintain and even greatly broaden its park system, protection of natural elements, and dedication to pleasant aesthetics in the twentieth century, urbanization ultimately would catch up with Minneapolis and change the cityscape greatly.

Conclusion

In the closing decades of the nineteenth century, Minneapolis had gone from a lumber milling outpost on the frontier to a flour milling powerhouse. Owing to new technologies in flour milling, its relationship with a western hinterland changed and the majority of its labor became deskilled. Civic leaders sought ways to attract increasing numbers of laborers to the city in order to tip the population balance in their favor while also enticing further capital investment. They turned to landscape architect Horace W.S.

Cleveland to create a plan that would provide the scaffolding inside of which the city would develop. A city naturalist, his plans placed parks in most neighborhoods and would conserve large sections of the Mississippi riverfront. The emphasis on providing natural spaces in the city was supported by environmental determinists, who believed that the environment influences people’s character development, and was part of a broad attempt to mitigate the negative attributes of rapid urbanization as seen in other urban areas. Civic leaders did not support developing Minneapolis as a company town. They sought private investment to fill in Cleveland’s scaffolding. The city found itself in national headlines twice in just over a decade due to census fraud and municipal corruption. City leaders worked to address the infamy through booster pamphlets that emphasized Minneapolis’s natural beauty and industrial strengths. They believed that

73 with guidance, capital, settlers, and planning, they could construct a city unaffected by the issues plaguing older urban areas, making Minneapolis a model metropolis.

74 Chapter Two: Civic Stewardship and the Open Shop

Protection of the rights of men and women on every level of its enterprise is only one of the tasks of the great modern corporation. Another is to attract young men into its design and to train them for top executive responsibility.1

So wrote James Gray in his 1954 history of the General Mills Corporation. The

book glorified Washburn-Crosby, General Mills’ predecessor, as a benevolent employer

that provided more than wages to promote well-being among its workers. Gray

emphasized the health, education, and savings plans that enabled the company to

influence employees and fashion them into good citizens as well as good workers.

Washburn-Crosby was not alone in offering corporate welfare programs to its workers, especially in the Progressive era. Pillsbury and Northwestern Consolidated, the other two major milling entities in the city, had also cultivated welfare systems that shared

Washburn-Crosby’s aims. It was no coincidence that the presidents and owners of each of these mills were integral in designing the booster image of Minneapolis as an ideal city.

While working on selling their beloved metropolis to outsiders, civic leaders were developing stewardship plans to mold residents according to their values and preferences.

They also formed a new civic welfare association that acted on behalf of employers and capitalists in many industries to study social issues and suggest means by which they could be ameliorated. The agency cooperated with various local and national social reform groups as well. The rise of local progressive social reformers sparked employers to become more proactive in providing welfare programs and in addressing the city’s social issues. In Minneapolis, civic leaders saw themselves as stewards who could guide

1 James Gray, Business Without Boundary: The Story of General Mills (Minneapolis: University of Minnesota, 1954), 301. 75

the city and its inhabitants away from the decay present elsewhere and chart a new course

for urban respectability. The relationship between capital and labor was among the first

issues addressed, as civic leaders, situated themselves as better stewards for workers than

unions, endeavored to establish the open shop in Minneapolis.

The years between 1890 and 1915 marked Minneapolis's emergence as something

more than a frontier mill settlement. As its industrial and commercial footprint grew, the

city’s wealthy worked to make the built environment match the capital progress and to

cultivate a civic spirit that would develop citizens according to their values and priorities.

In order to keep their city from succumbing to the urban chaos of the early twentieth century, Minneapolis's civic leaders situated themselves as stewards of the city’s social as well as physical and economic growth. Far from suffering “status anxiety,” they actively

pursued reform and regulation.2 Of course, the solutions they proposed and regulations

they drafted always reflected their own values, and rarely empowered ordinary

Minneapolitans to maintain control of their public lives. Facing reform initiatives and

organized, national movements seeking to wrest power from the hands of the few,

Minneapolis's civic leaders appeared to believe that “the best way to thwart change was

to channelize it.”3

At the turn of the twentieth century, flour milling was the central driving force of

Minneapolis’s economy. It had been integral to bringing in textiles, banking, and

railroads, and its owners and workers set the tone for capital-labor relations. The major

2 Richard Hofstadter, The Age of Reform: From Bryan to F.D.R. (New York: Vintage Books. 1955), 135. 3 Gabriel Kolko, The Triumph of Conservatism: A Re-Interpretation of American History, 1900-1916 (Chicago: Quadrangle Books, 1967), 57-58. This argument also built on Robert Wiebe’s 1962 work in which he argued that businessmen (and they were all men in his study) had varied responses to reforms, but were particularly engaged in regulations pertaining to finance and public infrastructure. Robert Wiebe, Businessmen and Reform: A Study of the Progressive Movement. (Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 1962). 76

names associated with milling – Crosby, Washburn, Pillsbury, Dunwoody – were the

city’s leading capitalists who played significant roles in shaping the civic identity of their

adopted home. Civic leaders – many of them capitalists involved in flour milling –

adopted classic paternalistic humanitarianism, which placed a special burden on the

wealthy to provide for the city’s working classes. But the rise of organized labor in

Minneapolis complicated the notion that benevolence and minimal legislation could

provide for Minneapolitans and condition the working class to be grateful for that which the employers provided. Eventually, Minneapolis capitalists began to adopt the open- shop principle, which aimed to eradicate unions and talk of organization in or near work spaces. In part, the move was a means for owners to combat newly-formed industrial

unions that they believed were complicating their paternalistic management styles.

Moreover, it was a way for capitalist owners to establish a measure of control over the work environment.

One of the central issues plaguing the United States in the Progressive era was how to even out its economy without curbing growth. The laissez-faire policies that governed the nineteenth century had provided the foundation for a cycle of ever- worsening economic crises. Starting with the panic of 1873 and culminating with the crises of 1893-1897, the late-nineteenth century was particularly tumultuous. The

dizzying growth of American cities had “generated dismaying extremes of wealth and

poverty, tempting new pleasures, alien cultures, and frightening antagonisms.”4 The extreme ups and downs of the Gilded Age combined with the seemingly ceaseless drive toward industrialization, vertical integration, and corporatism proved to be too

4 Michael McGerr, A Fierce Discontent: The Rise and Fall of the Progressive Movement in America, 1870- 1920. (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2003), xiv. 77

overwhelming a tide for the majority of Americans. As the nineteenth century came to a

close, Americans, particularly in the middle class, endeavored to set the course for the

nation’s political, economic, and social growth through interventionist reforms.5

One of the first initiatives Minneapolis's capitalists and employers undertook to

establish themselves as civic stewards was to displace unions by implementing the open- shop principle. Technically, an open shop was only one in which workers were not required to join a union. In practice, though, it was intended to dismantle unionism as well as undermine working-class autonomy by asserting that employers knew better how to care for employees than did they themselves. Just after the turn of the twentieth century, Minneapolis business leaders determined that they would endeavor to implement the open-shop principle on a city-wide basis. They did not do this alone; many employers joined national organizations dedicated to eliminating unionism and establishing open shops, such as the Citizens Alliance (CA), the National Association of Manufacturers

(NAM), or both. One of the CA’s central tenets was to destroy unions, but the organization primarily functioned behind closed doors at first.6 Though founded in Ohio,

the CA gained traction in the mining West fighting the Western Federation of Miners and

other “dangerously radical” unions.7

5 Lawrence Goodwyn, Democratic Promise: The Populist Moment in America. (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1976). Goodwyn argued that the Populists of the late-nineteenth century had reacted to the economic instability and unpredictable crashes that wreaked most havoc on the nation’s agrarians. The Populists, in uniting agrarian concerns, had created a movement culture that sought to extend democratic political participation and extend the party’s support network. Though plagued with regional and racial (not to mention gender) issues, the Populists were able to cultivate a movement culture and present an alternate roadmap for future governance to which the two main political parties often responded by coopting ideas in order to undercut growing support for the third party. 6 Richard W. Gable, “Birth of an Employers’ Association,” The Business History Review33:4 (Winter 1959): 540. 7 Elizabeth Jameson, All that Glitters: Class, Conflict, and Community in Cripple Creek (Urbana: University of Illinois Press, 1998), 201. See also: George Suggs, Colorado’s War on Militant Unionism: James H. Peabody and the Western Federation of Miners (Detroit: Wayne State University Press, 1972). 78

Founded in 1895, the NAM’s original organizing purpose was to urge protectionism and the adoption of a “dual schedule tariff” that would encourage foreign trade but not cripple domestic industries.8 Minneapolis's flour and cereal mills drew raw materials from a vast western territory that often included Canada’s Prairie Provinces; as such, the potential of increasing tariffs or free trade were central concerns to the city’s capitalists.9 While the tariff issue would remain an important one, particularly as

Canadian Prime Minister Wilfrid Laurier attempted to revive free trade in 1911, the

NAM’s priorities shifted after the turn of the twentieth century.10 As unionization rates across the country continued to grow, NAM members began to identify an enemy more potent than tariffs.11 In 1903, under the new leadership of president David M. Parry, the

NAM became “the standard bearer for vigorous antiunionism.”12 Indeed, Parry characterized organized labor as a “tyranny” and encouraged NAM members to support the open-shop movement.13 That very year, owners of the city’s three largest flour mills –

Pillsbury, Washburn-Crosby, and Northwest Consolidated – agreed to support Parry and joined the NAM.14 Parry’s fire-and-brimstone speeches situated organized labor as a

8 William Anthony Lovett, Alfred E. Eckles, Jr., and Richard L. Brinkman, eds., U.S. Trade Policy: History, Theory, and the WTO (New York: M.E. Sharpe, 2004, 2nd edition), 49. 9 Using the Reciprocity Agreement, Senator Knute Nelson argued that the only benefit it would bring to Minnesota would be the annexation of Canada. Not surprisingly, this alarmed Canadians a great deal. Patrice Dutil and David MacKenzie, Canada 1911: The Decisive Election that Shaped the Country (Toronto: Dundurn, 2011), 185. 10 Laurier’s Liberal Party fought to establish a free trade principle. In the 1911 election, the Liberals were ousted and the Conservatives returned to power under Robert Borden. See: Dutil and MacKenzie, Canada 1911, especially 182-189. The NAM was fighting for protective tariffs, fearful that free trade policies would debase their members’ enterprises. See: Henry Joy, To the Members of the National Association of Manufacturers of the United States of America: For or Against an Adequate Protective Tariff, is a Tariff Commission an New Menace to Prosperity? (Detroit, n.p., 1909). 11 Gable, “Birth of an Employers’ Association,” 538. 12 Gable, “Birth of an Employers’ Association,” 545. 13 Selig Perlman and Phillip Taft, History of Labor in the United States Volume IV (New York: The Macmillan Company, 1918), 133. 14 “A Circular Issued by Federation Committee Makes an Exhaustive Statement,” Minneapolis Tribune, October 1, 1903. 79

significant threat to capitalism and to the very sanctity of the American way. In one

speech, he compared unions to “‘Huns and Vandals’” who could only accomplish things

through “‘actual force or by the threat of force.’”15 In the autumn of 1903, Parry also

became president of the Citizens’ Industrial Association – the national organization

representing local chapters of the Citizens Alliance – and the Minneapolis Commercial

Club invited him to speak.16 The CA’s support of the open shop movement, Parry stated,

was part of “a war between the owners of the American industry and the working

class.”17 Not yet battle-ready, Minneapolis's open-shop employers engaged in benevolent

efforts as a means to decrease support for organized labor. Motivated by a sense of civic

stewardship but not yet emboldened enough to use force, employers in the early-

twentieth century acted secretly to undercut unions, to convince the conservative laborer

of the value of an open shop, and to establish their own values and perspectives as the

central guiding force for civic development.

Employers used benevolence, also called paternalism and welfare capitalism, as a

means to placate workers. One central argument in labor and working class history posits

that anti-union employers used tools like health plans, education opportunities, cash

bonuses, and savings plans to keep workers happy, cultivate loyalty, and keep them out

of unions. Historians employing this argument most frequently focused on small

communities dominated by one industry or one industry in a larger community.18 James

15 Gable, “Birth of an Employers’ Association,” 541. 16 Parry was also serving as the president of the NAM at this time. In 1903, under Parry’s leadership, the NAM aided in establishing “local Citizens’ Alliances, under the auspices of the Citizens’ Industrial Alliance (CIA).” Claire Goldstene, The Struggle for America’s Promise: Equal Opportunity at the Dawn of Corporate Capital (University, MS: University Press of Mississippi, 2014), 138, 142. 17 William Millikan, A Union Against Unions: The Minneapolis Citizens Alliance and Its Fight Against Organized Labor, 1903-1947 (St. Paul, Minnesota Historical Society Press, 2001), 30. 18 See: Rick Halpern, Down on the Killing Floor: Black and White Workers in Chicago’s Packinghouses 1904-1954 (Urbana: University of Illinois Press, 1997); Jose Alamillo, Making Lemonade out of Lemons: 80

R. Barrett, writing on post-World War I Chicago’s packinghouses, argued that employers

adopted corporate welfare programs that were “fundamentally intellectual” as employers

attempted to demonstrate that “workers’ interests were tied to those of their employers,”

but noted that “economic strategies” like stock ownership were also factors in coercing workers to develop loyalty to their employers.19 In such cases of corporate welfarism, workers were not simply unquestioning, grateful recipients. Workers took advantage of

welfare, often aware that they were trading loyalty for non-wage advantages; ultimately

the programs did not successfully tamp labor discord.20

Though the argument that corporate benevolence, welfare, or/and paternalism were used solely to dislodge a growing unionization movement persists, some scholars find it too restrictive to explain fully the complex relationships between workers and employers. It is perhaps more useful to see corporate paternalism as a “continuum of power” where “oppressive and manipulative behavior on the part of the owners and managers” has coexisted with “a gentle, supportive approach to worker/owner relations.”21 Welfare measures were often offered as a means to maintain capitalist control over workers, and in Minneapolis this impulse merged with the developing civic stewardship ethos in the early 1900s. A periodical called Minnesota Banker published a

Mexican American Labor and Leisure in a California Town 1880-1960. (Urbana: University of Illinois Press, 2006). 19 James R. Barrett, Work and Community in the Jungle: Chicago’s Packinghouse Workers, 1894-1922 (Urbana: University of Illinois Press, 1987), 243-245. The intellectual and economic aspects of corporate paternalism were found in industries throughout the country, in places like Highland Park, Michigan where Henry Ford was reconfiguring labor and social relations using new mass-production technologies and the famous five-dollar day program and Endicott, New York where corporate paternalism existed as a product of conflict, at once a result of and a response to the struggle for control of the means and fruits of industrial capitalism.” See: Stephen Meyer III, The Five Dollar Day: Labor Management and Social Control in the Ford Motor Company, 1908-1921 (Albany: SUNY Press, 1981); Gerald Zahavi, Workers, Managers, and Welfare Capitalism: The Shoeworkers and Tanners of Endicott Johnson, 1890-1950 (Urbana: University of Illinois Press, 1988), 2. 20 Zahavi, Workers, Managers, and Welfare Capitalism, Chapter 2, “The Rise of the ‘Square Deal.’” 21Sarah Cowie, The Plurality of Power: An Archaeology of Industrial Capitalism (New York: Springer Publishing, 2011), 15. 81

call to establish the open shop starting by appealing to the mind of the “‘conservative

laborer’” who, once convinced of its benefits, would influence his fellow workers to

accept the principle “‘without disrupting the entire industrial situation by means of

disastrous strikes and lockouts.’”22 This represented the gentle end of the continuum of

power. Failing this, though, the writer stated that “there is, of course, but one final thing

to do, and that is to beat them by force. They must be locked out and licked” until

workers are convinced that the open shop benefitted them more than a union shop.23

While force certainly appeared in Minneapolis during the infamous the 1934 general

strike, the early years of membership in the CA and the NAM saw employers attempt to

woo workers with benevolence.24

Civic leaders established the Minneapolis Civic and Commerce Association

(MCCA), a group of more than one thousand employers, as a non-governmental agency

that would influence regulations and social interventions in the city. William Millikan

argued that the MCCA was simply an arm of the CA, citing the overlap in their

respective memberships.25 In the list of founding members of both organizations Millikan

provided in his book, there were 138 names (in addition to a number of company names)

listed as founding members of the CA chapter in Minneapolis and 49 listed as founding

members of the MCCA; just nine names overlapped.26 Of course, both organizations

22 Minnesota Banker December 16, 1920, as quoted in Jean E. Spielman, Spielman, The Stool-Pigeon and the Open Shop Movement. (Minneapolis: American Publishing Company, 1923), 14. 23 Minnesota Banker December 16, 1920, as quoted in Spielman, The Stool-Pigeon and the Open Shop Movement, 14. 24 For more on the 1934 strike, see: Elizabeth Faue, Community of Suffering and Struggle: Women, Men, and the Labor Movement in Minneapolis, 1915-1945 (Chapel Hill: Duke University Press, 1991). 25 William Millikan, “Defenders of Business: The Minneapolis Civic and Commerce Association versus Labor during W.W.I.” Minnesota History 50:1 (Spring 1981): 4. Also Millikan, A Union Against Unions, 41, 51. 26 Comparison of membership lists provided in Millikan, A Union Against Unions, Appendices C and D, 378-388. 82 grew significantly after their founding, though Millikan did not provide subsequent membership lists for overlap comparison. He rightly identified the MCCA’s “inten[tion] to be a totally inclusive organization [so that] it could presume to plan to systematize every detail of Minneapolis's public life, from private commerce and industry to governmental regulation to the infrastructure on which city life was based.”27 However,

Millikan’s portrayal of the MCCA as a myopic organization, the sole purpose of which was to guard the open shop, is perhaps overblown. Millikan asserted that, like the CA, the

MCCA subscribed to the idea that “labor unions were…traitorous, un-American, and unconstitutional. There was to be no accommodation.”28 While there were many instances, which Millikan chronicled in his book, wherein members of the MCCA acted against organized labor and supported the CA’s principles, conflating the two organizations as equal, specifically in the first decade of each group’s existences, is misleading. The MCCA’s membership likely had overwhelming support for the open shop, but they did not reject accommodation outright. Rather, adopting Tone’s continuum of power, the MCCA initially worked with reformers in the city on projects relating to education, health, and housing. Their involvement is best categorized as an attempt to channel potential reforms and regulations. Many of the MCCA’s studies contained legislation drafted to address particular issues, which suggests that the organization was not simply the friendlier face of the draconian CA. In many ways, its actions matched up with the middle-class reformers with whom they partnered: they were attempting to instill order in their city.29 In many ways, the MCCA’s early initiatives suggested that they were

27 Millikan, A Union Against Unions, 51. 28 Millkan, “Defenders of Business,” 4. 29 Robert Wiebe, The Search for Order, 1877-1920 (New York: Hill and Wang, 1967), 132. Responding to the argument that progressives were motivated by “status anxiety,” Wiebe stated that: “the new middle 83

mostly in line with civic leaders’ efforts to entrench their power and act as civic stewards by implementing bureaucratic order, based on their own values.

Minneapolis's business leaders were eager to influence the new, more interventionist tendencies of local, state, and federal governments; this eagerness was buttressed by cultural factors that motivated benevolence and involvement with civic reforms. As Mary Wingerd noted, Minneapolis's development was run by “a small cohort

of powerful capitalists – families of the original New England settlers” such as the

Washburns from Maine and the Pillsburys from New Hampshire who “jealously guarded

control of the city.”30 Their shared heritage imbued them with a similar outlook on how

the city should be formed and operate. It is imperative to consider the way

industrialization altered social relations in New England and the Atlantic states to shed

light on the way that Minneapolis’s civic leaders with eastern heritage thought of the

changing socio-economic-political relations of the turn of the twentieth century. In his

The Protestant Ethic and the Spirit of Capitalism, Max Weber outlined the links between

the religion and the growth and development of the American economic system, and

questioned why Protestants more frequently advanced in the country.31 Weber recounted

Benjamin Franklin’s writing as the quintessential voice of early American Protestant

proto-capitalism. Citing expressions like “‘He that idly loses five shillings’ worth of time,

loses five shillings, and might as prudently throw five shillings in the river’” as the

class…had enough insight into their lives to recognize the old ways and old values would no longer suffice…they were still the ones with the determination to fight these confusions and mark a new route into the modern world.” 30 Mary Lethert Wingerd, Claiming the City: Politics, Faith and the Power of Place in St. Paul (Ithaca: Cornell University Press, 2001), 4. 31 Max Weber, The Protestant Ethic and the Spirit of Capitalism (Chicago: Fitzroy Dearborn Publishers, 2001, trans. Stephen Kalberg). 84

“supposed catechism of a Yankee.”32 Although operating in a more sophisticated

capitalist structure, Minneapolis business leaders were well schooled in such Yankee

catechisms and sought ways to form the city according to their perspectives and values.

In separate pieces, but working with similar frameworks, M.J. Heale and

Raymond A. Mohl presented the history of humanitarianism in relation to burgeoning

industrialism in New York.33 Both show that organized benevolence and the desire to be

moral stewards drove civic leaders in New York who were faced with incomprehensible

poverty and slum conditions to use their status to provide programs or materials for

amelioration. Mohl, focusing more on the efforts of reformers, chronicled the transition

of social work from “the spirit of Christian benevolence and the rationalism of the

Enlightenment” to “the demand for social control of a rapidly growing population and an

ideology of moral stewardship” as the central guiding influence for city humanitarians.34

Indeed, by following the “doctrine of moral stewardship,” humanitarians in New York

had laid the foundation for work in the Progressive era. Heale, building on Mohl, argued

that increased bureaucratization and professionalization had replaced a benevolent

“patrician” class in managing New York communities.35 This process, brought about by

urbanization as much as industrialization, was the foundation of “associated

32 Weber, The Protestant Ethic and the Spirit of Capitalism, 15. 33 M.J. Heale, “From City Fathers to Social Critics: Humanitarianism and Government in New York, 1790- 1860,” The journal of American History 63:1 (June 1976): 21-41; Raymond A. Mohl, “Humanitarianism in the Preindustrial City: The New York Society for the Prevention of Pauperism, 1817-1823,” The Journal of American History 57:3 (December 1970): 576-599. Mohl’s book gives more emphasis on the pre-industrial period of civic leaders becoming socially engaged. See: Raymond A. Mohl, Poverty in New York, 1783- 1825 (New York: Oxford University Press, 1971). 34 This was part of a broader change in the way people thought about poverty as they sought to remove the blame for poverty from the individual and seek instead structural issues that may have contributed to the condition. Rather than seeking to save souls one by one, Mohl’s humanitarians worked to initiate city-wide reforms such as savings banks, job finding societies, and schools to affect social changes; a change that he argues “served as a precursor of later urban humanitarian organizations.” Mohl, “Humanitarianism in the Preindustrial City,” 576, 596. 35 Heale, “From City Fathers to Social Critics,” 21. 85 benevolence” wherein “humanitarians and public officials tended to regard one another as co-workers for the public good undertaking complementary and interdependent activities.”36 The notions of a patrician “spirit of improvement” and the “ideology of moral stewardship” appear to have influenced many of Minneapolis's white founders, primarily Yankees in origin, in the way they constructed the vision of an ideal city that would sidestep the pitfalls of other urban centers. The dream of the model metropolis could only come to fruition if civic leaders acted as social, political, economic, and even aesthetic stewards. Unlike Heale and Mohl’s nineteenth-century humanitarians,

Minneapolis’s twentieth-century leaders saw their role less as moral stewards than as civic stewards.

In Minneapolis, civic stewardship coincided with supporting the open shop movement. An early test of it came in the form of reconfiguring the relationship between capital and labor just after the turn of the twentieth century. A 1903 strike in the flour mills saw labor and capital ally with national organizations to help consolidate their power. Unlike in heavily unionized St. Paul, Minneapolis was becoming an open-shop city. Some of Minneapolis's industries, like rail and printing, had workforces organized through other unions with a national presence. Others, like flour milling, had a few craft unions in the skilled positions. In the late-nineteenth and early-twentieth centuries, organized labor was growing but so, too, were violent retaliations against membership drives and strikes.37 Although the flour mills had suffered but two labor disruptions in the

36 Heale’s patrician class expressed their “spirit of improvement” by using their distinguished role in society as leverage to push for civic improvement projects, but their power to enact change would soon be eclipsed by a rising group of professionals who studied and recommended reforms for civic issues such as education, housing, and health.. Heale, “From City Fathers to Social Critics,” 23, 25, 27, 40. 37 Notable examples: the railroad strikes of 1877, Chicago’s Haymarket riot in 1886, the Homestead strike in Pennsylvania in 1892, the Pullman strike in 1894, the Colorado Labor Wars in 1903 and 1904, and later incidents such as the 1913 Massacre in Calumet, Michigan and the Ludlow Massacre in 1914. 86 nineteenth century, the biggest three mills – Pillsbury, Washburn-Crosby, and Northwest

Consolidated – were embarking on new management strategies. As discussed in Chapter

One, these mills had sought technological advances that would both make a superior product and replace human labor. This led to a de-skilling of many occupations and, owing to the seasonality of the work, mills tended to employ day laborers over long-term employees. This move had the added benefit of fracturing the workforce in a way that might make it more difficult for the unions already in place to grow.

Minneapolis flour-mill owners would eventually join with hundreds of other employers in the city seeking to establish the open shop. Unions, by empowering the working class, threatened employers’ immense power and their ability to exploit labor for profit. Additionally, many employers translated the ethos of civic stewardship as supporting their broader assertion that they could better provide for workers than could unions. Taken together, profit-making and city-making were prime sources of motivation for employers to subscribe to the open shop movement. This belief led to the use of company unions attempting to supplant labor unions and the deployment of benevolent tactics like health coverage and education provisions. Stewardship would be most effective if the open shop were established city-wide, though. The events of 1902 and

1903 in the flour mills would set the city on a course of dismal labor-capital relations and further entrench the power held by civic leaders who were able to dominate “politics, finance, and business” as well as “successfully dictate the terms between business and labor.”38

The flour mill labor turmoil of 1902 and 1903 would be unremarkable if not for its role in determining labor-capital relations in the city for almost two decades. The

38 Wingerd, Claiming the City, 4. 87 strikes were short but threatened production of the city’s most valuable commercial product. They offer windows into the different experiences of workers with various skills in the working class as well as into how the mill owners expected to express their power in and outside the mills. The 1902 strike saw highly skilled workers walk out and immediately spark negotiations with mill owners while the 1903 strike saw semi-skilled and unskilled workers bound together in a young, inexperienced industrial union walk out only to receive a very different response. For while the workers were uniting, so, too, were the employers. In a time of incredible vertical integration for industries nationwide, capitalists sought ways to consolidate and make more efficient their political and economic power. That they cultivated the concept of a model metropolis within which humanistic benevolence on the part of capital provided for citizens exposes their myopic understanding of civic order. As far as capitalists were concerned, only an open-shop city could achieve highest economic efficiency while simultaneously providing jobs for the many laborers. In order to achieve the open shop, however, the city’s capitalists would have to undercut a growing labor movement.

Local employers had long been connected through industry-specific economic clubs that helped consolidate their social and economic ties. The major milling companies were involved in loose organizations of manufacturers as early as the 1870s.

The Minneapolis Miller’s Protective Association was the first such group to form in the city in 1873. The Association formalized the casual relationship most of the mill owners in the city had had with one another. Political and economic capital further coalesced in

1883 when John S. Pillsbury founded the Minneapolis Club, the membership of which

represented many industries and included local and state politicians.39 Despite the fact

that the club was initially founded to be “purely social,” the men discussed everything

from where to buy wheat for the coming year to legislation that concerned milling and

business.40 This organization helped to foster camaraderie and fraternity among the mill

owners and foster closer ties with politicians, judges, and capitalists in other industries.

Other associations, like the Anti-Adulteration League, which was an early alliance among wheat manufacturers whose products did not meet the legal criteria of a trademark,

further developed bonds among the city's capitalists and emphasized cooperation to

protect business interests.41 These ties would be of crucial importance in their efforts to

establish theirs as an open-shop city.

Minneapolis capitalists also joined national organizations devoted to fighting

organized labor. In 1902, a Citizens Alliance (CA) chapter was established in

Minneapolis. Its mandate was: “To promote, on a fair and equitable basis, industrial

peace and prosperity in the community, and the steady employment of labor…To

discourage strikes, lockouts, and unfair demands by either employer or employee. . .

[and] to uphold the principle of the Open Shop.”42 Upon its founding, the chapter was

weak as it drew mostly from small businesses, but within months the chapter received a

significant boost when Pillsbury and the owners of Washburn-Crosby signed on as

members.43 They joined with Edmund J. Phelps, the former president of the Commercial

39 William C. Edgar, Minneapolis Club: A Review of its History (Minneapolis: Minneapolis Club, 1974 repr. 1990). 40 W.C. Edgar, “Miller’s Club,” June 5 and August 7, 1894. Club Minute Book and Article, 1894, 1896, 1942, Minnesota Historical Society Archives P1214. 41 “Washburn’s Rolled Oates” Advertisement, The Northwestern Miller, January 16, 1901. 42 “The Citizens Alliance of Minneapolis,” undated 1903. Citizens Alliance Records, 1903-1953, Minnesota Historical Society Archives M465. 43 Millikan, A Union Against Unions, 26. 89

Club, and Judge Martin B. Koon, who was also a director and general counsel for the

SOO Line railroad.44

Each local CA learned tactics from the others, particularly sharing strategies to

erode community support for labor and establish the open shop in every city in which

there was a chapter.45 On the advice of a chapter in Sedalia, Missouri, the Minneapolis

members kept their involvement with the CA secret, because the “secrecy of the

organization is one of its greatest elements of strength,” and in practice, secrecy “had the

desired effect and controls [workers] by that fear that always evolved so many hidden

punishments, in fact, it strikes terror to their ranks.”46 As previously mentioned, in 1903

many Minneapolis employers joined the NAM and even invited its president David Parry

to speak at the Commercial Club that year. Between social and economic groups,

capitalists began to form stronger bonds with one another locally, regionally, and

nationally. This helped them further coalesce their power in such a manner that when

labor conflicts arose in one industry, other industries would come to its aid. The CA truly

was, as historian William Millikan noted, a union against unions.

The Minneapolis CA used tactics from the national organization to curtail the

growth of unions. In the first two years of the twentieth century, Minneapolis experienced

an economic boom, many industrial jobs were created, and union leaders tried to organize

as many of the new workers as possible. By 1902, union membership was 28,338, almost

double the 1900 number.47 One of the ways the Minneapolis anti-unionists went about

44 Phelps and Koon were both anti-union and felt that complete unionization in Minneapolis would be a menace to the city’s industry. Millikan, A Union Against Unions, 23. 45 Rosemary Feurer, Radical Unionism in the Midwest, 1900-1950 (Chicago: University of Illinois Press, 2006), 245. 46 Letter from J. West Goodwin to Wallace Nye in Minneapolis, September 11, 1903. Citizens Alliance Records, 1903-1953, Minnesota Historical Society Archives, M465. 47 Millikan, A Union Against Unions, 5. 90

undermining such growth was by employing the CA tactic of firing and replacing those

workers who threatened to walk out or made “unwarranted demands."48 While this tactic likely instilled fear in some workers and may even have curbed unionization rates, it was a difficult practice for those who dealt primarily with skilled workers. Finding trained workers was sometimes difficult and, despite many advances, technology could not replace or de-skill all positions. Firing capable workers because of their membership in or activity with a union meant that capitalists would need to ensure a higher supply of skilled workers. This tactic was one of the reasons that groups like the CA and NAM, supported the vocational school movement, which will be discussed in the Chapter Three.

That the city's capitalists joined with regional and national organizations at a time when unionism was growing was not a coincidence, and the employment of surreptitious tactics demonstrated their commitment to establishing the open shop in Minneapolis.

While the city's capitalists organized, workers in the largest industry founded an industrial union that linked mill employees locally and nationally. There had existed various unions that included mill employees as early as 1879, and the operative millers and millwrights’ unions were formed in 1881.49 In 1902 the formerly independent unions

of the millwrights, millers, nailers and packers, and loaders affiliated with the

International Union of Flour and Cereal Mill Employees (IUFCME) with nailer James M.

Finley as its president. Its headquarters were in Minneapolis, and the AFL delivered over

twenty-eight local charters, which represented territory from upstate New York to Kansas

48 Letter from President of Mason Builders’ Association, New York to President Nye, August 25 1903. Citizens Alliance Records, 1903-1953, Minnesota Historical Society Archives, M465. 49 “Almost a Strike,” The Weekly Northwestern Miller, May 2, 1879; Photo of Unsatisfied Millers, The Weekly Northwestern Miller, November 11, 1881. 91

City. A union label was promptly created.50 The IUFCME, it was hoped, would be better

able to represent mill employee needs and to draw from a larger pool of resources than

the separate unions could on their own. The Minneapolis local was under significant

pressure to challenge management for better wages and an eight hour day for all workers.

Success in the Mill City could pave the way for changes in labor standards in other cities.

This was, of course, a sentiment shared with the local CA chapter.

The Minneapolis IUFCME suffered initially due to skills-based occupational separation. Certain jobs within the mills were regarded as “unskilled,” such as the loaders, packers, and nailers.51 As discussed in Chapter One, mill owners implemented

technologies that either eliminated human labor or de-skilled it as they rebuilt after the district explosion in the 1880s. They continued to use technologies in this way while also embracing the CA tactic of firing employees who attempted to unionize. Taken together, these practices drove wedges between workers in the mills as the power gap between skilled and unskilled widened. In an effort to build ties among mill workers and between the IUFCME and other local unions, Finley sponsored entertainment outside the workplace. In March of 1903, the IUFCME held a “smoke social” with cigars and apples.

Four hundred mill employees and Mayor James C. Haynes attended.52 Finley's work to

nurture bonds among unionized workers also reached outside of the IUFCME. At its

meetings, the Flour Packers and Nailers Union No. 1548 occasionally heard reports from

its delegate to the city and state Trades and Labor Councils. At the union’s August 6

50 “Flour Mill Employees,” The Union, September 26, 1903. 51 “Minneapolis and the Northwest,” The Weekly Northwestern Miller, October 14, 1903. Packers weighed and packed flour, nailers headed and stenciled barrels of flour, loaders loaded the products onto train cars. Millwrights maintained machinery and mill operations. See: Robert M. Frame, “The Progressive Millers: A Cultural and Intellectual Portrait of the Flour Milling Industry 1870-1930, Focusing on Minneapolis, Minnesota” (Ph.D. diss., University of Minnesota, 1980), 91. 52 “Mechanical Department,” The Northwestern Miller, March 25, 1903. 92

meeting, the packers and nailers were informed that they should not buy tools from D.

Maydole Hammer Co. because it was an unfair company. They were also informed that

the “telephone girls” were on strike and that any measure to help them should be taken.53

Their support of other unions and reaching out to the working-class community as well as

politicians would become crucial in the union’s standoff with mill owners. In many ways,

unions were attempting to build a working-class network with strong enough ties that it could, when necessary, resist employers’ attempts at controlling the work place. Workers

and employers alike saw control of the workplace as a critical element of building

influence and control in the larger community.

In the autumn of 1902, several unions in the flour mills moved to get the eight-

hour day. In doing so, they joined a nationwide, indeed international, movement of

workers trying to rearrange industrial time. Industrial development in the nineteenth

century and the revolutions in communication and travel brought by telegraphs and

railroads had changed the ways in which people conceptualized time and work. With

more people engaging in urban industrial production, rather than artisanal production

from their homes or industrial production in highly-controlled company towns, “the value

of labor came to be measured in increments of time, rather than by the tasks

completed.”54 As hourly wages increasingly replaced a per-unit production rate or salary for many workers, winning an eight-hour day became an important goal for organized labor. Many employers rejected the change, if not for economic reasons than for moral

53 “Minutes of the Flour Packers and Nailers Union No. 1548,” August 6, 1903. Jean E. Spielman Papers, 1901-1936, Minnesota Historical Society Archives, M535. 54 Alexis McCrossen, Marking Modern Times: A History of Clocks, Watches, and Other Timekeepers in American Life (Chicago: The University of Chicago Press, 2013), 19. See also: E.P. Thompson, “Time, Work-Discipline, and Industrial Capitalism,” Past and Present 68 (1967: 56-97). For more on the importance of time in company towns, see: Tamara Hareven, Family Time and Industrial Time: The Relationship Between the Family and Work in a New England Industrial Community (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1982). 93

ones. As will be discussed in Chapter Five, many worried what workers might do if given

eight hours for “what they will.”55

The IUFCME worked throughout 1902 and 1903to gain the eight-hour day for all of its member unions throughout 1902 and 1903, though this endeavor was undercut due to skills-based occupational divisions. The millwrights, the most skilled workers in the mills, would strike twice – once in the autumn of 1902 and once in the spring of 1903 – in search of the eight-hour day and wage increases. Both times they acted independently of the IUFCME and both times they were successful.56 The negotiations between the

unions of the operative millers, nailers, and packers and the mill owners took place in

October 1902, just days after the IUFCME was officially established.57 Their move to

acquire the eight-hour day under the banner of the IUFCME had tested the strength of the

industrial union. While the millwrights struck on their own, the move likely inspired mill

owners to be more open to negotiations with the two other unions involved in the hours

disagreement. “The change asked for was a radical one,” reported the local labor

newspaper The Union, “and but for the wise and sensible attitude of the employers, it

might have developed into a struggle which would have proved costly for both sides.”58

Although recent members of the CA, the mill owners did not opt to fire the union men

who demanded a change. The IUFCME, also in its infancy, was not able to marshal all of its members to unite for the cause of establishing an eight-hour day for everyone in the

55 Roy Rosenzweig, Eight Hours for What we Will: Workers and Leisure in an Industrial City, 1890-1920 (Cambridge: University of Cambridge Press, 1983). 56 “Millwrights,” The Union, October 10, 1902; “The Millwrights’ Strike,” Weekly Northwestern Miller, April 22, 1903; “Millwrights’ Strike Settled,” Weekly Northwestern Miller, April 29, 1903. 57 The IUFCME was created on September 26, the operative millers’ union and nailers’ and packers’ union settled arbitration on October 3, and the millwrights’ strike ended in the first week of November in 1902. “Flour Mill Employes,” The Union, September 26, 1902; “Eight Hours in the Mills,” The Union, October 3, 1902; “Millwrights,” The Union, October 31, 1902. 58 “Eight Hours in the Mills,” The Union, October 3, 1902. 94

mills. Over the next year the groups matured and readied for a strike that would carry

significant local, regional, and national consequences.

In the summer of 1903, there was an anxious atmosphere within the mill district.

The local CA membership list had gone public, and the mill owners were clear about

their intentions to establish the open shop in Minneapolis – starting with their industry.

The IUFCME continued in its efforts to unionize mill workers and achieve the eight-hour

day for its members. The loaders’ union was affiliated with the IUFCME, but as unskilled

workers they had not been a part of the 1902 negotiations. In the spring of 1903, the loaders appealed to the unions of the millwrights, operative millers, and nailers and packers for support in their effort to secure an eight-hour workday. The operative millers as well as nailers and packers agreed to support the loaders. Once again the millwrights acted separately from the IUFCME’s unions and refused to support the action.

Regardless, in the fall of 1903, the eight-hour day was once again the source of a major labor dispute in the mills.

In preparation for upcoming actions, the IUFCME turned to city leaders with an appeal to get the mill owners to participate in arbitration, but was not able to get straightforward support. Mayor James C. Haynes was the organization’s first contact. He had attended the IUFCME’s smoke social in March and had also attended the organization’s national conference in June where he spoke on the importance of an eight- hour day for workers.59 As the IUFCME prepared its workers for negotiations and a

potential strike, Haynes and other city and state leaders implored mill owners to consider

59 “Minneapolis and the Northwest,” Weekly Northwestern Miller, March 25, 1903; “International Union Meeting,” Weekly Northwestern Miller, June 10, 1903. 95 arbitration, to no avail.60 Haynes’ inability to force the mill owners to negotiate was likely affected by his relationship with capital in the city. Although he had spoken in support of the eight-hour day, attended the smoke social and other union-sponsored events, and agreed to be an independent moderator if mill owners agreed to arbitration, employers also called on Haynes to defend their side when labor conflicts arose. In the past, and eventually during the 1903 mill employees’ strike, Haynes appointed special police forces to protect company property and strikebreakers.61 This action did not necessarily mean that Haynes was only paying lip service when he spoke of the virtues of the eight-hour day for mill employees, but it is apparent that political manoeuvring was a factor in the ways he would express support during a time of labor strife. A Democrat elected in the wake of the Doc Ames City Hall scandal, Haynes’ political standing was weak in the Republican-dominated city. Taking too strong an action against the most powerful capitalists would not bode well for his political future.

While Haynes’ public support was promising initially, the IUFCME still did not have the formal backing of the mayor and could not rely on him to act in its best interest.

Without this support, it became increasingly difficult for the IUFCME to battle with the politically, socially, and economically connected mill owners. In his last appeal to the mayor, Finley invoked civic reputation. “The mill owners have appealed to the civic pride of the citizens of Minneapolis,” he wrote, adding that the IUFCME workers “‘are willing to meet them in this issue, for we are as proud of the ‘Flour City’ as they are.’”62

The young, financially “slender” union could not, however, convince the mayor that the

60 Millikan, A Union Against Unions, 27. 61 Millikan, A Union Against Unions, 37. 62 “Flour Mill Strike Now Grim Reality,” Minneapolis Journal, September 24, 1903. 96 city’s industrial reputation belonged as much to workers as to the mill owners.63 When the attempt to negotiate failed, the IUFCME led the operative millers, nailers and packers, and loaders’ unions to a strike.

The mill owners made a strong proclamation to their employees upon strike notification. Signs posted in the big three mills – Pillsbury, Washburn-Crosby A, and

Northwest Consolidated – stated that any employee who walked off his job to “help the flour loaders gain their point” would not have employment within the mills after the strike ended.64 The statement did not outright condemn the existence of the IUFCME’s unions, but it clearly borrowed from CA policies and intended to assail the union’s walkout tactics. With union men on the picket lines, the mill owners sought strikebreakers to keep the mills running. They had been courting St. Paulites to work in their mills, mostly because they were the closest urban center with skilled laborers. St.

Paul’s workforce had high union rates and many were aware of the potential consequences of the CA-backed mill owners overcoming the IUFCME, and few crossed the river to work.65 While the mills’ production suffered initially, there were many men who responded to the call to replace the striking millers, nailers, packers, and loaders. In a move to entice potential strikebreakers to cross the picket lines, they were offered the jobs of striking union members who had just been fired. At the time, only 2 percent of

American flour and cereal mills were unionized and, as noted by the trade paper The

Weekly Northwestern Miller, many mills were “running light and operatives are idle.”66

The paper further warned that the out-of-work operatives “will soon be flocking to

63 “Flour Mill Strike Now Grim Reality.” 64 “Millers Stand Firm to Protect Industry,” Minneapolis Journal, September 23, 1903. 65 Wingerd, Claiming the City, 2; see also chapter 9, “Vying for Power: The Showdown between Business and Labor.” 215-232. 66 “Minneapolis and the Northwest,” Weekly Northwestern Miller, October 14, 1903. 97

Minneapolis,” adding that “they are not union men and have never been organized,”

which made them unlikely candidates for sympathy with picketing strikers.67 Of course, this aspect was not lost on mill owners either. Drawing under- or unemployed non-union men to the busiest milling center in the world likely meant that their new workforce population would simply accept open-shop working conditions of Minneapolis's mills.

Labor’s and capital’s involvements with national organizations meant that the

1903 Minneapolis flour mills strike was more than just a local event. The showdown was an early test of the CA’s mandate as well as of the IUFCME’s ability to protect workers’ rights to organize. Throughout the strike, IUFCME president Finley tried to remind the public of the high stakes of the loaders’ strike. He co-authored a circular which was distributed to local unions in the city that attributed the mill owners’ resistance to their new membership in the NAM and the CA, saying that the “influence of Parryism was becoming apparent.”68 The comment, referring to the NAM’s president Parry’s

comments about a class war, was meant to remind striking IFUCME members that their

strife was for a purpose much greater than acquiring an eight-hour day; it was a fight against the coalition of employers seeking to abolish entirely workers’ rights to organize both locally and nationally. The IUFCME had some support from the AFL, but it was minimal when compared to the structural support the CA and NAM offered mill owners.

Indeed, the CA was heavily invested in the Minneapolis strike. The organization was young and had a mostly mid-level industrial membership, and a victory in the

67 “Minneapolis and the Northwest,” Weekly Northwestern Miller, October 14, 1903. 68 “Appeal to Unions: A Circular Issued by Federation Committee Makes an Exhaustive Statement,” Minneapolis Journal, October 1, 1903. 98

Minneapolis flour mills would propel the CA to a national level by demonstrating that it

was capable of supporting large industries during labor conflicts.69

The IUFCME attempted to draw on the nascent, but growing union movement in

Minneapolis and, once again, to remind people that this dispute was about more than all

mill employees winning the eight-hour day. Parry took steps to bring the mills’ labor

issues to the city beyond the picket lines in the mill district. Striking workers met at

Union Temple on Washington Avenue south to hear speeches from union leaders, and

“those who lined the curb held impromptu debates.”70 This helped bring labor issues to

the streets, making it an issue for all Minneapolitans rather than just those directly

involved. At the same time, the Weekly Northwestern Miller surmised that in the debates held curbside emerged discussion that questioned whether the strike was worthwhile at

all, suggesting that not all workers were supportive of the initiaitve.71 The IUFCME

approached area hotels, restaurants, and grocery stores to request that they refuse to serve

strikebreakers or the mills. While some were amenable to the request, others stated they were “ready to sell to all who cared to buy.”72 Again, variance in support of the service

boycott spoke to the fact that Minneapolis was not yet a strong union city. With a picket

line in place, strikers were sometimes able to convince strikebreakers not to work in

embattled mills. Early on, the strikers convinced five men from St. Paul who had come to

work to join the picket lines rather than the mill workforce.73 Other unions also offered

help to the mill workers. The railroad switchmen’s union told the striking mill employees

that they were “prepared to take whatever action [was] necessary to sustain the mill men

69 Millikan, A Union Against Unions, 26-27. 70 “Flour Mill Strike now Grim Reality,” Weekly Northwestern Miller, October 7, 1903. 71 “Flour Mill Strike now Grim Reality,” Weekly Northwestern Miller, October 7, 1903. 72 “The Minneapolis Strike,” Weekly Northwestern Miller, October 7, 1903. 73 “Millers Hire Men ‘For Steady Work,’” Minneapolis Journal, September 25, 1903. 99

in their fight.”74 Although the switchmen were prepared to strike in support, they did not

because they would have broken their own contract that stated that they had to give a

thirty-day notice to their employers if they wanted to strike.75 However, they still took

action. Workers coming to strikebreak often arrived via rail. In at least one instance, rail

workers tipped the IUFCME that strikebreakers were on a particular train. The IUFCME

intercepted a group of sixteen experienced mill men arriving from Duluth to work in the

embattled Minneapolis mills.76

The IUFCME’s successes in spreading the strike beyond the mills persuaded many strikebreakers to abandon their new mill jobs. Throughout the strike, few skilled workers came to cross the picket lines, which hurt mill owners’ bottom lines. In a circular

put out by the IUFCME, it was stated that “bums, hobos, Greeks, negroes, and university

students” were the primary strikebreakers and that recruiting them and training them had

cost the mills more than if they had just made the eight-hour adjustment for the loaders.77

Having offered the potential of continuing, full-time work to strikebreakers, mill owners were apparently willing to bear the cost of training new workers in these positions in order to establish the open shop. However, as strikebreakers came in and out of the mills each day, they had to go through the IUFCME’s picket lines and, increasingly, strikebreakers were being rejected from hotels and restaurants that stood with the embattled mill workers. In these interactions outside of the mill space, many strikebreakers were convinced to support the union’s fight and did not return to their new occupations. With training each new worker coming at such high cost and retention rates

74 “The Minneapolis Strike,” Weekly Northwestern Miller, October 7, 1903. 75 “The Minneapolis Strike,” Weekly Northwestern Miller, October 7, 1903. 76 “Diverted Duluth Men Who Came to Take Work in the Mills,” Minneapolis Journal, October 1, 1903. 77 “Circular Issued by Federation Committee Makes an Exhaustive Statement,” Minneapolis Journal, October 1, 1903. 100 low, mill owners devised a plan in an effort to prevent strikebreakers from interacting with the strikers.

In an effort better to control strikebreakers’ movements, mill owners turned to extreme tactics. Pillsbury and Washburn-Crosby converted an oatmeal mill into homes for the strikebreakers. They divided the mill in this way: “on the first floor is the dining room and kitchen and on the upper two floors, the sleeping apartments.”78 The Pillsbury mill was converted into dormitories and the Crown Roller mill, which the Northwestern

Consolidated owned, into a dining room, providing strikebreakers cots and three meals a day so they would not leave the mill compound, which was supposed to solve the issue of low retention altogether. Effectively, employers had set up a makeshift company town located entirely within the confines of their mills. Strikebreakers were treated to “the best of meats and other provisions” in the shelters; sitting down to meals on “bales of twine for a seat” they were served by “13 waiters [and] 4 cooks” in addition to the “4 dish washers and 3 porters.” In down times, these “colored cooks and other help…furnish[ed] entertaining music” for the strikebreakers; at night the men slept on cots with blankets – all furnished by Washburn-Crosby and Pillsbury.79 The Consolidating Milling Co., also part of Washburn-Crosby’s holdings, developed a similar system as it changed “flour- testing rooms” into “a dining room and kitchen” that were considered to be “very serviceable quarters.”80 In chronicling these developments, the Weekly Northwestern

Miller commented that “the companies found it a necessity to provide themselves with such facilities, owing to hotels and restaurants refusing to serve meals for the mill

78 “Minneapolis and the Northwest,” Weekly Northwestern Miller, October 7, 1903. 79 “Minneapolis and the Northwest,” Weekly Northwestern Miller, October 7, 1903. 80 “Minneapolis and the Northwest,” Weekly Northwestern Miller, October 7, 1903. 101

employees.”81 The IUFCME was not able to convince everyone to support the workers,

but it was successful to the extent that it forced employers to keep strikebreakers within

the confines of the mills. Once these accommodations were in place the employers were

able to take the upper hand.

The improvised, temporary environments within these three mills functioned as

company towns. Employers provided all essentials at no cost in exchange for workers’ performing their duties. The insulated space meant that strikebreakers would not be exposed to the rhetoric at the Union Temple, on the streets, in restaurants or hotels, or at the picket lines. While never intended to be a long-term practice, the creation of these employer-controlled spaces demonstrated Minneapolis mill owners’ commitments to benevolence as the tool by which they would guide change in their industry and establish the open shop. Rather than turning to force, employers would take advantage of divisions among the working class and woo strikebreakers with amenities. This tactic diminished the IUFCME’s ability to exploit its connections with other workers and businesses who realized that they, too, had a stake in this strike. The tactic became a favorite of CA locals, demonstrating the significant local and regional impacts of this seemingly small, local strike.82

By mid-October, circumstances were no longer favoring the strikers. The

operative millers’ union, the most skilled IUFCME workers involved, decided to allow its

members back to work, weakening the strength of the strike.83 The mill owners delivered

another blow by announcing that they would take back “good men, regardless of their

81 “Minneapolis and the Northwest,” Weekly Northwestern Miller, October 7, 1903. 82 Millikan, A Union Against Unions, 37. 83 “The Minneapolis Strike,” Weekly Northwestern Miller, October 7, 1903. 102 membership or non-membership in a union.”84 Within a week, many formerly striking men had reapplied for their jobs. The mill owners were pleased to see so many experienced men return, while the IUFCME saw the men who returned to their old jobs as no better than strikebreakers undercutting the strike and the larger labor cause. Finley called an end to the strike and resigned his position as president. To many men of the

IUFCME, it was a sign that they could return to work. The same day that Finley resigned, thirteen of the seventeen struck mills were running at capacity, including the largest mill, the Washburn-Crosby A.85

The remaining strikers were depending on financial assistance from sympathetic unions and the AFL, which promised but did not deliver $100,000 in aid.86 The nailers’ and packers’ union, still supporting the loaders’ strike, voted to have the strike committee help to pay the striking men’s dues because they had been out of work so that long that they themselves could not afford to pay.87 The mill owners refused to compromise; the loaders returned to working ten-hour days at the same wages as before the strike. In overcoming the union-led strike and destabilizing the strength of the IUFCME, mill owners showed their commitment to establishing the open shop in Minneapolis. At the end of the strike, the Weekly Northwestern Miller published an editorial cartoon that spoke to the relationship between establishing the open shop and broader civic stewardship. Figure 2.1 depicts an editorial cartoon that was titled “Who’ll Steer the

Ship.” It features an earnest-faced employer dressed in storm gear at the helm of a ship

84 “Both Sides Active,” Minneapolis Tribune, October 5, 1903. 85 “The Strike in Minneapolis,” Weekly Northwestern Miller, September 30, 1903. 86 “Another Mill Starts,” Minneapolis Journal, 23 October 1903, and “The Strike in Minneapolis,” Weekly Northwestern Miller, September 30, 1903. 87 “Minutes of the Flour Packers and Nailers Union No. 1548,” 15 November 1903. Jean E. Spielman Papers, 1901-1936, Minnesota Historical Society Archives, M535. 103

during a storm. Hanging onto the wheel, labeled “enterprise,” and depicted as men in

childlike forms were three individuals labelled “operative millers,” “packers and nailers,”

and “loaders.” The implication is clear, only the employer was prepared to weather the labor storm and only the employer had the experience and power to steer the economic ship of the city.

Figure 2.1: “Who’ll Steer the Ship?” Source: “Who’ll Steer the Ship?,” The Weekly Northwestern Miller, October 14, 1903.

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The 1903 strike failure all but extinguished the IUFCME’s presence in

Minneapolis and helped the CA gain strong footing. The union tried to recover from the

divisions experienced at the end of the strike but it was difficult to do so when Pillsbury

and Washburn-Crosby hired men to infiltrate the workforce and quash discussions of

unions or organized actions against the companies.88 After becoming entrenched in 1903, the CA stepped back from public action in the city. In the wake of the mill operatives’ strike, the growing union movement in Minneapolis was halted and began to reverse.

Unions would struggle as the CA consolidated employers and used specious tactics to make Minneapolis an open-shop city.89

The outbreak of World War I in Europe increased demand for flour produced in

the United States, and Minneapolis's big three mills procured ever larger contracts as the

conflict persisted. Charges of war profiteering were levied at the Minneapolis mills,

particularly as Washburn-Crosby and Pillsbury ignored labor’s demands for higher wages

and better hours in 1917 and 1918.90 These offerings were part of mill owners’ larger

desires to curb unionism and to influence the shape of reforms. After the war’s end, the

War Labor Board met with labor leaders and the managers, presidents, and owners of the

big three mills. Pillsbury acquiesced and gave back pay for overtime worked during the

88 For more on the “Labor Crushing Detective Agency”, see Spielman, The Stool-Pigeon and the Open Shop Movement, Chapter II - “The Labor Crushing Detective Agen[c]y Modus Operandi,” 16-41. 89 Robert O’Connor, “Closing the Shop,” 3:AM Magazine, February 4, 2011. O’Connor, writing about the 1934 Teamsters’ Strike, expressed: “The Citizens’ Alliance had kept unions out of Minneapolis for three decades. In three months, the Teamsters Union had defeated them. Other strikes that year like the West Coast Longshore strike and the Toledo Auto-Lite strike led to a rise in unionism across the country and put popular support behind the New Deal.” 90 Spielman, The Stool-Pigeon and the Open Shop Movement, 151. 105

war. Washburn-Crosby adopted the eight-hour day and implemented a small wage increase for its workers.91

The mill owners’ desire to shape and control the nature of reform in their industry

through corporate benevolence was once again apparent when, in the wake of hundreds

of labor disruptions after the end of World War I, they worked to dismantle the IUFCME

fully and to replace it with company unions. Labor organizer and advocate Jean E.

Spielman wrote about his experience with the IUFCME and strikes in the flour mills in his book titled The Stool-Pigeon and the Open Shop Movement.92 Spielman wrote bluntly

about the active weakening of unions and labor across the United States, and especially

as he saw firsthand in his work with the Minneapolis flour mills. In describing the

creation of company unions there, he stated that “of all the schemes employed by the

employers in the flour milling industry to chloroform the workers to sleep, and prevent

them from organizing into a bona fide union, the company union had been one of the

shrewdest moves on their part.”93 Small gestures intended as corporate welfare or

benevolence were called out as shrewd management tools utilized to keep employees just

placated enough that labor unions became unappealing and would lose any footing

gained.94 James Gray’s hagiographic coverage of why Washburn-Crosby decided to

create a company union is telling as to the way in which employers framed their actions

to undercut labor unions. He wrote:

In 1918 the Washburn Crosby Company, without accepting the still distasteful idea of unionism, voluntarily took a decisive step toward

91 Spielman, The Stool-Pigeon and the Open Shop Movement, 96. 92 Spielman, The Stool-Pigeon and the Open Shop Movement. 93 Spielman, The Stool-Pigeon and the Open Shop Movement, 96. 94 Spielman, The Stool-Pigeon and the Open Shop Movement, 96. 106

employee representation in the discussion of wages and conditions of work… The company invited mill workers to choose representatives to sit with management in joint discussion of these terms. The session was a complete success and advances for workers were put into immediate effect. Out of this experience grew the committee system which remained in effect for many years. This consisted of a neat dovetailing of elected representatives of various departments into a counseling body.95

In Spielman’s account, which included hundreds of documents from this period

that supported his arguments, this “neat dovetailing” process involved workers’ being

spied on and fired for union involvement. Instead of the company union simply rising up

and easily replacing the labor union as Gray suggested, the IUFCME was garroted into

submission until, in 1921, it finally dissolved after Pillsbury and Washburn-Crosby, still

working with the CA, hired secret agents to infiltrate the union and name those active in

the organization.96 Gray wrote that success in the “humanities of business” was proven

when employees surveyed offered “‘open expressions of approval’” of company welfare

initiatives like health and savings plans and guaranteed hour schemes, which promised

that laborers would work a certain number of hours per month, though that often meant

taking a cut in hours and, of course, pay.97

With the threat of losing their jobs always looming, though, it was difficult for employees to reject the programs Washburn-Crosby, Pillsbury, and Northwestern

Consolidated instituted. Gray, neatly summarizing mill owners’ intentions when offering

welfare programs, stated that “the phrase ‘building men’ has been one of almost mystical

importance and significance in the councils first of the Washburn Crosby Company and

95 James Gray, Business Without Boundary: The Story of General Mills. (Minneapolis: University of Minnesota, 1954), 294. 96 Joseph Hart, “Lost City,” City Pages, June 11, 1997, 4. 97 Gray, Business Without Boundary, 295, 296. 107 later of General Mills.”98 Indeed, the employers, after establishing the open shop, positioned themselves as stewards offering space and programs that would improve the lives of workers and their families. Company unions gave the illusion that employers were working on behalf of (though often without the input of) laborers, when the reality was that they were using this position to channel potential actions and reforms in their favor. While the open shop movement is certainly tied to avarice in many industries, and indeed in the case of Minneapolis flour mill owners it was used to consolidate labor in order to streamline and enhance profit making, stewardship remained a core factor in the management strategies exercised in the mills. Believing they knew how to manage workers’ wages and lives better than workers themselves, mill owners and their capitalist colleagues in other industries worked to destabilize the nascent labor union movement and quiet voices of dissent by offering counterfeit unions in which employers dictated the conversation. For employers, shaping workers as part of the broader network of civic stewardship was as much a part of city making as it was profit making.

As Minneapolis companies grew into corporations, owners thought they occupied an elite place in society that imbued them with special duties to guide and shape the city around them – the city they believed they created. The city’s capitalists began to consolidate their economic and social power as they joined local and international organizations like the MCCA, CA, and NAM. They conspired to establish the open-shop principle in the Mill City, but the act was not simply born of avarice. By working to undercut the growing union movement in Minneapolis, capitalists also positioned themselves as stewards of social development. Fully indoctrinated in Yankee catechism and looking for mechanisms by which to solidify their position as defining hegemonic

98 Gray, Business Without Boundary, 301. 108 values and perspectives, the city’s capitalists saw labor unions as a threat. The flour mills, the largest industry in the city, became the venue for a dispute that would define local labor relations for more than two decades to come. As the newly-formed IUFCME faced off with the CA-backed mill owners in 1903, there was much more on the line than an eight-hour day. With the operative millers’ defeat that autumn, owners believed they had cemented their positions as civic stewards while workers were made to accept a company union as their official voice. Civic leaders believed that their stewardship was the means by which their vision of the model metropolis could become real. Establishing the open shop in the city brought a significant measure of employer control over the workplace. In an effort to expand this control and continue their work to undermine efforts of labor organization, capitalists turned their sights on workers’ training and the public school system.

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Chapter Three: Schools and Education in the City

So the city, through its schools, is trying to minister to the whole child, body mind and soul, striving to send out into the world useful rather than ornamental graduates.1

E. Dudley Parsons, a Minneapolis high school teacher, wrote these words in his

1913 work of boosterism, The Story of Minneapolis, in which he extolled the city’s many

virtues. Among these were the common entries of lakes, parks, and industry. He made

special note, though, of the city’s developing education system and touched on the

movement to use schooling as a conditioning process for young people. That process,

Parsons implied, was tied to the broader civic cause. In the quote above, Parsons made

the city into a humanized actor that employed schooling and schools as tools to

indoctrinate its youngest citizens with properly-curated knowledge and morals. As the

nation moved from laissez-faire capitalism toward semi-regulated corporatism, the issue of education reform attracted an ever-widening array of advocates. Vocational education was a particularly significant topic in Minneapolis. With the Citizens’ Alliance’s 1903 success in the flour mills, the city’s employers saw vocational education as the best way to produce well-trained laborers familiar with the work patterns of industrial labor, but who would not have been part of a union apprentice system and therefore might be more malleable to their open-shop cause. Schools and schooling also became part of broader civic stewardship plans to prevent the city from experiencing the discord and declension of other urban centers. As the vocational school movement gained traction in

Minneapolis, it garnered national attention and became part of the campaign to get

1 E. Dudley Parsons, The Story of Minneapolis (Minneapolis, 1913), 159.

110 federal funding for such education. Curriculum reform represented the potential to mold future generations, and the vocational school movement both in Minneapolis and on a national level tied practical curriculum with the development of moral, productive citizens. During this time, schools became more than just daytime learning venues.

Reconceptualized as civic institutions and social centers, schools’ physical forms and conditions were situated as crucial elements for civic and citizen development. Reform initiatives involving schools and schooling would be linked to everything from economic survival to assimilation; Minneapolis's civic leaders and social reformers advocated for both in their efforts to act as social, civic, and economic stewards for the model metropolis.

During the Progressive era, the roles of schools and schooling shifted. Rather than being the province of the wealthy, public schools became civic institutions, tasked with guiding students’ development into productive adults. This transition sparked significant local and national debates over what should be taught. The classic, liberal curriculum of the nineteenth century was geared toward the 10 percent of American students who went on to university after graduation.2 Vocational education – whether in a separate school or integrated into the public system – was widely touted as the solution to many of the nation’s growing, mostly urban, problems. Assimilation of immigrants, democratization of education, preventing children from juvenile delinquency, and control over work processes and spaces were all brought into the conversation about schools and schooling during this time. With such a variety of concerns present, the issue of education – particularly that of vocational curriculum – became a boundary object, or, a concept that

2 Melvin D. Miller, Principles and a Philosophy for Vocational Education: Special Publication Series No.48 (Washington, DC: Office of Vocational and Adult Education, 1984), 13.

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was flexible in meaning such that groups with antithetical missions were able to come

together in its support.3 Where employers saw the demolition of the apprenticeship

system and the destabilization of organized labor’s power, labor saw the potential to

protect skills training from corporate control and the opportunity at least to keep its

influence on the shop floor, and social reformers saw the opportunity to equip students

with skills and training that might afford them a greater say in the direction of their adult

lives. While each of these groups – labor, capital, and social reformers – worked to bring

vocational education to Minneapolis, they advocated varying degrees of adoption. As will

be discussed, capitalists would lobby for the creation of an entire high school dedicated

solely to vocational training. This reflected their desire to use public high schools as

training centers for their future workers. Social reformers, on the other hand, argued that

some elements of vocational training should be combined with classical education

curricula in an effort to develop well-rounded students and to equip them with a

knowledge base that might facilitate upward mobility. In Minneapolis, labor and the local

economy were at the heart of the vocational school movement.

A key progressive issue, education reform spoke to negotiated identity and power

in the public realm. For many looking to change the education landscape, altering

curricula was an ideal means of instilling order in the lives of American youths while

preparing the nation for a productive, harmonious future. With proper adjustments,

publicly-funded American schools would be the incubators of ideal citizens. Further, changing education programming was proposed as a means to keep students interested in school longer and therefore less likely to drop out. Keeping students in school until

3 Susan Leigh Star, “This Is Not a Boundary Object: Reflections on the Origin of a Concept,” Science, Technology, & Human Values 35:5 (September 2010): 601-603.

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graduation ensured both a better-trained workforce entering the economy and put students in the hands of developmental stewards for longer than if they dropped out early.

In such a tumultuous period of change, schools could offer spaces in which a new order would be established in the minds of young Americans. As schools transitioned into new roles as civic institutions, they became increasingly politicized.

In many ways, curriculum became a boundary object – something with

“interpretive flexibility” which functioned as “a sort of arrangement that allow[ed] different groups to work together without consensus.”4 That is, while adversarial groups

agreed on bringing vocational education into public schools, their motivations for doing

so and the extent to which they urged adoption of such programming varied based on

their particular backgrounds. Advocates for vocational education emerged from a wide

spectrum of backgrounds, from employers’ associations and federal political parties to

social workers and labor unions. They discussed education reform in terms of social and

economic issues such as workers’ rights, immigration and Americanization,

industrialization in cities, and democratizing opportunity. Organizations whose missions

were entirely antithetical to one another coalesced around the issue of education reform,

particularly in regard to adopting vocational curricula. For example, the National

Association of Manufacturers (NAM) fervently lobbied for federal funding for vocational

education. As discussed in Chapter Two, the NAM was also a major force behind the

drive to establish the open shop. One-time president David Parry openly called the

organization’s fight against unionism a class war.5 By 1910, however, Parry’s presidency

4 Star, “This Is Not a Boundary Object: Reflections on the Origin of a Concept,” 602. 5 William Millikan, A Union Against Unions: The Minneapolis Citizens Alliance and Its Fight Against Organized Labor, 1903-1947 (St. Paul: Minnesota Historical Society Press, 2001), 30.

113 had ended and the NAM joined an unlikely coalition of organizations that worked to acquire federal funding for vocational education. The National Society for the Promotion of Industrial Education (NSPIE) combined experts across fields and geographic spaces to consolidate knowledge and expedite achieving its goals.6 Among its board of managers were members of many state boards of education, leaders of industry (particularly located in industrial cities like St. Louis, Chicago, Fall River, and Milwaukee), leaders with the

YMCA, and settlement house workers including Jane Addams.7 Although aligned in the

NSPIE, each of these groups had varying, often competing motivations for supporting the vocational movement.

Schooling’s role in democratizing opportunities brought vocational education reform into conversations about immigration and nativism as well. Settlement workers’ interest in the movement was shared with many reformers across the country; they

“supported [it] as a way to permit the downtrodden to participate more fully in the nation’s economic system.”8 Moreover, by “establishing vocational training as an alternative,” schools could combat the high dropout rates of children over fourteen, which would “vastly extend general education,” while also making it “more democratic.”9

The potential of school spaces and curricula to reify a particular construct of

American culture as the standard set of values and practices to adopt attracted nativists as much as it did those interested in giving immigrants the opportunity to adopt or reject

American culture on their own terms. Between 1890 and 1920, the foreign-born

6 Wright, “The Work of the National Society for the Promotion of Industrial Education,” 20. Also: Millikan, A Union Against Unions, 61. 7 Carroll D. Wright, “The Work of the National Society for the Promotion of Industrial Education,” The Annals of the American Academy 33 (January 1909), 14. 8 Hillison, “The Coalition that Supported the Smith-Hughes Act,” 10. 9 Miller, Principles and a Philosophy for Vocational Education, 14.

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population hovered around 14 percent of the American population, a number that alarmed

many native-born Americans, particularly those of white, Anglo-Saxon descent who

feared that immigrants would not assimilate quickly without some form of guiding

hand.10 Nativists saw schools as venues of assimilation and the vocational school

movement urged particular guidance for working-class children – especially those whose

parents were immigrants.

Labor organizations were motivated to support the vocational education

movement as a protectionist measure for both skills training and control of work space.

The American Federation of Labor (AFL), despite its enmity with the NAM, campaigned

for vocational education in part to combat the growth of company-owned and privately-

run vocational schools.11 As the apprenticeship system became increasingly precarious,

skilled workers sought means by which to preserve their control of the shop floor.12 In

many ways, though, it had the same meaning to capital owners and management who

were looking to undermine the power workers held on the shop floor. The AFL was also

likely amenable to partnering with the NSPIE because of the latter’s view on the role of

schools in the lives of immigrants. David Brody noted that in some instances, the AFL’s

“leaders had unfortunate nativist leanings” that affected their organization’s advocacy

agenda to the point that the organization did not realize that the “education of the

10 Campbell J. Gibson and Emily Lennon, “Historical Census Statistics on the Foreign-born Population of the United States: 1850-1990,” Population Division, Working Paper no. 29, Population Division, (Washington, D.C.: U.S. Bureau of the Census, February 1999). Gintis and Bowles asserted that “almost all” education reform proponents “were white anglo-saxon [sic] Protestants.” Samuel Bowles and Herbert Gintis, Schooling in Capitalist America: Educational Reform and the Contradictions of Economic Life, 2nd edition. (Chicago: Haymarket Books, 2011), 187. 11 John Hillison, “The Coalition that Supported the Smith-Hughes Act or a Case for Strange Bedfellows,” Journal of Vocational and Technical Education 11:2 (Spring 1995, 4-11), 5. 12 Miller, Principles and a Philosophy for Vocational Education, 17. Miller stated: “it was a matter of common observation that the apprenticeship system in many trades had been rendered ineffective by the disappearance of the old form of industry in its complicated form.”

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Americans was as vital to the organization as education of the immigrants.”13 Liberal reformers, like many in organized labor, saw vocational education as the tool by which individuals could determine their working futures. But they faced the many capitalist owners who saw it as the opportunity to crush the apprentice system and implement their specific conception of order in the lives and minds of students who would, upon graduation, unquestioningly enter the industrial economy and remain placid employees for life. Education reform, particularly concerning vocational curriculum, indeed functioned as a boundary object for these many varied groups, united under the NSPIE, who struggled to ensure that their perspectives were respected in the conversations and resulting legislation on the subject.

In Minneapolis, the vocational education movement was inserted into the open- shop conversation as well as into the drive to instill a shared civic spirit among the city’s inhabitants. In the wake of the 1903 flour mill strike and in the larger context of

Minneapolis employers seeking to establish the open shop, schools and curricula became a focal point for negotiations over power in the city. One of the central planks of the national movement’s platform was that vocational high schools should offer programs that would be tailored to local economic needs. This was intended to ensure that there would be workers for industrial maintenance and growth. However, in Minneapolis the notion of training students specifically to engage in the local economy became part of the broader civic vision of a model metropolis. Many local capitalists, social reformers, and school officials saw the value of schools as places of citizen development. This meant that schools would be fertile grounds for inculcating students with the civic vision as

13 David Brody, Steelworkers in America: The Nonunion Era (Champaign-Urbana: Illini Books edition, 1998), 144.

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defined by boosters. Students tracked into vocational curriculum or vocational schools would be providing a valuable civic service by eventually becoming laborers on the shop floor. Elite private high schools that held onto liberal curricula existed for the city’s

wealthiest to send their children.14 This division meant that elite children were given

greater opportunities to enhance their social and economic standing, while the children of

working-class families were directed toward remaining in the same, or perhaps slightly better status as their parents. However, the majority of Minneapolis high school students would be attending public schools, paid for by public tax money. Reformers and civic leaders alike emphasized that schools were taxpayer-funded civic institutions wherein students should be made to believe that they played an essential role in making

Minneapolis a great city. By using curriculum to push the model metropolis ideal while also folding students into the local economy through specific industrial training, local vocational education proponents believed that they were building the social and economic foundation of their city.

Schools as publicly-funded civic institutions were intended to provide clean, surveilled spaces where teachers would follow a curriculum that would habituate students to a particular set of rhythms and values. Samuel Bowles and Herbert Gintis argued that schools were preparatory zones that “socializ[ed] people to function well (and without complaint) in the hierarchical structure of the modern corporation or public office.

Schools accomplish[ed] this by…structuring social interactions and individual rewards to replicate the environment of the workplace.”15 This conception of schools was apparent

in the plans and works of education reformers of the Progressive era. Among the more

14 Millikan, A Union Against Unions, 77. 15 Bowles and Gintis, Schooling in Capitalist America, ix-x.

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vociferous vocational education reformers was Massachusetts State Commissioner of

Education, David Snedden. In 1910, he published The Problem of Vocational Education

in which he argued that schools should be the mechanism by which leaders could instill

order in a society with so many civic institutions in flux.16 An adherent of Herbert

Spencer’s Social Darwinism, Snedden believed that developing a separate vocational

school system would bring a measure of “social control.”17 He wrote that “in the shifting

currents of social progress,” homes, churches, and factories saw their roles in

contributing to the development of children into workers altered, and, as such

“agencies…become incapable of training men for their complex environment, society,

becoming increasingly self-conscious, gathers up the neglected functions and assigns

them to the school, the one institution entirely under its control.”18

Schools’ new role as civic institutions was troublesome, though, as most high

schools in the country still adhered to a liberal curriculum that both drove students away

and did not prepare them to become producers in the industrial economy. Liberal

education focused almost exclusively on preparing students for college or university.19

With only 10 percent of the population attending college or university, many students dropped out before high school graduation, unable to see the practicality of continuing to attend when they could be out earning money for themselves or their families.20 Liberal

education’s narrow purpose stifled opportunities for the majority of school-age children,

who would not be attending college or university. Early dropouts meant that students “did

16 David Snedden, The Problem of Vocational Education (Boston: Houghton Mifflin Company, 1910). 17 Elizabeth Sanders, Roots of Reform: Farmers, Workers, and the American State, 1877-1917 (Chicago: The University of Chicago Press, 1999), 326. 18 Snedden, The Problem of Vocational Education, iv. 19 G. Gerald Lamey, “A Case Study of the Conversion to Full-time Vocation in Delaware,” (PhD diss., Wilmington University, 2013), 12. 20 Lamey, “A Case Study of the Conversion to Full-time Vocation in Delaware,” 12.

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not secure, at public expense, a preparation for their work in life.”21 Many reformers

shared this concern, and, in the agitation to change education practices and policies,

maintained that schools could only perform this role if they were made academically

accessible – that is, if the liberal curriculum were replaced by a more practical one.

Vocational school training was linked to the democratization of opportunity and cultivation of citizenship. This argument was borne from two primary channels. First, as schools adjusted to their new positions as social civic institutions, education reformers sought to emphasize the opportunities that changing curriculum could bring to the

population. Second, as the immigrant population continued to swell in the early-twentieth century, using schools and schooling as tools of indoctrination seemed a simple solution to nativist fears that immigrant children and children of immigrants would not adopt

American habits. For many, though, the promise of vocational education was that working-class students, long ignored by public schools, might be empowered by the new curriculum and have greater opportunities entering the world of industry, in which they often owned little more than their skills. Charles Prosser, Snedden’s protégé who would later become an executive director of the NSPIE, wrote that “the American public educational system was founded in the political faith that education would not only enable, but inspire, the individual to participate in our American society.”22 Vocational

schools, thus, would help students “move from noneducative [sic] occupations as

unskilled laborers to positions as skilled workers sought after by industry.”23 In other

words, vocational curriculum was built upon the foundational premise that education

21 Lamey, “A Case Study of the Conversion to Full-time Vocation in Delaware,” 12. 22 Charles A. Prosser and Thomas Henry Quigley, Vocational Education in a Democracy (Chicago: American Technical Society, revised edition 1949), 530. 23 Miller, Principles and a Philosophy for Vocational Education, 14.

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could help some children of working-class families secure better employment than their

parents and positioned it as a critical factor in citizen participation in democracy and for

the development of a productive citizenry. If schools were to truly become renewed civic

institutions, vocational education proponents argued, it was imperative that they extirpate

liberal curriculum in favor of more practical courses.

Vocational education reform in Minneapolis shared many issues with the national

movement, though they were filtered through local lenses. Minneapolis's population

growth during this period was due to immigration and native-born domestic migration.

While those who wished to make Minneapolis a model metropolis recognized the need

for in-migration, it often served to complicate the idea of a cohesive civic vision that was

crafted by and according to native-born, Yankee white male perspectives. Curriculum

reform advocates in Minneapolis, as across the nation, saw schools and schooling as ideal

methods to form, or in some cases re-form, students according to the ideal Minneapolitan

mold. Schools were opened for evening classes so that, as civic-booster Parsons noted,

“foreigners and those deprived of the chance to attend day school” could have access to

education.24 Assimilation was seen as an essential step in helping immigrants shed their

ethnic identities and adopt the behaviors and values of the host society. In particularly

heterogeneous sections of the city, such as the Northeast, assimilation programming was

developed in an effort to cultivate a sense of cohesion among the area’s residents so that

they might “co-operate in a united social, civic, or political effort.”25

24 Parsons, The Story of Minneapolis, 117. 25 Winifred Wandersee Bolin, “Heating up the Melting Pot: Settlement Work and Americanization in Northeast Minneapolis,” Minnesota History 45:2 (Summer, 1976): 60.

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Curriculum reform also fed into another civic endeavor. Open-shop proponents

saw schools that graduated skilled, productive individuals as a supplier of laborers, and

perhaps as tools to develop a large enough trained labor pool that the CA policy of firing

workers who threatened to organize would become more tenable in the future.

Meanwhile, local social reformers, like their national counterparts, saw education reform

as a democratization of opportunity that would provide students, particularly working-

class children, with skills with which they would become empowered to have a greater

voice in the direction of their lives. By the time vocational education reform was

receiving vociferous support in Minneapolis, classic liberal education had already been

tempered with the addition of manual arts such as “domestic art and science, manual and

commercial training” in high schools.26 Whether through curriculum delivered or acting

as venues for social programming, schools were a socially constructed controlled space

within which civic stewards could guide and direct many classes of students to become

productive Minneapolitans.

The Status of Education in Minneapolis

The first decade of the twentieth century saw an increase in the number of

Minneapolis high schools. By 1908, there were five public high schools open throughout

the city, with their names corresponding to their location (North, Central, West, East, and

South), in addition to sixty-one public grade schools.27 Schools were considered essential

civic spaces and, like parks, were purposefully scattered throughout the city so as to make

26 Parsons, The Story of Minneapolis, 158. 27 Davison’s Minneapolis City Directory, (Minneapolis: Minneapolis Directory Company, 1908), 45. The fifth high school, West, opened in 1908.

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them physically accessible to students. In The Story of Minneapolis, Parsons attributed this to a progressive spirit which ensured that “every section of the city could send its children directly to obtain, not only the education that America has always claimed as a right, but that which only the wealthy and the apt could have enjoyed a few years before.”28

While the expansion of high schools was celebrated, some asserted that the

curriculum taught was not in the city’s best interest. As in the national realm, local

proponents of curriculum reform came from disparate groups with mandates that were

not always in agreement. The social and economic aspects of schooling were central to

the local discussion about curriculum reforms. In 1913, the Minneapolis Teachers’ Club

published a survey of the city’s high schools and made the case for bringing more

vocational programming into the public schools.29 The city followed many of the

vocational reform movement’s causes and integrated curriculum changes into the public

schools. Four years later, the Minneapolis Civic and Commerce Association’s (MCCA)

Committee on Municipal Research published a document that laid out financial

projections for school growth and how the city would pay for them.30 The city’s

education reform endeavors would also have a national impact as Minneapolis was used

as a national case study for the vocational reform cause, with the NSPIE stepping in and

28 Parsons, The Story of Minneapolis, 117. 29 Minneapolis Teachers’ Club, A Vocational Survey of Minneapolis (Minneapolis: Minneapolis Teachers’ Club, 1913). 30 Minneapolis Civic and Commerce Association Committee on Municipal Research, Report on Analysis of Five Year School Building Program: Proposed Two and Three Year School Building Programs (Minneapolis: Minneapolis Civic and Commerce Association, 1917).

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supporting a several-hundred page study on the conditions of education and the steps that

had been taken up to that point to bring practical education to schools.31

Many Minneapolis high schools featured curricula that mixed manual arts and liberal education. The city’s newest high school, West, was completed in 1908. The year after it opened, it offered courses in English, Latin, German, French, Mathematics,

History, Civics, Chemistry, Physics, Botany, Stenography, Geography, Drawing,

Mechanical Drawing, Domestic Art and Science, Manual Training, and Music.32

Although a few manual arts had made their way into the curriculum, West High School

continued to base its curriculum largely on classical liberal education models.33 The other

four high schools featured a similar range of courses. In 1909, East high school offered

Latin, German, French, English, History, Mathematics, Commercial, Drawing and

Manual Training, and Science.34 North high school offered English, Mathematics, Latin,

German, Science, History, English Grammar, French, Manual Training and Drawing, and

Commercial.35 South high school had similar courses and, by 1910, had manual training,

commercial, and stenography courses as well.36 Such courses of “basic manual training…was not intended as vocational training” in the sense that they were not

31 U.S. Department of Labor Bureau of Labor Statistics, Vocational Education Survey of Minneapolis, Minn. (Washington: Government Printing Office, 1917). 32 West High School, The Hesperian (Minneapolis, MN, 1909). James K. Hosmer Reading Room, Hennepin County Public Library. 33 West High School, The Hesperian (Minneapolis, MN, 1913), 7. James K. Hosmer Reading Room, Hennepin County Public Library. 34 East High School, East High Cardinal (Minneapolis, MN, 1909). James K. Hosmer Reading Room, Hennepin County Public Library. 35 North High School, North High Polaris (Minneapolis, MN, 1911), 8-9. James K. Hosmer Reading Room, Hennepin County Public Library. 36 South High School, South Yearbook (Minneapolis, MN, 1910), 7. James K. Hosmer Reading Room, Hennepin County Public Library.

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directed at developing one skill or trade in pupils.37 Rather, the manual courses were crossed with the liberal curriculum, aimed at cultivating a well-rounded student with many options for work or extending education after graduation.

Each of the five high schools had yearbooks that featured student art, which provide a window into the way students thought about their education and its role in their futures. A number of them featured characterizations of students as they went from freshmen to seniors. Freshmen were commonly portrayed as young, naïve students.

Images of seniors, however, tell a different story. Two portraits of seniors, in particular, highlight students’ post-graduation expectations. At West High School, the yearbook, titled Hesperian, featured a drawing of a senior done by Isabel Northrup (figure 3.1). The

well-dressed man in a fine chair ponders his future options. His thought bubble reads:

“law/medicine/engineering/business/pulpit/press/agriculture?”38 Northrup’s drawing

captures the hopes of West High School’s students and demonstrates that the curriculum in high schools during this period was intended to groom students for professional careers. East high school’s Cardinal also featured a telling depiction of a post-graduation senior (figure 3.2). With a sharp, pinstripe suit a young man walks out of a gate, looking over his shoulder toward campus.39 With a bold headline of “whither?”, it is apparent that

this artist, like West’s Northrup, was conveying the sentiment of potential and

opportunity that many graduating seniors likely felt. Neither showed their subjects

37 Carole Zellie, “Minneapolis Public Schools Historic Context Survey,” Prepared for the Minneapolis Heritage Preservation Commission (Minneapolis: April 2005), 14. 38 Isabel Northrup, “Senior,” West High School, The Hesperian, 1909. Northrup may be the daughter of Jesse Northrup, co-founder of Northrup, King, & Co. Seed Company. She, along with a “Miss Jessaline Northrup” were listed as part of a ladies’ welcoming committee who gave tours of the city’s “delightful resident section…[and] beautiful lakes” to delegates and their wives visiting for the American Seed Trade Association’s twentieth annual convention. The American Seed Trade Association, Twentieth Annual Report (1902). 39 “Whither?,” East High School, East High Cardinal, 1909.

124 excitedly entering factory doors or pondering the industrial floor role he might play.

These portrayals reflect the organization of high school curriculums in Minneapolis at the time. Although there were manual training courses available, the intention of high school principals and teachers was to produce graduates who would enter the halls of law, medicine, or engineering rather than the shop floor. This intention, however, tended to ignore that the majority of high school students would not go on to university and, indeed, many of the students who entered high school did not graduate.

Figure 3.1: “Senior.” Source: West High School, The Hesperian, 1909.

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Figure 3.2: “Whither?,” Source: East High School, East High Cardinal, 1909.

School officials often expressed the sentiment that schools were spaces in which citizens were formed. Several of the high schools’ yearbooks link their local experience to broader notions of democracy and civic duty. An epigraph in East high school’s 1909 yearbook contained nothing but this statement: “A creation of Democracy, the public school now stands as its mightiest champion and its chief exponent.”40 Snedden’s contention that schools would become a crucial civic institution in a period of social flux

40 East High School, East High Cardinal (Minneapolis, MN, 1909), viii. James K. Hosmer Reading Room, Hennepin County Public Library.

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was apparent in the quote; a bedrock of democracy, the importance of a school’s role

both in curriculum and in providing public space could not be ignored. While others

would make reference to national-level democracy, the city of Minneapolis often seemed to be placed at the forefront of yearbook inscriptions. High schools urged students to be civically-minded both in spirit and in productivity. Becoming educated was the means by which one became a contributing citizen. Each year, West High School’s chemistry teacher, Clifford Salt, penned a dedication to the students. In 1913, he wrote:

The untrained man is under a heavier handicap as the years go by. Science has developed many fields of industry that demand only skilled men and women. Whether a man be his own master in the filling of these positions depends mainly on the man and his training…Plan to earn your own living, whether you feel the necessity of doing it or not. Don’t be in debt to Society.41

The dedication asked students to be as devoted to society’s growth and development as

they were to their own. If one was not actively contributing to society, one was a

millstone to it. Moreover, the sentiment that productivity made one a good and acceptable

member of the citizenry reflected one of the main contentions of vocational school

advocates: students must graduate ready to be economically productive in order to be

good Minneapolitans. Salt was not alone in his position. In 1911, Central High School’s

principal, John N. Greer, urged students to adopt the city into their hearts:

Your principal wishes to suggest to you a ‘civic creed.’ If you will make this creed a part of your lives and thought, you will be most worthy citizens of our great republic. God hath made of one blood all nations of men, and we are His children, brothers and sisters all. We are citizens of these United States, and we believe that our flag stands for self-sacrifice for the good of the people. We want, therefore, to be true citizens of our beautiful city, and we will show our love for her by our works. Minneapolis does not ask us to die for her welfare; she asks us to live for

41 West High School, The Hesperian (Minneapolis, MN, 1913), 1913. James K. Hosmer Reading Room, Hennepin County Public Library.

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her, - so to live and so to act that her government may be pure, her officers honest, and that every school building within her boundaries shall be a fit place to grow the best men and women to rule over her.42

Greer was much more explicit than Salt in his call for students to see themselves as integral to their city’s growth and success. Moreover, Greer went further than Salt as he stated that schools would be the mechanism by which good, productive, dedicated citizens would be cultivated. In each of these instances, school’s instrumental roles in citizen formation and as civic institutions was apparent. As school officials urged students to become contributing members of society, they were simultaneously warning against being a drain (both financial and spiritual) on the city’s resources. Minneapolis was a slight outlier at this time because its public schools were early adopters of the manual training curriculums. Students who learned sloyd also learned Latin and classic literature.43 The rise of the vocational school movement, though, presented challenges to this curriculum. The strictest advocates urged for the development of separate vocational schools into which students – who had been tracked – would be placed to receive education that focused solely on productive craft skills. In Minneapolis, though, the vocational school movement merged with ongoing streams of civic stewardship and the desire to cultivate Minneapolitans who would be dedicated to the growth of their city. As such, the local vocational school movement was directed at incorporating more job training courses into the public school curriculum, and was thus enveloped into these larger concepts of civic identity.

42 John N. Greer, “The Senior” in Central High School, Central Yearbook (Minneapolis, MN, 1911), 9. James K. Hosmer Reading Room, Hennepin County Public Library. 43 Sloyd is a type of Scandinavian woodworking. It was a common element of manual arts training in cities throughout the United States.

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Vocational Education Reform in Minneapolis: The Minneapolis Teachers’ Club

Study

In 1913, the Minneapolis Teachers’ Club published a study of the city’s education

system. Its purpose was twofold: to identify where, if any, curriculum inefficiencies lay

and to recommend measures to improve education in the future.44 It is important to note

that this survey was not the product of the CA or MCCA. Although some milling and

machining employers were involved, the Minneapolis Teachers’ Club, which researched

and wrote the study, was comprised of men and women from settlement houses, the

Board of Education, the Trades and Labor Assembly, and several departments at the

University of Minnesota including psychology, sociology, and economics.45 The club

decided to undertake the study because “there had been much talk of training for the

trades in the public schools” and this “group of men and women interested in the welfare

of boys and girls” determined that more information was required to make a solid

assessment of whether including vocational training in public schools was appropriate or

necessary.46

Researchers focused on children aged fourteen to sixteen who had left school and

conducted oral interviews, scoured school documents from seven schools – including two public high schools and five grade schools, and documentation from local settlement houses to develop as close to a comprehensive picture of the state of education in

44 Minneapolis Teachers’ Club, A Vocational Survey of Minneapolis, 4. 45 Minneapolis Teachers’ Club, A Vocational Survey of Minneapolis, 4. 46 Minneapolis Teachers’ Club, A Vocational Survey of Minneapolis, 4. The grade schools selected were Sheridan, Adams, Logan, Monroe, and Seward; the high schools selected were Central and North. These represent a broad geographical representation and would have broadly covered most of working- and middle-class Minneapolis.

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Minneapolis as possible.47 The survey covered issues of local economy and the vocational curriculum’s ability to prepare a highly skilled workforce for industry, but this was not, in the minds of its authors, the main purpose of schools – especially high schools. At the end of the document’s introduction, it asserted that “The product of

[schools] should be manhood and womanhood, efficient to take its place in the world of workers, and yet firmly established in habits of right thinking and noble action.”48 That is, while training for employment was a priority, it did not replace the school’s most sacred role: to build citizens.

Occupational opportunity through learning skills was presented as a fundamental necessity for the city’s young people to graduate into a stable, moral adulthood. School helped shape students as they prepared for their working lives, and the report was clear in making the connection between a person’s ability to acquire good work and laying the foundation of a good family and home. “Vocation,” it stated “determines his income and through his income his standard of life, his and his children’s opportunity of culture, their associates, and their prospects of advancement.”49 Therefore, providing vocational education in public schools was the best way to help bring opportunity to children who otherwise might be forced to leave school to work at low wages to support their families or who might opt to leave school because the curriculum content of most high schools seemed uninteresting or impractical. The way in which the report was undertaken, its lines of focus, and its recommendations speak to the politicization of education,

47 Minneapolis Teachers’ Club, A Vocational Survey of Minneapolis, 5. 48 Minneapolis Teachers' Club, A Vocational Survey of Minneapolis, 4. 49 Minneapolis Teachers’ Club, A Vocational Survey of Minneapolis¸ 71.

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particularly vocational curriculum, and the ways in which it was linked to the economy,

democracy and equality of opportunity, and the social conditioning of young students.

Three professional women social workers exercised tremendous influence over

the survey’s methods and content. Many settlement house workers in the Progressive era

were “daughters of the middle and upper-middle classes [who] brought the obligations of service considered appropriate to their class and gender.”50 Caroline Crosby, whose

father John Crosby was the co-founder of Washburn-Crosby milling, had graduated with honors from the University of Minnesota College of Science, Literature and the Arts in

1902.51 She was the resident director of the Unity House settlement, which was

established by her father and by her uncle, Charles Pillsbury.52 She came from a family of civic stewards, and her work in Unity House likely affected her perspective as much as if not more than did her heritage. Lydia Herrick was the secretary for the survey and was also a settlement house director at Unity House. Emily Child was the daughter of Samson

Reed Child, a distant relative of the Washburns of Washburn-Crosby, a prominent lawyer, and a member of the Minnesota House of Representatives whose constituency was in western Minneapolis.53 Child, like Crosby, attended the University of Minnesota

50 Barbara Sicherman, “Working it Out: Gender, Profession, and Reform in the Career of Alice Hamilton,” in Noralee Frankel and Nancy S. Dye, eds., Gender, Class, Race and Reform in the Progressive Era (Lexington: The University Press of Kentucky), 128. 51 “Thirtieth Annual Commencement” program, 5 June 1902, The Armory at the University of Minnesota. https://conservancy.umn.edu/bitstream/handle/11299/60272/Commencement1902.pdf?sequence=1 (accessed April 11, 2015). 52 U.S. Department of Labor, Vocational Education Survey of Minneapolis, 539. 53 Horace B. Hudson, “Courts and Lawyers of Minneapolis,” 1908 (courtesy of the Minnesota Legal History Project), 312-2; M.D. Shutter, History of Minneapolis, Gateway to the Northwest. (Chicago- Minneapolis: The S.J. Clarke Publishing Co, 1923), 683-684.

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and graduated in 1909 with studies in psychology.54 Their gender, training, and experience aided them in making meaningful connections with their interviewees.

As they went into people’s homes, asking personal questions about family economic strategies and the ways in which income was spent, Child, Crosby, and Herrick were well aware of the imposition they were making into their interviewees’ lives. The survey seemed to imply that the three women’s professional training had intersected with their gender in a way that enabled them to conduct more thorough and personal interviews. Perhaps the women and young adults being interviewed believed that the three women would be more sympathetic to their economic difficulties, and indeed interviewees offered candid responses as they developed closer relationships with the women asking the questions. While it was not explicitly stated that Child’s, Crosby’s, and

Herrick’s gender played an integral role in the interview process, the survey did note that

“much kindness, patience, and tact” – traits pinned to women at this time – were required to build relationships with survey subjects.55

One key issue that Crosby, Child, and Herrick isolated was how pervasive and damaging classist expectations were to those in unstable economic situations. Several sections highlighted the precarious nature of many household economies as a call to move past class-based judgments to prepare the path for economically-productive reform programming. The survey’s introduction spoke to the power of building relationships with subjects as the best way to get candid answers on sensitive subjects, such as income:

54 W.J. Maxwell, “General Catalogue of the University of Minnesota,” (Minneapolis: R.L. Polk and Company, Inc., 1916), 113. 55 Minneapolis Teachers’ Club, A Vocational Survey of Minneapolis, 5.

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[W]hen worth in a community is decided on the basis of earning power, as it is by many persons, it is easy to see why the tendency [of those interviewed] is to make as good showing as possible. Then when a stranger wishes to learn why a father is not at work while a frail mother goes down town every day to toil in some office building; or why, in a prosperous home, the son left school at fourteen, to accept three or four dollars a week in a candy store, very often native pride hesitates to speak, and resentment at such an inquisition seals the lips.56

The survey specifically noted that multiple visits were required in order to develop trust

between the interviewers and their subjects.57 Without building the relationships that fostered forthright dialog about income, the survey could not have had such incisive comments on class prejudice and structural inequality. The inclusion of income commentary spoke to one of the main factors that attracted social reformers to the cause of education reform: equipping students with the tools to become more economically independent. This was, of course, at odds with employers who wished to use vocational education as a means of developing a trained workforce that would not question hierarchical authority.

There were instances when the survey provided astute conclusions about the state of the working class during the first decade of the twentieth century. In one section, the survey presented numbers on home sizes, wages earned, and cost of living in

Minneapolis. Researchers found a sharp increase in inflation that had far outpaced wages since 1897: “the rise of food prices…has been 65 per cent, of rent…about 30 per cent…of general wages between 20 per cent and 25 percent…of union wages in

Minneapolis 34 per cent.” 58 This meant that many workers had to find economic

56 Minneapolis Teachers’ Club, A Vocational Survey of Minneapolis, 5. 57 Minneapolis Teachers’ Club, A Vocational Survey of Minneapolis, 5. 58 Minneapolis Teachers’ Club, A Vocational Survey of Minneapolis, 74.

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strategies to compensate for the fact that more people had to work longer hours in order

simply to survive. The survey noted that “the working people of Minneapolis have met

the rise in rents and prices of the last twenty years by lowering their standard of housing”

in order to afford food, rent, and other expenses.59 The decrease in average home size was not met with a decrease in the average family size and thus overcrowding remained a significant issue in the “city of homes.” The survey concluded that the average $15 a month income for male workers hardly met necessity in times of plenty and did not allow for families to save for times of need. Ultimately, it asserted, “the vast majority

of…Minneapolis’ wage earners are earning barely enough for subsistence.”60 By

exposing how uncertain these working-class families’ economies were, the survey laid

clear groundwork for the overall argument that adopting vocational education was as

much a social as an economic necessity for Minneapolis. Without addressing the low

wages and high inflation, sub-par living conditions would continue for the city’s working

class. Moreover, the survey implied that as families increasingly struggled to make ends

meet, it would be likely that more students would be pulled from school in order to work

and support their families. Local vocational school advocates, particularly those from the

settlement houses and the university, saw the implementation of a vocational curriculum

in the public school system as a means by which this path could be avoided. As

researchers discovered, though, economic necessity was not always the main reason

students left high school.

The survey used data from 1907 and 1908 to report on the reasons why children

left school before graduating from high school, concluding that parental nativity was a

59 Minneapolis Teachers’ Club, A Vocational Survey of Minneapolis, 74. 60 Minneapolis Teachers’ Club, A Vocational Survey of Minneapolis, 74.

134 significant factor in low graduation rates.61 Researchers found 352 children who left school either before completing grade school (43.7 percent), immediately after graduating from grade school in grade 8 (23.9 percent), or after having attended some high school

(32.4 percent).62 Of these children, 331 (94 percent) were American-born, but 203 of the families studied (57 percent) had parents who were both born outside of the United States

(figure 3.3).63 The fear that immigrant parents would not push their children to stay in school until high school graduation motivated many vocational education advocates who pushed for reform.

61 Minneapolis Teachers’ Club, A Vocational Survey of Minneapolis, 9. 62 Minneapolis Teachers' Club, A Vocational Survey of Minneapolis, 9, 14. Those who attended some high school ranged from two months to two-and-a-half years. The study identified these 352 children by using school records of the seven schools under consideration to determine which children were no longer attending school. That list was then cross-referenced with records of employment developed by the truancy office. This returned 543 names. Researchers then identified that some of the children had died, some left the city with their families, and some were misidentified as having left school or their age was recorded incorrectly. 63 Minneapolis Teachers' Club, A Vocational Survey of Minneapolis, 12, 13. The study was not clear on how many families the 352 children came from.

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Figure 3.3: “Nationality of Parents.” Source: Minneapolis Teachers' Club, A Vocational Survey of Minneapolis, 12.

Foreign-born parents more frequently than American-born parents were reported to be “indifferent to further education” or stated that their “ideal of education for the child had been fulfilled,” so they either pulled their child from school or allowed them to quit.64 Results like these motivated reformers to push school officials to have the

64 Minneapolis Teachers' Club, A Vocational Survey of Minneapolis, 17.

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authority to override parental decisions to pull children from school. Schools would thus

become spaces where reformers’ visions of the best education for children would be

paramount. The report consistently emphasized the different parenting decisions of

foreign-born parents versus the few American-born parents (31.8 percent).65 To address

the issue of parental influence on their children’s school attendance, the survey argued

that schools should keep records “of each pupil, giving a complete account of his home

conditions, his physical condition, and his mental and emotional characteristics,” so that

school officials could make “a judgment concerning his future occupation.”66 In other words, students should be tracked by school officials who would determine which curriculum course was most appropriate. Nationally, tracking was being widely called for as the best way to ensure students stayed in school regardless of their or their parents’ desires to withdraw. In practice, children of working-class families were disproportionately tracked into vocational courses or schools.67

The Vocational Survey presented nativist assumptions about the children of

immigrants as a justification to track certain students into vocational training. It noted

that there was a ratio of 1:6 native-born to foreign-born workers in skilled trades in the

city.68 There was no suggestion that foreigners on the whole were not suitable skilled

workers, as indeed they were already in the majority, but the survey seemed to suggest

that because immigrants were no longer of the “intelligent classes from Northern

65 Minneapolis Teachers' Club, A Vocational Survey of Minneapolis, 12. For the most part, the survey did not identify any one foreign nationality as superior or inferior to another in terms of providing education opportunities for their children. One example, which will be discussed in this chapter, provided information about the daughter of a Russian Jewish family and her views on education, but there was no implication given that her parents’ ethnicity influenced them to allow her to leave school. 66 Minneapolis Teachers’ Club, A Vocational Survey of Minneapolis, 7. 67 See: Herbert M. Kliebard, Schooled to Work: Vocationalism and the American Curriculum, 1876-1946 (New York: Teachers College Press, 1999). 68 Minneapolis Teachers’ Club, A Vocational Survey of Minneapolis¸ 3.

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Europe,” greater intervention and training was required.69 Immigrants coming from elsewhere, it was feared, needed more intervention in order to enter the industrial working world:

Southeastern Europe was being emptied of its ignorant population, accustomed to a standard of life better than that of the cattle with which they housed. These people had lived in a far-away industrial epoch, where implements were yet primitive and modern trades and machines unknown.70

The tone suggested that the adult immigrants coming from southern and eastern Europe were considered to be lost causes in terms of training for industrial labor. However, these immigrants’ children would need extra attention if they were going to transcend the

“ignorance” and the “primitive” ways that supposedly characterized their ethnic backgrounds. According to the survey, without city-wide implementation of a vocational curriculum in the public schools and a system in which students were guided (or, rather, tracked) by school officials who supposedly had expertise in selecting students’ paths, immigrant children and the children of recent immigrants would remain ignorant and would not assimilate. Thus, schools would be an important venue not only for development of Minneapolitans, but also for Americanization both in language and customs. While parental nativity was presented as a main reason school children left before graduation, it was a problematic explanatory tool given that the majority of children studied were American-born and had experienced only American schooling. Of

69 Minneapolis Teachers’ Club, A Vocational Survey of Minneapolis¸ 3. 70 Minneapolis Teachers’ Club, A Vocational Survey of Minneapolis¸ 3.

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this, the survey sardonically reported: “It is worthy of note that more than half of the

whole number of children left at their own sweet will.”71

Through interviews with parents, the survey’s authors displayed the complex

reasons that parents either pulled their children from school or allowed them to drop out.

In some cases, parents reported that their child’s gender was a major factor in the

decision that the child would leave school or stay. One parent reportedly said, “A girl

only needs enough money to keep her in clothes anyway. It is different with a boy. He

needs more education, because he has to go farther. If the girls learn sewing or something

like that I think it is different.”72 Girls’ limited earning power combined with their longer financial dependence on their families was also a part of some parents’ education strategies: “If you send a girl to high school, maybe she will marry soon after leaving, and you don’t get any good out of her.”73 Other parents reported that their children were

so bored by public school that they left either to acquire a specialized trade in a different,

privately-run school or to join the workforce to learn a skill on the job.74 However, the most common sentiment offered was that parents strongly desired that their children earn an education but that a skill was most important. One respondent stated: “Of course education is a good thing, and some who are smart and can afford it ought to go to the

University. But for workingmen’s children a trade is better than education after grade school.”75 Of the parental quotes offered, several themes arose that were clearly in line

with the survey’s overall aims. Taken together, they suggested that: more stringent

71 Minneapolis Teachers' Club, A Vocational Survey of Minneapolis, 18. 72 Minneapolis Teachers' Club, A Vocational Survey of Minneapolis¸18. 73 Minneapolis Teachers' Club, A Vocational Survey of Minneapolis, 18. 74 Minneapolis Teachers' Club, A Vocational Survey of Minneapolis, 18. 75 Minneapolis Teachers' Club, A Vocational Survey of Minneapolis, 18.

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attendance requirements would remove the parental factor of whether students stayed in

school until graduation; schools were crucial grounds for assimilation into American and

Minneapolitan values; and that with curriculum adjustments which would include trade

skills, students (and their parents) would better see the value of education.

The survey also presented quotes from students who commented on why they left

school. While the decision was often made of “their own sweet will,” students’ reasons

for leaving were multifaceted. Some said they had to leave school in order to support

their families. As can be seen in Figure 3.4, just over one-third of girls and just under one-half of boys were turning their wages in to their families. While the earnings were attractive, many students reported a desire to return to school or to take evening courses eventually in order to advance in the workforce, though few were successful in either pursuit. One girl who left school to earn money stated “‘I was growing up to be a young lady, and I wanted clothes that were reasonable. I intended to go back after I had earned money.’”76 “‘I always thought I would go to evening school,’” another commented, “‘but

I never seemed to feel like it when I got through work.’”77 Such sentiments reflected that

most students were not quitting school because they did not see the value in education.

The survey presented sentiments from many students who regretted that they had left

school early, but who were already engaged in work and so would not likely return. One

girl stated that “‘I don’t believe anyone leaves school because they want to. They are just

ashamed to give the true reason.’”78 The added time of high school, particularly when

76 Minneapolis Teachers' Club, A Vocational Survey of Minneapolis, 20. 77 Minneapolis Teachers' Club, A Vocational Survey of Minneapolis, 29. 78 Minneapolis Teachers’ Club, A Vocational Survey of Minneapolis, 20-1.

140 liberal curriculum dominated, was unappealing for students who did not see themselves going on to university.

Figure 3.4: Table showing breakdown of 111 girls and 192 boys who left school to work. Source: Minneapolis Teachers' Club, A Vocational Survey of Minneapolis, 26.

Many students expressed frustration over the fact that they would have to seek further training after high school if they wanted to acquire a decent job. One student remarked:

I did not think I could go through the University, and I do not think a fellow can get much out of high school unless he can go on. The courses are all planned for the fellows who can go on in school. I was planning to go into some sort of business; and if I had thought any of the work would help me in business, I would have stayed all right.79

Other interviewees echoed this sentiment, adding that few could “‘afford to be going to school just to be cultured.’”80 In such statements, it becomes apparent that these students did have a desire to remain in school longer, but could not see the value in school for school’s sake. Students reported that they wanted a more useful curriculum that would

79 Minneapolis Teachers' Club, A Vocational Survey of Minneapolis, 22. 80 Minneapolis Teachers' Club, A Vocational Survey of Minneapolis, 23.

141 prepare them for their working futures. One young woman shared her experiences and hopes that the high schools would develop more practical courses, especially for girls.

Identified only as Rebecca C., she was the daughter of Russian Jews who had immigrated first to New York then to Minneapolis in search of better opportunities. Rebecca, who stopped attending high school at level 11B, fairly close to program completion, stated that she found it practical, adding that “the Commercial Course is all right, if you took four years of it; but I took only two, and when I got through with that – well, you know I had to go to Business College anyway.”81 In other words, she was aware that graduating from the full commercial course would be a stepping stone to more schooling, not a job and, as such, it seemed easier to drop out and find work. Rebecca’s experience, which she shared with countless other students, was used by the survey’s writers to show that the curricula were a driving cause for students to leave school early. Although some courses of study had practical application, the addition of business college after high school graduation meant too much schooling before any earning. Rebecca added:

The school should prepare you to enter a world of Commercialism. You are measured in this world by what money you can earn, and you can’t tell me that you are not. Now, no one cares how much Latin and Greek and History and all that stuff you know. They want to know whether you can take care of the goods in their department or office.82

Rebecca eventually acquired a job as a stenographer, earning sufficient wages to keep her younger siblings in high school longer than she had stayed, which suggests that she believed there was greater value in finishing school than in entering the workforce

81 Minneapolis Teachers' Club, A Vocational Survey of Minneapolis, 11. 82 Minneapolis Teachers' Club, A Vocational Survey of Minneapolis, 11-12.

142 early.83 Many students had the same thoughts. Often, after weighing immediate earning potential against length of time in school before being able to work, students took the more immediate option. The report included many quotes from students who left to earn, but who later lamented their decisions. As one student said: “‘I wouldn’t be doing factory work now if I had gone on to High School.’”84

It is apparent that many children who dropped out early regretted their decisions, but the survey contained an extensive inclusion of testimony from children who left school because they found an academic curriculum impractical, suggesting that its writers believed this was a crucial factor for high dropout rates that could be ameliorated by changing courses of study. In other instances, students who left school early believed it was better to earn money more immediately. Such sentiments were often followed by quotes expressing a desire to have finished their schooling, statements that certainly developed a neat narrative that supported some of the report’s final recommendations.

Indeed, although the survey opened with skepticism, much of the content covered was in line with vocational education proponents’ claims: impractical curricula drove students out of school or graduated individuals who lacked marketable skills; parents’ nativity affected their children’s school attendance and performance; and gender had significant bearing on how children and their parents weighed the importance of schooling. If, as the survey’s writers claimed, vocation was the single most significant factor in determining a person’s future and quality of life, then schools, as civic institutions, were compelled to deliver curricula that both kept students interested and that developed them into productive citizens capable of immediately entering the local workforce.

83 Minneapolis Teachers' Club, A Vocational Survey of Minneapolis, 12. 84 Minneapolis Teachers' Club, A Vocational Survey of Minneapolis, 29.

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Ten recommendations were printed in the survey. Taken together, they presented

a very new role for schools and school officials in the city. Two of them asked for the

creation of new departments – a Department of Vocational Guidance that would work

with local employers to determine ideal courses and help guide a children into “his proper

place at work” as well as an Advisory Commission added to the Board of Education that would to “report changes in the demands of business and industry, and to advise modifications of the course of study to meet these new demands.”85 These were intended to be a safeguard against changing courses of study simply because it was in vogue nationally. As the introduction warned, the survey’s writers did not want to adopt curricula in response to fads because it would lead to developing antiquated skills, such as basketry and vertical writing and thus hinder the growth of local industry.86

In order to address the issue of parents’ withdrawing their children from schools,

the seventh recommendation was that a boy “be either in school or at work up to his

eighteenth year, and that the Department of Vocational Guidance be charged with the

duty of enforcing such a provision.”87 The study also made a point of endorsing the city’s

consortium of charities that were lobbying the state legislature to set a minimum wage for

girls and women.88 This showed a commitment to the broader network of stewardship

that was operating in Minneapolis at the time. Trying to keep students in school longer

and putting them under the guidance of school officials was a clear expansion of the

school’s role from a luxury to a civic institution that was responsible for graduating

productive citizens. It was imperative that public schools adopt vocational curricula so

85 Minneapolis Teachers' Club, A Vocational Survey of Minneapolis, 7. 86 Minneapolis Teachers' Club, A Vocational Survey of Minneapolis, 3. 87 Minneapolis Teachers' Club, A Vocational Survey of Minneapolis, 8. 88 Minneapolis Teachers' Club, A Vocational Survey of Minneapolis, 8.

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that the city’s school officials could surveil and guide students. However, a private

institution backed by employers who supported the open-shop movement would

complicate this plan.

A Private Vocational School Opens

Shortly after the Vocational Study was published, a new, private vocational high

school opened that would set a pattern for vocational education nationwide. Its courses of

study and the manner in which classes were held reflect the attitudes of conservative

employers who wanted vocational education to produce pliable workers for their shop

floors. William Hood Dunwoody, one of the wealthiest men in turn-of-the-century

Minneapolis, had come to Minnesota at the age of twenty-eight for his health. He began his business ventures in flour milling, and then became a partner in the Washburn-Crosby organization, a co-founder, director, and chairman of the Northwestern Bank, a vice president of the Minneapolis Trust Company, and on the board of directors of the Great

Northern Railway.89 Upon his death in 1914, he bequeathed $3 million to open a private

vocational school in the city; a few years later his wife Kate L. Dunwoody donated

another $2 million.90 The Dunwoody Institute was intended to cater to those students who

89 Edward L. Lach, Jr., “Dunwoody, William Hood,” American National Biography Online, http://www.anb.org.ezproxy.lib.ucalgary.ca/articles/10/10-00477.html (accessed November 26, 2014); see also: Minneapolis Golden Jubilee, 1867-1917: A History of Fifty Years of Civic and Commercial Progress. (Minneapolis: Tribune Job Printing Company, 1917), pages including 12, 31, 36, 43, 44. 90 U.S. Department of Labor Bureau of Labor Statistics, Vocational Education Survey of Minneapolis, Minn. (Washington: Government Printing Office, 1917), 11. The equivalent of $5 million in 2014 dollars is just over $118 million.

145 desired a more “practical” education, and although it was a private institution, they would not have to pay tuition.91 The project received support from many civic leaders.

Charles Prosser was the Institute’s first director. He served in the position from

1915 to 1945 and was also Executive Secretary of the NSPIE during this time. His presence in Minneapolis meant that national attention would be on the Dunwoody

Institute. Prosser developed a curriculum that emphasized “training for useful employment” with courses that would “train the person to get a job, train him so he could hold it and advance to a better job.”92 A strong believer in education replicating work as closely as possible, Prosser developed programming for the Institute, in which units were programmed in great detail to lead students step-by-step through the skill development cycle. Students punched in on time clocks and instructors behaved like shop foremen rather than public school teachers. A no-nonsense attitude prevailed. If students were not punctual, orderly and efficient, they were asked to leave.93

Prosser’s program would habituate students to a particular industrial rhythm that matched employers’ expectations. In these classrooms, teachers held all of the power; on the shop floor, so would employers. Moreover, the program dovetailed well with

Minneapolis capitalists’ anti-labor strategy to condition young workers to not only accept the open shop, but also to reject unions. It also helped to support the CA in using its tactic of firing workers suspected of pro-union activity was, as discussed in Chapter Two, risky as it quickly depleted the pool of skilled workers available to work in the city’s

91 The Dunwoody College of Technology, which exists today as the legacy of the Institute, is a private for- profit organization. 92 Arthur G. Wirth, “Job and Work – Two models for Society and Education: Vocationalism and the Schools in the Early Twentieth Century” 216-230 in Controversies over the Purposes of Schooling and the Meaning of Work: Selected Readings in the History of American Education, Revised Edition, Norman Benson and Richard Lyons, eds., (Lanham, MD: University Press of American, 1990), 224. 93 Wirth, “Job and Work,” 224.

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industries. However, with Prosser’s programming in place, the Dunwoody Institute could

produce hundreds of graduates a year who were indoctrinated in top-down, autocratic

industrial relations.

The Institute experienced almost immediate success and had full classrooms of

students seeking to learn a skill without having to attend the “impractical” high schools.

In its first year, the Institute took over Central High School’s building. Central was the

first public school to adopt a vocational curriculum, though it was still offering a liberal

curriculum. This meant that there was still a “need” for a purely vocational school, especially in the view of anti-labor employers and those who supported vocational

education as a complete replacement for high school. In 1913, Central provided the first

public school “course of study” that “was approved by the Civic and Commerce

Association and the business men of the city.” 94 The city had determined that the

building was too small to handle the increasing number of students, and a new building

was erected less than a mile away to accommodate this growth as well as to allow for the

adoption of a vocational course of study.95 The combination of a new building and the

adoption of a new curriculum meant that Central went from a school described as in

“deplorable” condition to “the city’s flagship school.”96 The school’s new design:

reflected the best of school-planning ideas, with fireproof construction, a variety of specialized classrooms including a 20,000-volume library, well- equipped laboratories including a botany laboratory and greenhouse, extensive manual arts areas, a 2,000-seat auditorium, two gymnasiums and

94 U.S. Department of Labor, Vocational Education Survey of Minneapolis, 49. 95 “Central High School” and “New Central High School,” in The Senior, Central High School Yearbook, 1914. The yearbook had a section that discussed the new building and how the increased space would enable the school to offer mechanical and woodworking classes as well as increased manual training and commercial courses. 96 Zellie, “Minneapolis Public Schools Historic Context Survey,” 19.

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a swimming pool, and a maximum amount of wall area devoted to windows.97

Asking for manual arts areas in addition to a library, gymnasium, and auditorium indicated that the new courses of study to be offered at Central high school combined elements of vocational and classical liberal education. The public schools would not become vocational training centers, nor would they remain exclusively college- preparatory. In order to cultivate good citizens who would also be good workers,

Minneapolis's schools would create a different type of curriculum that merged these two tracks. The importance of schools’ physical form will be discussed later in this chapter, but it is important to note that Central was celebrated for both its curriculum and its space, which many education reform advocates argued must be yoked in the process of improving both the education process and the city as a whole. The spread of vocational curricula and the establishment of Prosser’s curriculum in the Dunwoody Institute brought national attention to the Mill City.

Minneapolis Vocational Education as a National Case Study

In 1917, the U.S. Department of Labor distributed a bulletin developed by the

NSPIE in conjunction with a local Minneapolis survey committee that expanded the

Teachers’ Club study in hope of getting federal funding and support for vocational education.98 The bulletin was developed in preparation for Minneapolis to host the

97 Zeillie, “Minneapolis Public Schools Historic Context Survey,” 19. 98 U.S. Department of Labor Bureau of Labor Statistics, Vocational Education Survey of Minneapolis, Minn. (Washington: Government Printing Office, 1917).

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NSPIE national convention in 1918.99 The NSPIE relied on work done by the Teachers’

Club in addition to support from the Minneapolis Public Library, which catalogued and typed research received, and the MCCA, that undertook a study of industrial conditions in the city that was used for data.100 Over 100 people were listed as being involved in the survey, some of whom, like Caroline Crosby, were part of the Teachers’ Club survey. It included some information from the 1913 survey, but omitted the sections that highlighted wage inequality and classist judgments as well as quotes from the interviews.

Although the bulletin extolled the virtues of the Dunwoody Institute, it remained focused on getting vocational education brought into public schools. The NSPIE survey garnered national attention for Minneapolis. It was the first time since the Doc Ames governance scandal, covered by Lincoln Steffens, that the city found itself taking such a significant role in national debates. Almost instantly upon publication, it was a “nationally referenced stud[y],” and situated Minneapolis as a model metropolis – at least in terms of education curriculum development.101

The NSPIE survey framed work, particularly skilled, high-wage work, as a connection to broader concepts about democracy and opportunity. It stated that “the social and educational need for practical education is equally urgent. We should have it to democratize the education of the country by recognizing different interests and abilities, giving equal opportunity to all to prepare for their life work.”102 The idea that formalizing education would aid in preparing students both in basic knowledge and social customs

99 U.S. Department of Labor, Vocational Education Survey of Minneapolis, 539. 100 U.S. Department of Labor, Vocational Education Survey of Minneapolis, 14. 101 Deberae Culpepper, “The Development of Tracking and Its Historical Impact on Minority Students,” (PhD diss, Walden University, United States, 2012), 19. 102 U.S. Department of Labor, Vocational Education Survey of Minneapolis, 20.

149 was clearly pervasive, a sentiment that bears similarity to those expressed in various yearbooks and the Teachers’ Club survey as it discussed its vital role in Americanization and citizen development. Although a national publication, local vocational education advocates’ beliefs that schools would act as critical civic institutions and imbue pupils with a sense of civic purpose and pride still appeared in the NSPIE survey.

Like the Teachers’ Club survey, the bulletin consistently linked civic identity and education. Vocational training would, ideally, equip individuals with a skillset that enabled them to command high wages. Until vocational options were provided for all students and for adults wishing to learn trades, the city could not achieve the model metropolis vision set out by boosters and civic leaders. The bulletin claimed:

When the pathways for merit are wide open for all, the city of Minneapolis will profit a hundredfold from its most precious asset of human resources and democracy will find not only its best expression but its fullest fruition. Not until a system of vocational education has given the mechanic and the artisan, the designer and the decorator, a chance, through training, to develop their peculiar interests and abilities, can it be said that the city has opened for them a clear pathway for merit.103

The statement suggested that one of the main purposes of education was to help individuals achieve self-realization through their skills and, eventually, their occupations.

This, of course, could be a “dangerous” sentiment as far as organizations such as the CA and NAM were concerned; if workers identified with one another along the lines of the same trade, similar skill levels, or even simply being wage-earners there was a greater possibility for labor organization. However, the placement of the city and civic interests in this statement is critical for understanding open-shop advocates’ motivations for

103 U.S. Department of Labor, Vocational Education Survey of Minneapolis, 25.

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supporting vocational education in Minneapolis. First, it invoked key concepts of hard

work and equal opportunity that were foundational to American identity, which appeared

in other sources such as the yearbooks at the same time. While the structure of these two

sentences emphasized the role of education in achieving the “fullest fruition” of

democracy, it was not the work of individuals learning skills or even the schools

themselves that enabled this to occur. Rather, the city was the central actor that enabled

motivated individuals to seek their self-fulfillment through education: “the city has

opened for them a clear pathway for merit.” So, while there were many participants in the

movement to get elements of vocational education included in public schools, the city

was still presented as a precious asset, which would benefit the greatest from each citizen

playing his or her part whether it be student, day laborer, skilled laborer, white-collar worker, or capitalist.

The bulletin emphasized the practical benefits of vocational education, though its tone strongly reflected employer expectations. It stated that the only way to quell

“industrial and social unrest” was to address “a demand for a more practical question that shall furnish the opportunity for creative expression”; education, the bulletin claimed, would “save the worker from the narrowing influence of specialized tasks, fit him into progress in industry, and enable him to rise to the ranks of leadership and responsibility.”104 This language situates vocational education as a mechanism both for

students to learn how to operate in new industrial contexts and for employers to develop a

largely uncritical workforce. It also placed vocational courses as a road to some level of

upward mobility. Educators, working in civic institutions, would thus become stewards

104 U.S. Department of Labor, Vocational Education Survey of Minneapolis, 20.

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for students, teaching them occupational skills while also instilling in them a sense of

civic (in addition to national) spirit. It hearkened to the Teachers’ Club survey’s contention that vocation was an all-determining factor in a person’s life.

As the vocational education movement gained more support nationally,

Minneapolis high schools began adopting the curriculum. The labor bulletin noted that all five Minneapolis high schools had some manual courses, but more specific vocational training was required if there were to be a satisfactory pool of skilled laborers to facilitate industrial growth. The bulletin framed Central High School’s adoption of its vocational curriculum as a benefit for those who wanted training but who found union apprenticeship too long a process. It claimed that boys seeking to learn a trade believed that high school was not desirable because when they graduated they “would be approaching the age of 20 and facing four years of apprenticeship at low pay.”105 This

was a clear deprecation of the union apprenticeship system and promoted the inclusion of

vocational training in public schools and private institutions as the way to keep boys in school longer. Further, it was a means to prevent them from entering the union apprenticeship programs while getting them into the workforce faster, a concern shared with the CA and NAM.

The bulletin did not, as the Teachers’ Club report had, include direct quotes from former students giving reasons why they left school. In that document, students had certainly expressed frustration with the length of time high school added to their education. The extra years had to be followed up by more schooling in business college

or university, but students did not often speak of apprenticeship issues as much as they

105 U.S. Department of Labor, Vocational Education Survey of Minneapolis, 49.

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cited the impracticality of courses in relation to their long-term plans. The push to

connect student frustration over extended schooling to a frustration over apprenticeship programs suggested an anti-organized labor bias in the construction of the NSPIE survey.

Vocational education continued to be presented as both a tool for employers to exercise control over the lives of their workers and as an opportunity for working-class students to

acquire skills and have more say in their working futures.

Although the labor bulletin and most of the vocational curriculum focused on

boys’ education, there were also plans to train girls for work. For many girls who were

wanting to work outside their homes and for those who left farms for the city in search of

work, it was difficult to access training.106 The same year the Dunwoody Institute was

bequeathed, a Girls’ Vocational High School opened in Minneapolis. Unlike the

Mechanic Arts High School in St. Paul which limited girls’ education to art training,

Minneapolis's Girls’ Vocational school taught a variety of skills to its pupils.107 In its first

year, there were 246 girls enrolled in four subject areas: dressmaking, millinery,

commercial and salesmanship, home making and junior nursing, and catering and

nursing.108 The majority of enrollees were in the commercial and salesmanship courses, reflecting Rebecca C.’s desires and showing the great interest among many young women to be engaged in out-of-house work in their adult years. The school’s stated objective was “to give practical training, to prepare for employment, and to extend the general education for girls” who could not or would not attend any of the high school

106 Joan M. Jensen, Calling This Place Home: Women on the Wisconsin Frontier, 1850-1925 (St. Paul: Minnesota Historical Society Press, 2006), 416-418. 107 Jensen, Calling this Place Home, 418. 108 U.S. Department of Labor, Vocational Education Survey of Minneapolis, 61.

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programs already in existence.109 The vocational school’s existence was a recognition

that women workers were an integral part of the city’s industrial future, but it was clear

that courses related to homemaking and household management were still offered

because women were not expected to work outside their homes for the rest of their lives.

The math curriculum at the Girls’ Vocational High School highlights the

balancing act between training women capable of working outside the home but

maintaining the expectation that they would eventually retire to domestic life.110 In a

short book titled Household Arithmetic, Katharine F. Ball of the University of Minnesota

and Miriam E. West of the Girls’ Vocational High School (both of whom held Master’s

degrees) reported on the math curriculum at the high school.111 The book had been in use

in Minneapolis for five years, and was intended to help girls develop arithmetic skills and

better apply them “to the problems of cooking, sewing and home management.”112 The contents page further reveals further the domestically-oriented nature of this arithmetic program aimed at girls, including information on “home dressmaking,” “economy in shopping,” and “measuring food materials.”113 Example problems focused on using math

to stretch the family budget by doing things like cost/benefit analysis of whether it was

worthwhile to substitute peanuts for steak as a protein source.114 Other sections focused

on varieties of fabrics, formulas for ensuring one did not purchase too much material for

109 U.S. Department of Labor, Vocational Education Survey of Minneapolis, 61. 110 For more on the assumption that women, once married, would only work in times of economic necessity and the ways that affected girls’ education, see: Jane Bernard Powers, The “Girl Question” in Education: Vocational Education for Young Women in the Progressive Era (London: Falmer, 1992). 111 Katharine F. Ball and Miriam E. West, Benjamin R. Andrews ed., Household Arithmetic (Philadelphia: J.B. Lippincott Company, 1920). 112 Ball and West, Household Arithmetic, 7. 113 Ball and West, Household Arithmetic, 9. 114 Ball and West, Household Arithmetic, 160.

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a project, and studying seasonal sales patterns to assess when discounts might be applied

so as to stretch a dollar further.115

A course in domestic science aimed at the elementary grades similarly reinforced the notion that while developing girls’ ability to financially plan was important, it would be most useful if tied to the home economy. Lilla Frich, a supervisor for domestic science and a chair in the Minneapolis public school system, published a series of cards that included daily menus broken down by caloric and protein value given by each food item, then further categorized by the cost per item. The menus were based on a “family equivalent to 4 men at moderate muscular work,” so girls either had to adjust their intake to fit into this budget or use their domestic arithmetic training to calculate how much extra each female mouth cost to feed.116 Both menus averaged about 14,000 calories for

the four men, with a cost of around $1 for each daily menu.117 Frich’s menus were prepared using information supplied by the Department of Agriculture, a partner in the

NSPIE endeavor to establish practical curriculum in schools. These domestic science menu cards and the math curriculum demonstrate the limits of girls’ vocational schooling at this time. Although they could acquire skills, their course options were limited and often tailored to domestic over commercial conditions. After World War I, the push for expanded vocational education would help in providing a broader range of courses to female students but it would be many decades before women had equal access to trades courses.

115 Ball and West, Household Arithmetic, 93. 116 Lilla Frich, “Elementary Course in Domestic Science,” Cards 64B and 65B, 1908. Hennepin County History Archives. 117 Frich, “Elementary Course in Domestic Science,” Cards 64B and 65B.

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As information from specific cities began filtering upward, the vocational

education movement gained significant traction nationally. Shortly after his election,

Woodrow Wilson ordered an investigation into the status of trades education in the

country. In 1914, the Smith-Lever Act passed, providing the funds and system to deliver

agriculturally-based extension services to land-grant institutions.118 Three years later,

Congress passed the Smith-Hughes Act that created a separate governing board for

vocational schools and gave some federal money to vocational education curricula in

certain industries. Among its stipulations was that a school would only receive funding if

it featured courses that complemented local economic needs.119 While it is unclear

whether the bulletin was part of Wilson’s research mandate, it is clear that it was made

into a national case study and its findings supported this mandate directly.120 The local

work of social workers, labor unions, and capitalists was again tied into a national

discussion on the purpose of education in the United States. Although these three groups maintained their own motivations for supporting the development and implementation of vocational education, they shared the same overall goals of making it easier for students to learn trade skills in order to join the growing industrial economy.121 Both the local and

national vocational surveys highlighted the relationship between schools as civic

institutions and abstract conceptions of citizenship and civic duty. Proponents contended

that vocational education was the best means by which the country could cultivate a large

productive class of citizens. The Teachers’ Club survey inserted the voices of the study’s

118 Smith-Lever Act, 63rd United States Congress, Public law 63-95, 1914. 119 Smith-Hughes Act, 66th United States Congress, Public Law 64-347, 1917. 120 Graves, Girl’s Schooling During the Progressive Era, 245. 121 John Hillison, “The Coalition that Supported the Smith-Hughes Act: or a Case for Strange Bedfellows,” Journal of Vocational and Technical Education, 11:2 (Spring 1995): 4-11.

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subjects but the moral questions it raised were not included in the national, NSPIE-

collated bulletin. Lost in this omission were the voices of those who had few outlets for

their fears and frustrations, or for their hopes for positive change.

The Social Center Movement

Progressive-era school reform went beyond curriculum. The buildings, too, came

under scrutiny. Reformers argued that schools needed to be more than daytime education

venues for children; if they were truly civic institutions they needed to minister to the

entire community. The “social center” movement, which experienced a foundational

moment in Minneapolis at the 1902 National Council of Education conference, argued

that schools should become venues for developing social citizenship. Many of the issues

that social center proponents touched on were shared with the curriculum reform

movement already discussed in this chapter, specifically those of guided assimilation and

democratization of opportunity. The school reform movement of the Progressive era thus

sought to use both programming and environment to condition citizens. In Minneapolis,

schools were seen as critical venues for shaping newcomers (both foreign- and American-

born) according to the model metropolis vision. Schools were to be well-appointed

spaces with access to the three essential environmental elements – light, air, and water – that were deemed crucial for the development of good, moral citizens.

Education reform advocate John Dewey defined the social center movement while speaking in Minneapolis. His address, titled “The School as Social Center,” was delivered to the National Council of Education and subsequently published in a national

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education journal.122 In it, Dewey made three assertions: social institutions such as

churches and families were failing and social citizenship was suffering as a result;

schools used only for daytime education of children were underperforming in their roles

as civic institutions; schools used as social centers could foster community and tolerance

of differences in languages and customs. Too much urban discord was linked to problems

that, according to Dewey, could not be addressed by political means, “only by the promotion of common sympathies and a common understanding.”123 He further

contended that communities held a responsibility for inhabitants’ continued social

education. Left on their own, people could not be expected to engage in lifelong learning,

which put the responsibility on the community to “provid[e], through the school as a

center, a continuous education for all classes of whatever age.”124 In doing so, schools would become spaces of assimilation. Dewey made it clear that the assimilation taking place in these social centers would not be an extraction of people’s ethnic customs entirely. Rather, he pointed to experiences in New York and Chicago where “children are too rapidly…denationalized. They lose the positive and conservative value of their own native traditions…They do not get complete initiation into the customs of their new country, and so are frequently left floating and unstable between the two.”125

These remarks were echoed in the Teachers’ Club survey over a decade later as

American-born children of two foreign-born parents left school “of their own sweet will.”

Because of uncertainty over home environments, the schools-as-social-centers movement

advocated that the spaces be dedicated to habituating both children and adults to

122 John Dewey, “The School as Social Center,” The Elementary Teacher 3:2 (October, 1902): 73-86. 123 Dewey, “The School as Social Center,” 75. 124 Dewey, “The School as Social Center,” 83. 125 Dewey, “The School as Social Center,” 78.

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American culture. Dewey believed that social centers could help heterogeneous

communities find commonalities. They would, thus, be physical reminders that “the

community owes to each one of its members the fullest opportunity for development.”126

As schools became civic institutions and began to be used as social centers, it was

imperative that their new functions be “no longer viewed as a matter of charity, but as a

matter of justice – nay, even of something higher and better than justice – a necessary phase of developing and growing life.”127 In other words, the services offered by school

buildings were fundamental to civic development. Vocational education would be

integral for developing good, productive citizen-workers; schools as social centers were just as essential for providing an opportunity to affect adults.

In Minneapolis, the school-as-social-center movement was connected more closely to the cause of social engineering than to providing a space in which immigrants debated political issues. Five years after Dewey’s speech in Minneapolis, the city of

Rochester, New York was the first to make its public schools available for community use in the evenings.128 The movement proved popular, with seventeen social centers in

schools in the city holding debates on civic concepts like the “commission form of city

government.”129 However, as increasing numbers of immigrants began to use the space

and as programming came from the community rather than from a civic agency or reform

group, the Rochester social centers were charged with having “anarchist ties” and were

forced to close in 1911.130 Although this was the end in Rochester, it was not the end of

126 Dewey, “The School as Social Center,” 86. 127 Dewey, “The School as Social Center,” 86. 128 Karen Pastorello, The Progressives: Activism and Reform in American Society, 1893-1917 (Malden, MA: Wiley Blackwell, 2014), 136. 129 Pastorello, The Progressives, 137. 130 Pastorello, The Progressives, 137.

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the movement. That same year, Wisconsin legislated in favor of using public schools as

social centers, with the caveat that meetings were used by “‘nonpartisan, nonsectarian,

and nonexclusive associations of citizens that shall have use of schoolhouses free of

charge.’”131 In other words, they could not be used as spaces for promoting anything that

might challenge the city stewards’ hegemony. In their second iteration of nonpartisan

meeting spaces for community gatherings, schools as social spaces were no longer

following Dewey’s philosophy. Instead, they more closely followed the social efficiency

ideologies of men like national education reformer David Snedden, as they were

conceptualized as a “master agency for adjustment,” that were “to carefully cultivate

behavior patterns that would result in ‘efficient personal growth, individual efficiency,

and ultimate social usefulness.’”132 Eschewing community-driven programming as seen

in Rochester, social centers that were primarily programmed by civic leaders and social

reformers became “an organizational response to the threat of instability, uncontrolled

change, and the loss of traditional values faced by an industrial society. Its aim was collective stability.”133 With school curricula being altered to inculcate particular values

in students during the day, schools’ evening programming as well as environment

became entwined with city- and citizen-making.

In 1913, the American Academy of Medicine met in Minneapolis, and the issue of school environments as influencing factors in children’s lives was raised. Addresses from the convention were printed and distributed nationally. Included in the document was a

131 Stevens, “Social Centers, Politics, and Social Efficiency in the Progressive Era,” 16. 132 Stevens, Jr., “Social Centers, Politics, and Social Efficiency in the Progressive Era,” 19-20. Stevens quoted David Snedden, Sociological Determination of Objectives in Education (Philadelphia: J.B. Lippincott Company, 1921): 26-46. 133 Stevens, Jr., “Social Centers, Politics, and Social Efficiency in the Progressive Era,” 29.

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speech titled “The Schoolhouse as a Crime Contributor” by Edward C. Elliott, a professor

of education at the University of Wisconsin-Madison.134 Elliott argued that schools, including “building, grounds, and equipment,” should adopt theories from medicine to improve school spaces and so to improve and uplift the buildings’ inhabitants.135 The late- nineteenth century saw a “reconception of the moral and spatial organization of urban society,” and schools were not exempted from this process.136 National rhetoric of

school reform had focused mostly on curriculum reform, but Elliott argued that the

environment of schools were as critical – if not perhaps more so – than the content being

delivered therein. It was imperative, he stated, that:

children in school be provided, as a guarantee of both private and public morality, with an environment of fresh, temperate, dustless air; an environment outwardly clean, spaced with sunlight, and germless; an environment equipped in such a way as to make possible right physical postures and behavior. Our social creed binds us to the belief in the relationship of muscles and morals, of contagion and crime…The successful performance of this task…depends upon an entirely new conception of the school as an organized thing of brick, stone, mortar, lumber, and land…This new conception recognizes and emphasizes the influence of the external physical environment of the school as a neglected factor in the making of the moral child and of the social citizen.137

The reconceptualization of schools as civic spaces and social centers meant that their

physical attributes became more than just rooms in which people received programming

and curriculum. They would become a sort of display model of a proper environment.

134 Edward C. Elliott, “The Schoolhouse as a Crime Contributor,” Physical Bases of Crime: A Symposium (XXXVIII Annual Meeting of the American Academy of Medicine, Minneapolis 14 June 1913 (Easton, PA: American Academy of Medicine Press, 1914). 135 Elliott, “The Schoolhouse as a Crime Contributor,” 15. 136 Paula Lupkin, Manhood Factories: YMCA Architecture and the Making of Modern Urban Culture. (Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press, 2010), xx. 137 Elliott, “The Schoolhouse as a Crime Contributor,” 15.

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Many reformers believed that simply by inhabiting such a space, people could experience uplift while being shown the “proper” form of such an environment. In Minneapolis, the belief in schooling as a tool for social engineering was apparent in the 1913 Teachers’

Club survey. The move to improve schools and grounds as idealized venues also found significant support.

Elliott was not alone in his call for improvement of school space. Minneapolis architect E.B. Stebbins, chief designer for the Board of Education, changed his approach to school designs just after the turn of the twentieth century to reflect the changing uses of school buildings. Whereas his early designs “were based on a main classroom block with short wings, and prominent hip or gable roofs decorated with heavy cornices and cupolas” he began to favor simplified Classical Revival and Collegiate Gothic modes” by

1910.138 He joined architects across the country who, influenced by social reformers and paid by new state and federal initiatives to build more schools, pared down ornament in favor of function. The State Board of Health regulated school buildings in the early twentieth century, and by the time Stebbins was changing his design approach, the Board had instituted “requirements for minimum square footage, ventilation, heating, and light.”139 These regulations “reflected the pressure of surging enrollments” due to the state’s raising of the compulsory attendance age to 16 in 1902 as well as “rapidly changing educational programs encompassing academic and vocational subjects…and expanded community use of the facilities.”140

138 Zellie, “Minneapolis Public Schools Historic Context Survey,” 12. 139 Zellie, “Minneapolis Public Schools Historical Context Survey,” 14. 140 Zellie, “Minneapolis Public Schools Historical Context Survey,” 2, 13.

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As the quality and quantity of affordable housing in the city continued to

decrease, schools were situated as secondary domestic spaces for children. Some schools

had “showers and tub baths installed…[that] served those without bathing facilities at

home.”141 The emphasis on light, air, and water in schools reflected reformers’ desires

for schools to be ideal environments that would improve the health and outlook of

inhabitants, whether pupils or adults enjoying night programming. In other words, local

reformers’ calls for curriculum change and use of school buildings and grounds resulted

in formal changes.

Civic leaders and social reformers alike placed schools and schooling at the center

of Minneapolis's ascendance toward modernity. Schools were touted as a cornerstone for

the city’s “emphasis on modern city-planning principles.”142 In 1915, the MCCA’s

Committee on Municipal Research carried out a study on the costs of schools to the city

in the coming years. Published in 1917, the study explained how taxpayer money would

be used in school development and maintenance over the next five years.143 The efforts to

justify spending tax money on school and grounds development indicated the importance

of schools’ physical form in the process of city-making in Minneapolis. While there were some costs that the committee recommended putting off until more necessary developments were pursued, such as a new stadium at West High School that would cost

$75,000, much of the document was dedicated to supporting public spending on adding

141 Zeillie, “The Minneapolis Public Schools Historical Context Survey,” 15. 142 Zeillie, “The Minneapolis Public Schools Historical Context Survey,” 16. 143 Minneapolis Civic and Commerce Association Committee on Municipal Research, Report on Analysis of Five Year School Building Program: Proposed Two and Three Year School Building Programs. (Minneapolis, 1917).

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grounds to school buildings.144 Over $630,000 was dedicated to either enlarging or

developing playgrounds for schools that were already built.145 The study’s authors – echoing the call often made by the city’s Park Board – argued that these land extensions should be made as quickly as possible in order to secure land at low cost. It is noteworthy that the MCCA’s committee did not see playgrounds as an accessory for schools. In its explanation for delaying the construction of West’s stadium, the committee wrote that “it seems wise for the Board of Education to care for pressing educational needs before meeting recreational needs.”146 In many ways, the concept that schools and their grounds were as crucial to civic development as was reforming the curriculum demonstrated the city’s dedication to literally building itself as a model metropolis. From its early years, when civic leaders determined not to make the settlement a company town to the period of growth around the turn of the twentieth century, the city’s commitment to making a model metropolis linked social and physical development. Schools – as civic institutions, as social centers, as learning grounds – provided ample opportunities for such stewardship.

Support for vocational curriculum was strong in Minneapolis, in part because it dovetailed with broader civic stewardship and spirit schemes. By establishing schools as

civic institutions and school officials, following prescribed curricula, as guides for

children’s development, civic leaders and social reformers incorporated schools and

schooling into their plan to make Minneapolis a city unencumbered by the poverty, labor

144 Minneapolis Civic and Commerce Association Committee on Municipal Research, Report on Analysis of Five Year School Building Program, 17. 145 Minneapolis Civic and Commerce Association Committee on Municipal Research, Report on Analysis of Five Year School Building Program, 10, 20. 146 Minneapolis Civic and Commerce Association Committee on Municipal Research, Report on Analysis of Five Year School Building Program, 17.

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strife, and un-assimilated population of other urban centers. For the city’s employers, the vocational school movement represented an opportunity to buttress the initiative to instill

the open shop and remove power from laborers. For the city’s social reformers,

vocational education coupled with the move to make schools social centers within

neighborhoods was both a way to empower students and to act as guardians over their

public development. Civic leaders and social reformers did not stop their efforts to

elevate their city’s occupants at the doors to people’s homes, however. Using similar

rhetoric of citizen development, and assimilation, and as well as securing control of the

local economy, social reformers and civic leaders turned their efforts toward domestic

space as they sought to regulate and alter the city’s housing.

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Chapter Four: A “City of Homes”

A new spirit is developing in industry, a spirit born of the realization that all industry suffers through the misfortune of any factor. The employer fails to prosper as his men fail to prosper. Bad housing for the workmen means bad business for the one who hires. In the light of this spirit, the primary question is not ‘What can the tenant afford?’ it is ‘What can Minneapolis afford?’ If we are to develop in Minneapolis the highest type of civilization, if industry is to thrive permanently, if art and music are to serve their higher purposes, we must first recognize as an essential prerequisite to the realization of these high ideals, the providing of a home life for every family, rich or poor, that shall insure to them their inalienable rights to sanitation, safety, ventilation, privacy, sunlight, space and beauty.1

So concluded a report on housing problems in Minneapolis from 1914. The 110- page document emphasized the role of housing as the crux of a healthful, productive city and urged immediate action – preferably in the form of legislation – in order to save

Minneapolis from itself. The report reflected broader national and international trends in progressive reformers’ messages and means. Reformers in Europe and in older American cities had been grappling with the effects of industrialization and urbanization well before

Minneapolitans. Industrialization’s expansion in the nineteenth century changed the nature of settlements from resource-dependent company towns and small settlements that were the service centers for otherwise isolated agrarians to cities with multiple industries, a heterogeneous population, and increasingly complex social, economic, and aesthetic relationships. By the end of the nineteenth century, many Americans were still struggling to make sense out of the inchoate state of cities. With the seemingly unstoppable growth

1 Minneapolis Civic and Commerce Association Housing Committee, The Housing Problem in Minneapolis, a Preliminary Investigation made for the Committee on Housing of the Minneapolis Civic and Commercial Association (Minneapolis, 1915[?]) Minnesota Historical Society Archives HD7304.M5 A4, 109. In the original, this entire section is in bold.

166 of industrialization, what would happen to the American yeoman dream of being a frontier-hewn, independent, self-sufficient, land-owning individual?2 Cities, with cramped conditions, few opportunities to own land or the means of production, and little access to nature, seemed antithetical to that early American model character.

Minneapolis’s civic leaders, boosters, and social reformers attempted to update the ideal American identity by fashioning a city that would combine elements of nature, industrialism, and culture to inspire community development and evade the decrepit conditions of older cities. From reformers in other cities, Minneapolis civic leaders and social reformers adopted the method of studying, documenting, and publicly presenting conditions to lay groundwork for reform. However, the usefulness of legislation being the end goal would lead to a rift between more conservative civic leaders and the social reformers, whose programs continued to grow well after legislation efforts to regulate health and housing standards were passed. To do this, they turned once again to space and design, targeting housing as the cornerstone of the urban environment. Social reformers and civic leaders partnered to address the housing situation, borrowing from national and international reformers to craft a Minneapolis-specific reform plan. Housing was positioned as the foundation for building a model metropolis. On their exterior, the

2 Early American identity was tied to the presence of the frontier (an ambiguous zone that moved West along with settlers), owning and working land, and an individualist ethos. Thomas Jefferson’s early writings on the yeoman ideal elucidated these concepts and, on occasion, condemned cities for being crowded and polluted. During his travels of early America, Alexis de Tocqueville, too, talked about individualism as a defining American trait. In 1890, the frontier was declared gone when, according to federal census returns, it was found that there was no longer an unbroken line of “uninhabited territory” in the United States. Just after the turn of the twentieth century, Frederick Jackson Turner wrote on the role of the frontier in making and remaking American identity. See: Thomas Jefferson letter to Benjamin Rush, 23 September 1800. http://www.let.rug.nl/usa/presidents/thomas-jefferson/letters-of-thomas- jefferson/jefl134.php (Accessed May 17, 2014); Alexis de Tocqueville, Democracy in America (New York: Penguin Putnam, 2004); and Frederick Jackson Turner, "The Significance of the Frontier in American History," in Martin Ridge, ed., History, Frontier, and Section: Three Essays by Frederick Jackson Turner (Albuquerque: University of New Mexico Press, 1993), 62-71. 167

state of homes, tenements, or apartment buildings was believed to exude the quality of a

city’s character; on the interior, the conditions – social and physical – were believed to both manage and make citizens’ characters.

American progressives were not acting in a vacuum during this time. Europeans had pioneered many of the reform policies that would, eventually, make their way to the

U.S. Daniel Rodgers asserted that previous Gilded-Age and Progressive-Era scholars had been too “geocentric,” arguing that American progressives were part of a transatlantic reaction to poor city conditions. “For a moment,” Rodgers states, “London’s East End and New York City’s Lower East Side; the ‘black country’ of Pittsburgh, Essen, and

Birmingham; and university and chancery discussions in Paris, Washington, London, and

Berlin formed a world of common referents.” 3 Atlantic Crossings demonstrated the

importance of the transatlantic exchange of ideas and breaking down the myopic focus

some historians had in previous studies. However, it is essential that scholars assess the

ways in which these international ideas were translated and applied in different contexts.

Peter Hall noted that while both Europeans and Americans turned to planning to address

urban problems, in the former case there was “a strong working-class consciousness

[that] allied with an interventionist bureaucracy,” whereas the approach used in the

United States “was something odd and distinctly American: a voluntary movement

dedicated to saving the immigrant from his (and, especially, her) own errors and

excesses, socializing him into American folkways and adjusting him to city life.”4 During the Progressive era, urban reformers in cities throughout the United States turned to

3 Daniel T. Rodgers, Atlantic Crossings: Social Politics in a Progressive Age (Cambridge: Harvard College Press, 1998), 3. 4 Peter Hall, Cities of Tomorrow: An Intellectual History of Urban Planning and Design since 1880 4th ed. (Oxford: Wiley Blackwell, 2014), 42. 168

planning and environmental interventions to re-make cities and improve conditions for

inhabitants.

In their efforts to construct a social city, Minneapolis reformers, like their

counterparts elsewhere, turned to regulation of the most basic unit of urban life: homes.

Peter Marcuse argued that housing was often at the center of reformers’ rhetoric, but it

would eventually be tied into larger concerns – particularly assimilation and social

uplift.5 This was best seen in American reformers’ late-nineteenth century efforts to

address slums and tenements by publicizing the ways that such environments adversely

affected their inhabitants. Vociferous reformers helped to raise public consciousness

about slum conditions but awareness alone could not bring about changes needed to

ameliorate them. Lawrence Vale noted that tenement reform emerged from three inter-

related fears:

First, that tenement conditions promoted the spread of epidemic disease that could engulf a non-tenement population; second, that tenement life nurtured the ‘microbe of criminality’ that could escape and threaten the broader economic vitality of the city; and third, that tenement residence fostered immoral behaviors. These people posed a triple threat: a social problem with corporal, economic, and moral dimensions.6

From Herbert Ames’ 1897 “The City Below the Hill” in Montreal to Jane Addams’ work

in and writings from Hull House in Chicago, social reformers frequently pointed to

5 Peter Marcuse, “Housing Policy and City Planning: The Puzzling Split in the United States, 1893-1931,” in Shaping an Urban World, Gerald E. Cherry, ed. (London: Mansell, 1980): 23-58. 6 Lawrence J. Vale, From the Puritans to the Projects: Public Housing and Public Neighbors (Washington, DC: Howard University Press, 2000), 56.

169 tenements – and housing generally – as venues in desperate need of reform in order to improve social conditions and develop better cities.7

Settlement houses were situated in working-class neighborhoods and provided services such as daycare for working mothers and education opportunities for area residents. Middle-class women “lived (settled) in the house for months or sometimes years,” and few residents were as famous as Addams of Chicago’s Hull House.8 She believed that residing in the settlement house “provided women of the privileged classes with a steadying sense of realism and sense of purpose”; settlement work has been referred to as a major foundation for women’s increasing political role during the

Progressive era.9 Many reformers cited the growth of slums and showed the connections between their rapidly deteriorating environmental conditions and social problems in the same area. While the words found prominent outlets and helped advance housing as a core issue for progressive reformers, in most cities people living outside of slums could avoid the areas and dismiss what they had read. A Danish immigrant working in the

Lower East Side would help bring the slum to the nation’s door.

Jacob Riis was a journalist and an early muckraker working in late-nineteenth century Manhattan. He famously used photographs to present the deplorable conditions in which Lower East Siders (mostly women and children) found themselves. Through articles in national magazines and his foundational work, How the Other Half Lives, Riis

7 Herbert Brown Ames, “The City Below the Hill” A Sociological Study of a Portion of the City of Montreal, Canada (Montreal: The Bishop Engraving and Printing Company, 1897); Jane Addams, Twenty Years at Hull-House (Chicago: The Phillips Publishing Company, 1910). 8 Spain, How Women Saved the City, 9. 9 Barbara Sicherman, “Working it Out: Gender, Profession, and Reform in the Career of Alice Hamilton,” in Noralee Frankel and Nancy S. Dye, eds., Gender, Class, Race and Reform in the Progressive Era (Lexington: The University Press of Kentucky), 129.

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presented an unfiltered look into Lower East Side life, with images that varied from

children with dirt-smudged faces playing in polluted, unpaved streets to families of seven

crammed into a tenement room that also served as their workplace.10 By including

photographs, Riis was able to make a more significant impact than previous writers. The

photos made it difficult for those living outside of slums to deny that such conditions

existed or to ignore their impacts on people’s lives. Riis helped to engender compassion

for the people subjected to the conditions of tenements. Taken together, Ames’, Addams’,

and Riis’s works compelled readers to have sympathy for those living in squalor. This

line of thinking merged with compassionate social Darwinism and planning’s social city

turn to set the foundation for social reformers’ use of environmental interventions in their programs.

New York reformer and planner Lawrence Veiller articulated this foundation in his works on tenement regulation. “No housing evils are necessary,” he wrote, “none need be tolerated. Where they exist they are always a reflection upon the intelligence, rightmindedness [sic] and moral tone of the community.”11 His work was part of the

broader trajectory of progressive reformers. The rise of professionals and “experts”

during this period helped to translate social problems into actionable items, a process that

helped reformers implement regulation and achieve legislative success.12 Veiller was a settlement worker who expanded that experience into a long civil service career. He began as “secretary and practical director of the Tenement House Committee of the New

10 Jacob Riis, How the Other Half Lives: Studies Among the Tenements of New York (New York: Charles Scribner’s Sons, 1890). A number of the photos, dating from the early-to-mid 1880s, were originally published as articles in Scribner’s Magazine. 11 Lawrence Veiller, Housing Reform: A Hand-Book for Practical Use in American Cities (New York: Charities Publication Committee, 1910), 12. 12 Robert Wiebe, The Search For Order 1877-1920 (New York: Hill and Wang, 1967). 171

York Charity Organization Society” at its founding in 1898, later becoming secretary of

the New York State Tenement House Commission of 1900 – the body responsible for

writing New York State Tenement Act of 1901 (the so-called “New Law”). He helped to

found the Tenement Department of New York City and was its First Deputy Tenement

Commissioner.13 He was the lead writer of the New Law, which required that sanitation

be built into the buildings by way of indoor toilets, updated ventilation systems, and an

open courtyard. The last requirement led to a formal change, which promoted the

development of so-called dumbbell tenements that had central courtyards and were typically six stories high. The courtyards were little more than empty corridors in the center of the building, taking up only a few square feet, incorporated to allow windows that accessed fresh air and natural light in interior units.

Veiller’s work was used by cities throughout the United States looking for basic

housing codes to be implemented in their locations. Frustrated by the wholesale adoption

of New York’s laws in different contexts, he composed a more generalized housing law.

The publication was necessary, according to Veiller, because “the usual procedure

heretofore has been to take the New York law as a base, comparing it in some instances

with similar laws of other cities, and then to make such changes as seem desirable.”14 He argued that “this method has not proved very satisfactory” because New York’s law had become too complicated due to frequent amendment.15 Further, and more importantly in

his view, the law itself was “by no means ideal” because it was made to address New

13 Veiller, Housing Reform, vii-viii. 14 A Model Tenement House Law, 3. 15 A Model Tenement House Law, 3.

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York’s very unique tenement conditions: “it is…framed to meet the peculiarly aggravated conditions which prevail there and which exist to the same degree in no other city.”16

Thus, A Model Tenement House Law was truly that – an ideal that other cities undergoing building regulation reform could apply to their construction with better results than simply applying New York’s laws in dissimilar contexts. Veiller penned other works to be used as reform manuals, including Housing Reform: A Hand-Book for

Practical Use in American Cities in 1910, a primer on means of agitating for and achieving reforms.17 These publications were essential in spreading “best practice” for housing regulations for both new construction and refurbishment of existing buildings.

Importantly, Veiller’s texts went beyond basic legal frameworks. He included fervent disceptations on public policy and the tendency to ignore the growth of slum conditions until they overwhelmed a city. One of his main arguments was that while the conditions of the Lower East Side might be peculiar to New York City, the development of slums and the social disruptions they brought could occur in any city. He linked a lack of community – a lack of civitas – to the broader development of slums:

The chief underlying factor which stands out in every community is that they are, in nearly every case, due to neglect and ignorance. Neglect on the part of the community, failure of its citizens to recognize evil tendencies as they develop; dangerous ignorance on the part of citizens and public officials of what is going on within the city’s gates – a feeling of safety and of confidence that all must be right because they see little that is wrong, that things cannot be bad as long as they are hidden; a false civic pride which believes that everything in one’s own city is the best, a dangerous sort of apathy content to leave things as they are, a laissez faire policy which brings forth fruit of unrighteousness.18

16 A Model Tenement House Law, 3-4. 17 Veiller, Housing Reform. 18 Veiller, Housing Reform, 4. 173

His work supported that of Riis, Addams, Ames, among others, and helped to mold progressive ideology and tactics nationwide. National works helped in both spurring and guiding reformers. Veiller’s writings clearly influenced Minneapolis housing reformers.

Not only did they adopt his language and most of his definitions as they described conditions in the housing problems report, they cited his Model Law directly.

National & International Social Reform as Expressed in Minneapolis

When civic leaders and social reformers began addressing housing concerns in

Minneapolis, there were many factors on their minds: processing immigration and migration, addressing racial and ethnic differences, and, a factor which mediated all others, class standards. Housing was far more than simple infrastructure for the city, it was crucial to demonstrating that Minneapolis had successfully avoided the pitfalls of older industrial cities and truly was a modern metropolis. Efforts to address housing problems underscore the centrality of the physical city’s role in social and economic developments. Clean, well-ordered single-family houses portrayed a prosperous, modern city. This projection complements the ideals laid out in booster literature as discussed in

Chapter One. Encouraging the proliferation of single-family housing was also a way to lower density and combat overcrowding, which was a chief social, economic, and health concern at the time. As the city’s economy and population grew, new urban migration patterns emerged which saw the wealthiest push further west, the middle class moved into the old neighborhoods the wealthy abandoned, while the working class moved into formerly middle-class homes and apartment buildings, which had been divided into smaller apartments. Neighborhoods, save for those in the furthest west sections of the

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city, became increasingly mixed in terms of income, so when housing sections

deteriorated it became an urgent issue for civic leaders and social reformers alike.

The same year the organization published a study on the city’s housing problems,

the Minneapolis Civic and Commercial Association (MCCA) Housing Committee also

printed a pamphlet titled Housing Laws: A Summary of the More Important Provisions in

City and State Codes.19 The MCCA sought to manage housing construction to mitigate

the social problems it believed interior and exterior flaws of poor housing caused. The

MCCA was a group of more than one thousand employers that became an activist

commerce association. Though it was not affiliated with city government, its various

committees often identified, studied, and recommended courses of action for particular

social and economic issues. Its housing committee was comprised entirely of men, many

of whom were involved in local industry. Reverend Marion D. Shutter, director for the

city-affiliated Associated Charities who had also served on a commission on vice in the

city, was also on the committee.20 In its housing laws pamphlet, the MCCA presented the ways that other cities regulated housing developments. Generally, the areas covered in the Housing Laws pamphlet mirrored the problems identified in their study of housing problems, which directly cited Veiller’s work. The pamphlet was likely a companion to the study; the dual publications speak to the common Progressive process that involved identifying, studying, and recommending legislation to address the root causes of social problems that plagued cities.

19 Minneapolis Civic and Commercial Association Housing Committee, Housing Laws: A Summary of the More Important Provisions in City and State Codes (Minneapolis: Minneapolis Civic and Commercial Association, 1914). Minneapolis Public Library 331.83C M66 20 MCCA Housing Committee, The Housing Problem in Minneapolis, 4. 175

Realizing that a city of homes would not come to be without some social

regulation, social reformers and civic leaders began compiling research on housing

conditions in order to create legislation that would set minimum regulations for housing

construction and maintenance. They would encourage the creation of apartment houses

rather than tenements, and ask that the highest standards be implemented in construction

of new buildings intended to house the wealthy, for in the course of urban migration these

were likely to become the homes of the upwardly-mobile working and middle classes. In

the process of researching housing conditions and advocating for legislation, they drew

from national social reform literature produced in New York City as well as that

produced by experts from Britain and Germany. It marked a point when local actors

engaged in the national and international reform movements and reflected the fluidity of

the progressive movement.

Due to the peculiarly nocuous conditions, photos and stories of the Lower East

Side tenements elicited a major response from the public both in and outside of New

York. Minneapolis, however, did not have such a mature slum that could be publicized

by reformers in order quickly to catalyze change in the city. Civic leaders and social

reformers in Minneapolis had to make the case that although a concentrated area of excessively bad urban conditions did not yet exist, slums remained a real (and likely) possibility in the near future.

Two reports, An Ideal Health Department and The Housing Problem in

Minneapolis, demonstrate the ways in which Minneapolitans both borrowed from national and international rhetoric and tailored it to the unique conditions found in the

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Mill City.21 One of the first collaborations between the MCCA and social reformers was

a study of the municipal health system and recommendations for improvement. The

MCCA commissioned two experts, Dr. Hermann M. Biggs, General Medical Officer in

New York City’s Health Department and Professor of Biology and Public Health at

CUNY, C.E.A. Winslow, to investigate the city and make recommendations.22 That the

report was conducted by outsiders helped keep booster language to a minimum. An Ideal

Health Department borrowed extensively from national health reform literature and

outlined the basic standards a city of Minneapolis’s class should have in place.

Housing sanitation was identified as a central concern in the health report.

Remediating dwellings, particularly lodging houses and tenements, was identified as

crucial to ensuring sanitary living. Whereas booster pamphlets lauded the existence of so

many single-family detached homes, the health report argued that many of them,

particularly in the Northeast, appeared to be “left over village conditions, small shacks

with no proper toilet facilities and untidy yards.”23 The neighborhood had settlements

that predated Minneapolis’s very existence. When the cities amalgamated, most of the

wealth had already hopped the river and the west side became the central commercial

district. This left most of the Northeast and its environs outside the main growth in

Minneapolis. The cheaply-constructed homes became a destination for late-coming immigrants, who were mostly eastern and southern Europeans. That the Mississippi divided the area from the rest of Minneapolis meant that the population there maintained

21 Minneapolis Civic and Commercial Association and the Woman’s Club of Minneapolis, An Ideal Health Department (Minneapolis, 1912), Minnesota Historical Society Archives RA92.M6 B44 1912; 21 MCCA Housing Committee, The Housing Problem in Minneapolis. 22 MCCA and the Woman’s Club of Minneapolis, An Ideal Health Department, 1. Winslow was also the “Curator of Public Health, American Museum of Natural History.” 23 MCCA and the Woman’s Club of Minneapolis, An Ideal Health Department. Bold in original. 177 some small degree of cultural separation as well. Northeast suffered decades of disinvestment conditions, and was thus called out as “left over village conditions” – a far cry from the metropolis vision boosters had in mind.

The health report linked dilapidation to the fact that some areas had lacked any physical improvements since early settlement. For Briggs and Winslow, Northeast’s problems did not stem from demographics but from a lack of a quality environment, which, ultimately, stemmed from a lack of infrastructure. This line of reasoning highlights the important role of space in reformers’ and civic leaders’ minds as they set out to improve their city. Physical conditions governed all other issues. Only by providing basic infrastructural minimums for health and housing standards could a quality urban environment be ensured. Beyond molding the populace, spatial quality – particularly in the realm of aesthetics – was essential for selling the city. Ultimately, “left over village conditions” were as injurious to civic pride and aesthetics as “no proper toilet facilities and untidy yards” were to the health and safety of those living there. Housing problems, long linked to populations with deficient characters, were instead attached to the physical condition of the buildings.

Focusing on the regulation of lodging houses and tenements, the health report emphasized the benefits of strict ordinances in providing healthier, cleaner dwelling spaces. The Health Department held regulatory power over lodging houses via ordinances which had “rather rigid standards” and were apparently met with fairly broad compliance in 1912.24 The thirty lodging houses licensed under the ordinance represented a small

24 Minneapolis Civic and Commerce Association An Ideal Health Department (Minneapolis Civic and Commerce Association and Women’s Club of Minneapolis, 1912) Minnesota Historical Society Archives RA92.M6 B44 1912. The lodging house ordinances were not written by the MCCA or social reformers specifically, and they were already in place before the An Ideal Health Department was published. 178 grouping of the city’s plentiful lodging houses, but they were under the supervision of the

Chief Sanitary Inspector and a plumbing inspector. Notably, there was not an inspector of welfare conditions, again singling out the physical over the social. The report linked the existence of decent domestic spaces in lodging houses to the ordinance, arguing that it led to increasing observance and improvement among existing lodging houses: “Evidence of recent compliance with the law were noted everywhere and although some of the houses are still not up to the standard, others are models.”25 Lodging was, according to

Veiller, one of the more serious housing evils. The “lodger evil,” as he called it:

prevails chiefly among the foreign elements of the population, more especially among the Italians and Poles, and in some cities, the Hungarians and other Slavic races…It is fraught with great danger to the social fabric of the country. It means the undermining of family life; often the breaking down of domestic standards. It frequently leads to the breaking up of homes and families, to the downfall and subsequent degraded career of young women, to grave immoralities – in a word, to the profanation of the home.26

The proliferation of lodgers in Minneapolis, as in other cities, was, in part, an economic strategy by working-class citizens looking to supplement home income. This was not always the case, however. The instances that were targets of the Health Department’s overview were those in which homes were turned into lodging houses by an absent landlord. In these situations, avarice often motivated landlords to fill dwellings far beyond sanitary capacity. By advocating their regulation rather than their abolition, the

Health Department acknowledged that lodging houses had their place in the city.

25 Minneapolis Civic and Commercial Association, An Ideal Health Department, 29. Bold in original. 26 Veiller, Housing Reform, 33. 179

Tenements were not under the Health Department’s purview. The Building

Department held authority over them, and the report was careful to note that “the

ordinance under which this department works is a rather lenient one.”27 This leniency allowed for buildings in which “sleeping rooms may open on a ‘well ventilated’ light shaft nine square feet in area or if provided with ‘proper ventilation’ into a corridor,” conditions which Veiller identified in New York City’s 1901 tenement law as being sanitarily insufficient.28 The “small shack” housing problem was portrayed as a vestige of

the old Minneapolis, soon to be destroyed if not formally then simply by age and time.

These small reminders of the “village conditions” which characterized late-nineteenth-

century Minneapolis were on their way out. However, buildings like tenements and

lodging houses completed during the growth period and new construction were another

concern altogether. These buildings would, after all, be physical markers of the city’s

future. If subpar buildings that did not comply with sanitation standards were allowed to

proliferate, the city would find itself dominated by tenements the very form of which

would encourage poor social, economic, and health conditions. In its discussion of

tenement conditions, the report stated:

The city housing problem is rapidly taking shape, however. In several different sections we found typical examples of bad tenement construction with dark interior rooms and dark, untidy cellar toilets. There is no reason why such conditions should exist in a city so sparsely settled as Minneapolis. Before they become general, a more rigid tenement ordinance should certainly be framed, which need work no hardship at the present time, but

27 MCCA and the Woman’s Club of Minneapolis, An Ideal Health Department, 29. 28 MCCA and the Woman’s Club of Minneapolis, An Ideal Health Department, 29.

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which will be more and more difficult to enforce if the evil is allowed to grow.29

To mitigate prevailing conditions while preventing the proliferation of subpar tenement buildings, the health report used housing to wrap the physical with the social and recommended legislation as the preferred solution to the health concerns that arose from the tenement housing problem. This process would appear again in a subsequent report on city-wide housing conditions.

Two years after An Ideal Health Department was published, the MCCA distributed another study with recommendations that incorporated national and international thinkers in its progressive text. The MCCA’s Housing Committee did the research and writing for The Housing Problem in Minneapolis, though it shared many sentiments with Briggs and Winslow’s 1912 work.30 In particular, there were calls for stricter housing legislation that would prevent the continued construction of poor quality tenements and apartments. The housing report presented extensive “scientific” research into the state of housing in the city. It presented housing as the crux of social, economic, and aesthetic issues, affecting everything from assimilation and labor placation to disease prevention and access to green space. Douglas A. Fiske, a prominent lawyer, dedicated booster of his adoptive city, and first president of the MCCA, penned the introduction.

He had drafted dozens of laws aimed at growing Minneapolis’s commercial sector, including formally extending the head of Mississippi navigation into the city and getting

29 MCCA and the Woman’s Club of Minneapolis, An Ideal Health Department, 29. 30 MCCA Housing Committee, The Housing Problem in Minneapolis.

181 the Federal Reserve Bank to establish its Ninth District headquarters there.31 His support for improving housing conditions was anchored in economic concerns, as evidenced by his preface which linked provision of decent housing as essential for Minneapolis to have a “contented” labor force and attract new industries.32 Fiske described his city as one with much to laud but with urban concerns on the horizon. “Conditions,” he wrote, “have begun to appear which seriously threaten the home life of thousands whose welfare and happiness are absolutely essential to the future progress of our city viewed from the industrial, moral, and every other standpoint.”33 His words demonstrated that the MCCA saw homes as an intersection of spatial, economic, social, and aesthetic issues; the very future of the city hinged on the availability and good condition of homes.

The housing report borrowed from national and international thinkers. Lawrence

Veiller was cited several times and President William Howard Taft was quoted discussing the importance of backyards. Taft had recently visited Minneapolis and was quoted as saying that yards not only “yield bountifully to the family table” but “there is a psychological influence which can hardly be estimated in dollars and cents…the man who spends his spare time…cultivating vegetables for his table and flowers for the pleasure of his family and himself is usually a contented man and a useful citizen.”34 In its unplanned state of development, though, Minneapolis would not be able to cultivate citizens through backyard gardens. Lot overcrowding, in which buildings were allowed to butt up against the sidewalk line, had been identified as a main evil in the report, because

31 Marion D. Shutter, ed., History of Minneapolis, Gateway to the Northwest Volume III (Chicago- Minneapolis: The SJ Clarke Publishing CO, 1923), 536. 32 MCCA Housing Committee, The Housing Problem in Minneapolis, 9. 33 MCCA Housing Committee, The Housing Problem in Minneapolis, 9. 34 President William Howard Taft, as quoted in Minneapolis Civic and Commerce Association, The Housing Problem in Minneapolis, 80. 182

it led to the depletion of green space in the city and people were no longer able to enjoy

green yards. Indeed, the very first section of the report was titled “Housing Problem the

Universal Result of Unguided City Growth,” which claimed that a lack of planning led to poor housing conditions, which led to broader social and economic problems.35

Dr. Werner Hegemann, a leading figure in architectural and planning thought in

Germany who was instrumental in bringing European practice to American shores in his

co-authored work The American Vitruvius: An Architects’ Handbook of Civic Art, had

stern comments for Minneapolis.36 The report noted that Hegemann was on a world-wide

trip “in search for the model city.” After his visit, he stated that due to lot overcrowding

and increasing congestion, he found “‘no ground for optimism concerning the future of

Minneapolis. So far as I can see your city will repeat the story thus far related by all great

American cities, being good at first, then bad, and finally, like Chicago and New

York.’”37 Hegemann’s words were, undoubtedly, a significant blow to the pride of

Minneapolitans who subscribed to the concept of a model metropolis. The great lengths

they had taken to make theirs a model city had, according to an expert in the field, failed

to set Minneapolis on a course different from other American cities. Stewardship efforts

and targeted interventions into the condition of housing in the city had not abolished

these conditions from Minneapolis, and the report urged legislation as the best means to

enact formal change. For Minneapolis's civic leaders, it was imperative that the city transcend these issues that plagued older urban centers.

35 MCCA Housing Committee, The Housing Problem in Minneapolis, 11. Bold in original. 36 Werner Hegemann and Elbert Peets, Alan J. Plattus, ed., The American Vitruvius: An Architects’ Handbook of Civic Art (New York: Princeton Architectural Press, 1922). 37 Dr. Werner Hegemann, as quoted in MCCA Housing Committee, The Housing Problem in Minneapolis, 78. 183

On its second-to-last page, the report referred to a “Mr. Henry Vivian of England”

who stated that “The modern city is not life-producing…But we believe it is possible to develop a modern city that shall be life-producing and give its people all that comes from association with one’s fellow.”38 To revive modern cities, Vivian advised maintaining

contact with fresh air and nature, a problem that affected so many towns in his native

country. The MCCA’s Housing Committee clearly paid attention to national and

international developments regarding housing reform, but that the group quoted Vivian

is, in itself, significant. At the time, Vivian was most famous for his role as chairman of

Ealing Tenants Ltd, which developed a co-partnership district that was inspired greatly

byEbenezer Howard’s garden cities principles. Brentham, located in the London suburb

of Ealing, was designed to promote co-operation among its worker tenants, who had their

own homes and gardens in which they could grow supplementary food. Unlike Howard’s

garden cities, though, Vivian’s works did not push a co-operative structure, but rather co-

production, which “gave primacy to the rights of wage earners…workers were assured

the right to become shareholders; to share in profits; and to participate in management

decisions.”39 The set up dovetailed with early Minneapolitans’ decision to develop the

city with a loose plan for physical growth and a network of stewardship to guide social

growth. Vivian’s support for single-family homes and the proliferation of yard space to be used as gardens or play areas by children clearly struck Minneapolis civic leaders.

Vivian’s belief that the concept of a modern city need not be one of industry and congestion helped underscore the form Minneapolis civic leaders wished for their city.

38 Henry Vivian, as quoted in Minneapolis Civic and Commercial Association, The Housing Problem in Minneapolis, 108. 39 Mark Pottle, “Vivian, Henry Harvey (1868-1930),” Oxford Dictionary of National Biography, http://dx.doi.org/10.1093/ref:odnb/72126 (accessed July 2014). 184

Borrowing from Taft, Hegemann, and Vivian, the MCCA Housing Committee placed its crusade in a broader reform context and presented the report’s readers with expert opinions on what would happen if changes were not brought in quickly.

Minneapolis was initially sold as unique due to “the generous proportions of its lot area, providing ample room for yard and garden with all the civilizing influence that these assure.”40 But the increase in tenements that took up the entire lot and the subdivision of apartments such that multiple families dwelled in facilities designed for single families deprived people of crucial “light, air and space.” The “foreign population” was singled out as being especially affected by the “evils of overcrowding.”41 Increasing the number of rooms in old homes or apartment buildings frequently created spaces with no access to natural light and without any ventilation. The same conditions were found built into new tenements, which tried to have as many rooms per floor as possible and, before the Housing Act placed regulations on light, air, and space per unit, this led to the proliferation of so-called “dark rooms,” which lacked ventilation or any source of natural light. Lighting was so bad in apartments that residents could not even read during the day.42 There were instances in which toilets were located in kitchenettes with no ventilation present.43 The absence of light, ventilation, and even basic sanitation was not just presented as less than satisfactory, it was deemed that “such arrangements…are indecent, if not actually immoral.”44 The emphasis that civic leaders and social reformers in Minneapolis placed on developing proper environments within which people could

40 Minneapolis Civic and Commerce Association, “Housing Problems in Minneapolis,” 98. 41 Minneapolis Civic and Commerce Association, “Housing Problems in Minneapolis,” 23. 42 MCCA Housing Committee, The Housing Problem in Minneapolis, 35. 43 MCCA Housing Committee, The Housing Problem in Minneapolis, 43. 44 MCCA Housing Committee, The Housing Problem in Minneapolis, 50. 185 dwell and prosper was apparent in the report’s documentation of such terrible conditions.

Beyond the economic and aesthetic arguments for constructing well-regulated homes, the report was firm in its insistence that the social cost of allowing such domestic environments to persist was too burdensome for the young city to bear. The “population in darkness” needed to be rescued from overcrowded tenements with unventilated spaces and dark rooms. Figure 4.1 shows the exterior conditions that led to the creation of dark rooms, in this particular it is that only the front rooms would have received natural light because there was an entire exterior wall without windows, and the walls between the buildings, clearly, had no exterior windows. Figure 4.2 shows floor plans for one of the tenements studied, the areas shaded in indicate the areas that received no natural light.

Ultimately, the report argued that these issues could only be remedied via legislation.

186

Figure 4.1: “Windowless wall. Apartments lighted only by windows in front and rear. Buildings contain 25 dark rooms.” Source: MCCA Housing Committee, The Housing Problem in Minneapolis, 34.

187

Figure 4.2: “Dark, unventilated rooms and toilets in buildings.” Source: MCCA Housing Committee, The Housing Problem in Minneapolis, 47.

188

Fighting lot overcrowding became increasingly difficult as apartment houses

became a popular choice with upwardly-mobile classes. Living in well-appointed city apartments had become fashionable for the upper-middle class; living in tenements was one of the few options open to the lower-working class. The market responded to these demands, and the city saw proliferation of more multi-dwelling unit construction, whether they had marble or wood plank floors. Among the worst offenders in the early twentieth century, according to the report, were combination toilet and bedrooms located in unventilated dark rooms (figure 4.3). “The tendency of modern housing is strongly toward the apartment house type,” the report claimed, adding that “as everyone knows, the name…is simply a polite term for tenement. Apartment houses are the tenements of the well-to-do.”45 While the authors of the housing report understood that life cycles

often included temporary dwelling in bachelor units or apartments, when the these

choices became more than a stopping point in the path of urban mobility they came under

scrutiny. For the most part, these apartments allowed precious little living space for their

inhabitants and, due to lot overcrowding, there was no outdoor space for families to

interact with urban green spaces (figure 4.4). But the report made a clear distinction:

cities themselves were not injurious to the characters of their inhabitants. Living in multi-

family dwellings, not living in cities, undercut American character: “What does it mean

to a child to grow up in an apartment house where his home is like everyone else’s home,

except for the number on the door? The long-boasted American democracy and

individuality may well take thought for its life among such conditions.”46 Uniformity of

45 MCCA Housing Committee, The Housing Problem in Minneapolis, 89. 46 MCCA Housing Committee, The Housing Problem in Minneapolis, 92. 189

housing was problematic enough, but the assault on character was compounded by a lack

of access to earth that living in multi-family dwellings: “To ask the question, is this movement away from the soil, away from lawns and gardens, a wholesome one, is to answer it.”47

Figure 4.3: “Combination toilet and bedroom entirely dark located in basement. Flashlight photograph. Bed blurred through nearness to camera.” Source: MCCA Housing Committee, The Housing Problem in Minneapolis, 31.

47 MCCA Housing Committee, The Housing Problem in Minneapolis, 92. 190

Figure 4.4: “Ten rooms depend entirely on this lot line court, three feet, eight inches wide, for light and air. Present ordinance permits such court to be only four feet wide for a four-story building.” Source: MCCA Housing Committee, The Housing Problem in Minneapolis, 39.

191

The report noted that tenements were not always built, they were created when the

wealthy left a neighborhood and the working class moved in. Under the heading

“Apartment Houses of the well-to-do Some Day to be the Tenements of the Laboring

People,” the report explained why buildings “inhabited by the well-to-do” were studied in a report on housing problems. Although these were pristine spaces at their start, “the experience of all older cities indicates that within twenty-five years many of these apartments will become…the unwholesome heritage of the laboring population.”48

Indeed, the report cited Veiller in a section which explained that without legislated

minimum conditions, Minneapolis would become a deteriorating city. “Veiller lays down

a valuable principle in these words,” the report states, “‘It is a very wise maxim never to

set your standards lower than the standards that are actually adhered to at the time the law

is enacted.’”49

As much as class was a factor in changing apartment homes into tenements,

adding “foreign” ethnicities further complicated the tenement problem. In addition to

specifically calling out the population of the Bohemian Flats, the report contained

rhetoric concerning crowding and eastern or southern European populations.50 Bohemian

Flats was targeted especially due to its location below bluffs, which kept it from the gaze

of most Minneapolitans. The area (originally called Norwegian Flats after the preceding dominant ethnic group in there) was located under the Washington Street Bridge, in steps along the bluffs all the way down to the banks of the Mississippi (figures 4.5 and 4.6).

The river was filled with industrial debris and was very prone to flooding in the spring

48 MCCA Housing Committee, The Housing Problem in Minneapolis, 12. 49 MCCA Housing Committee, The Housing Problem in Minneapolis, 89. The report cites Veiller’s Housing Reform as the source of the quote. 50 MCCA Housing Committee, The Housing Problem in Minneapolis, 84. 192

and meant that on a nearly annual basis, people’s homes were inundated or washed away.

Rents reflected this reality, with Mill Street properties on the upper levee having the

highest rent, followed by Copper Street on the middle levee, then Wood Street with the

lowest rent due to its close proximity to the flood-prone river.51

Figure 4.5: Image of Bohemian Flats showing relative position to housing on top of the bluffs. Source: Hennepin County Archives DIS1.1mp

51 Frances E. Gardner, “The Bohemian Flats: An Idyllic Memory,” unpublished, 3. Hennepin County Archives, B1.35. 193

Figure 4.6: Image showing Bohemian Flats residences descending toward the river, underneath the railroad bridge. Source: Hennepin County Archives DIS1.1mp

The residents of Bohemian Flats leased land and then built their own domiciles.

Most of the homes were not much more than simple shelters, with little space dedicated to activity beyond cooking and sleeping. In the summers, women made ovens out of river stones in communal spaces to cook their food without heating up their homes.52 Single- use items were not only expensive, but took up space in small domiciles. For example, so few people owned an iron that people were willing to trade vegetables and canned goods to a local woman who would iron their clothing in exchange.53 This community-wide engagement in an informal economy was essential for residents of Bohemian Flats to

52 Gardner, “The Bohemian Flats,” 5. 53 Gardner, “The Bohemian Flats,” 5 194

meet basic sustenance needs, but it meant that they less frequently engaged in the city’s

commercial economy.

It was reasoned that this demographic was used to living in cramped conditions

and therefore would settle to live in that way in the United States, too. The housing report

featured a heading which highlights the intersection of ethnicity and domestic space:

“Bohemian Flats Population Not Averse to Crowding.”54 This idea showed up elsewhere in the document and in other rhetoric concerning crowding and eastern or southern

European populations from the time. This, however, was unacceptable. Not only would it mean that overcrowding would continue to be a problem in cities, but also those immigrants who chose to live in tight enclaves with people of the same or similar backgrounds were the least likely to adopt American values and assimilate. The report assessed the “mostly Slavic” population in Bohemian Flats, focusing on just twenty-three

of the families and extrapolating to the “hundreds of others of their kind” living there.55

The city presumed that the completion of a new dam would be the final factor in pushing

out the population of the Flats. The issue of their dispersal after vacating the flats was

tied closely with the broader motivation of dealing with the existing and future tenement

problems. When they left the Flats, the report asked, “what will it mean for the tenements

we have been studying? These people inevitably seek the lowest rent, and Minneapolis

will begin to realize that she has a foreign population in tenements, not at first a great

population, to be sure, but one which is destined to grow, and bring with it serious

54 MCCA Housing Committee, The Housing Problem in Minneapolis, 84. 55 MCCA Housing Committee, The Housing Problem in Minneapolis, 85.

195

tenement problems unless preventive action is immediately taken.”56 That the report

advocated for amendment of “well-to-do” residences as well as the Bohemian Flats

indicates the MCCA’s commitment to spatial reformation as the heart of social reform.

The Housing Problem in Minneapolis claimed that the city lacked a slum district, but emphasized that “there remain…many bad conditions, mostly in old, but some in fairly new buildings” throughout most of the city.”57 Problem housing was framed not as

a problem of derelict districts, but one that existed in pockets of varying sizes throughout

the city. Spatially, that there was not one concentrated area of slum made the housing

problem truly a civic concern. The housing report used this to argue that poor housing

conditions could not be ignored, because slum-like conditions were developing

throughout the city, not in one confineable district. As a result, “problem housing” could

only be addressed by implementing regulations in cases of renovation and new

construction that would be applied city-wide. However, those with some form of authority – the Chief Sanitary Inspector, the Inspector of Buildings, and the

Commissioner of Health – did not have actionable power to push immediate change on existing buildings. The report used this as leverage to change the structure of municipal

oversight and to pass legislation to regulate housing conditions. When, in 1917, housing

legislation was passed, the housing report’s influence (and Veiller’s language) was

apparent. It was not, however, a piece of city legislation. Rather, the Housing Act was

passed in the state legislature, to be applied to “cities of first class not under home rule

56 MCCA Housing Committee, The Housing Problem in Minneapolis, 85-86. The city’s first official effort to clear population from the flats via condemnation of properties occurred in 1915, but it would take until the mid-1970s for the last resident to move out. See: Gardner, “The Bohemian Flats,” 8. 57 MCCA Housing Committee, The Housing Problem in Minneapolis, 12.

196

charters.”58 The Act would be enforced mostly by the Health Department, with additional

powers conferred upon the city engineer and the inspector of buildings.59 Though no

“housing department” was created at a state or, at least in Minneapolis, at a city level, this

power structure followed closely that which Briggs and Winslow’s suggestions as

presented in the An Ideal Health Department report. The process by which Minneapolis

progressives pushed for housing reform – study, enlisting help from national and

international experts, and publication of findings in the hope of enacting legislative change – was one that could be found in other cities at the time and that would be used again in the city.

The Housing Act contained many provisions for minimum space and requirements for light, air, and water, but it fell short of mandating basic housing conditions for all Minneapolitans. Section 30 mandated that in any building constructed after the act took effect, “every room shall have at least one window opening directly upon the street, or upon a yard or court of the dimensions in this article.”60 The city’s experience with overcrowding combined with the information Veiller had published about the importance of legislation mandating outside windows in each room (that would face more than a three-foot by three-foot courtyard in a dumbbell tenement) was the only path toward securing a city against the dilapidated conditions of New York’s Lower East

Side. Further, there were sections mandating minimum square footage and ventilation for

58 Chapter 31A, “Housing Act for Cities of First Class Not Under Home Rule Charters,” contained in Francis B. Tiffany, compiler, General Statutes of Minnesota Supplement, 1917: Containing the Amendments to the General Statutes and Other Laws of a General and Permanent Nature, Enacted by the Legislature in 1915, 1916, and 1917 (St. Paul: West Publishing, Co., 1918), 428-453. 59 Department of Health, The Housing Act 1917, 38. 60 Department of Health, The Housing Act 1917, 14.

197 water closets and bathrooms.”61 Still, grey areas and exceptions to issues called out in the housing report existed. Section 45 prohibited dwelling in cellars, but Section 46 allowed janitors and their families to live in basements.62 Flexibility in the definitions of

“basement” and “cellar” was one way that apartment buildings got around Section 45’s constraints. While janitors would regularly occupy smaller apartments in less desirable areas in a building in exchange for their labor and for paying no rent, that the Housing

Act made exemptions for janitors and their families’ subterranean dwellings suggests that the altruistic strains of the housing report were shallow in terms of changing social conceptions of the minimum conditions all people required in their homes. The Act’s passage represented an end achievement for some, particularly those in the MCCA, while others saw it as a first step in a longer process of change. The after-effects of the Act were not of concern to the MCCA, but social reform groups became critical of this and many other pieces of reform legislation as they realized that the changes intended were rarely put into practice, at least quickly enough to make a difference.

As few as five years after the Housing Act was passed, the limitations of legislation as an agent of social change had become clear. Beginning in 1921, another series of reports that included information on housing conditions was published. This time, the MCCA was not included in authorship or publication. Students and professors in social work and sociology at the University of Minnesota joined with social reformers to perform “neighborhood character” studies. In 1923, the Women’s Co-Operative

Alliance and the University of Minnesota’s Sociology Department published three works comprising research on three districts of the city. Conditions of the North, East, and

61 Department of Health, The Housing Act 1917, 14, 16. 62 Department of Health, The Housing Act 1917, 18. 198

South districts were broadly studied. Industry, juvenile delinquency rates, numbers of

“good” organizations (charity, churches, settlement houses) or “destructive” influences,

neighborhood composition, and housing conditions were among the subjects researchers

considered.

Each of the reports commented on the shortcomings of the housing legislation. In

the North District, industry had moved north along the river front and had made formerly

suitable neighborhoods into derelict districts with rapidly depleting social resources.

Residences there had been vacated and could not be sold even if in good condition due to

their location. They were thus cut up into apartments for the laborers who found casual

work in the area. As their conditions worsened, it became increasingly “unprofitable to

repair old or build new houses” and, as a result, “the old rundown places” came to

dominate the eastern section of the North district, “hous[ing] much of the chronic poverty

known to welfare organizations of the district.”63 When new housing was constructed, it

usually took the form of tenements governed by the Housing Act of 1917. Despite this,

many of the conditions found in the 1914 Housing Problems report persisted: “Hallways

are dark and dirty, with grimy, marred walls. Plumbing is old and inadequate; there are

many outdoor toilets. The yards have little grass and are littered and disorderly. Cellars

and outbuildings are infested with rats.”64 This was primarily because the affordable housing in this and other districts was comprised of older homes that were either occupied by families and roomers or was divided into apartments not affected by the

Housing Act of 1917. In the South District report, researchers noted the dwindling

63 Grace E. Pratt, A Study of Community Conditions: North District: An Extensive Survey of Environmental Causes of Juvenile Delinquency and a Summary of the Programs of the Constructive Agencies and Institutions Working in the Community (Minneapolis: Women’s Co-operative Alliance, Inc., 1925), 14. 64 Pratt, A Study of Community Conditions, 14. 199

sanitary conditions in the northeast section, an area with “very undesirable multiple

dwellings” that were “reported as being defective by the persons residing there, with

regard to sanitary conditions.”65 The reformers found themselves with little recourse in terms of addressing these defective homes. “Since this district contains such a large number of old dwellings,” they wrote, “the new housing act will not cause any marked change for several years.”66 That is, unless owners of these buildings attempted to

renovate their dilapidated holdings, which would be a wholly unprofitable venture, the

new laws would not bring any direct improvement in these people’s lives. Thus, the

limitations of relying on legislation to implement widespread, swift changes in housing

conditions were made apparent. The MCCA and other social reform groups would not

engage in many collaborations after the housing report and Act.

Minneapolis civic leaders and social reformers believed that by addressing

housing “evils” such as overcrowding (of both lots and rooms), lack of light and air, and

development of slum conditions they could help keep their city on track with the ideal of

a modern urban center that, through design interventions, transcended the ills of

urbanization as expressed elsewhere. Their decision to implement nascent scientific and

professional planning ideas was influenced heavily by national and international thinkers.

They clearly engaged in a transatlantic exchange of ideas, but amended recommendations

to their own points of view and to best fit the unique conditions of Minneapolis. Placing

the city’s civic actors and reform plans in this greater network of progressives is essential

to understanding the fluid nature of the movement. Reformers were still mainly middle-

class agents seeking to instill order in cities, but their means and goals varied by social

65 Fern Chase, A Study of Community Conditions: South District, 15. 66 Chase, A Study of Community Conditions, 15. 200 and geographic context. Housing was presented as the central issue plaguing

Minneapolis. So long as such sub-par domestic conditions were allowed to persist, the

Mill City would not be a model city. Social concerns were presented as inextricable from environmental ones, which highlights the ways that progressive reforms wove together intellectual currents of social Darwinism and environmentalism. Still, there were many areas of the city that, according to civic leaders and social reformers, needed their help.

The growth of the labor market meant that more Minneapolitans were working and many chose to spend their wages on newly-available commercial entertainments. The ways in which social reformers addressed housing was different from their broader programming efforts that targeted populations rather than just environmental conditions. The next chapter will show the limitations of cooperation between the MCCA and social reformers, and the ways in which their target populations navigated the city that reformers physically and ideologically constructed.

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Chapter Five: Landscapes of Consumption and Redemption

This point may occur to someone. ‘If they are earning barely enough money for subsistence how can they afford picture shows, lodges, and other pleasures or associations that cost money?’ The answer is simple. Recreation is a craving that will be satisfied even if real necessities are thereby sacrificed. Nothing in this field of economics has been more substantially proved in recent years than the prevalence of insufficient food and insufficient clothes among the working classes. Many of these legitimate pleasures and activities are obtained by a sacrifice of things which, at least physically, seem to us more necessary. No one wants to merely toil all his life, and those persons who criticize the wage earners at this point overlook some of the fundamentals of human nature.1

In its 1913 vocational survey, the Teachers’ Club offered this pithy explanation of

the importance of recreation for all classes. It outlined many of the core concerns

attached to working-class recreation, particularly those that related to spending money.

Employers’ efforts to destabilize unionism and establish the open shop were fairly

successful after the 1903 flour mill strikes, but the eight-hour day was becoming more common in the city by the mid-1900s. The prospect of working-class people paying for entertainment, particularly low-brow content delivered in deleterious spaces such as dance halls and movie theaters, was alarming for those civic stewards who sought to shape Minneapolis as a model metropolis. As social reformers and civic leaders were securing work, school, and home spaces through regulation and reform, addressing the proliferation of commercial entertainments became yet another campaign. While social reformers did not contest people’s access to new commercial entertainments, they

1 Minneapolis Teachers’ Club, A Vocational Survey of Minneapolis (Minneapolis: Minneapolis Teachers’ Club, 1913), 77. 202 endeavored to provide uplifting alternatives that would bring working-class people under their gaze and stewardship.

At the turn of the twentieth century, Minneapolis was maturing. The population was growing alongside profits in the milling and textile industries. The city physically grew as well; streetcar lines facilitated residential spread as a flurry of development downtown produced shopping, theater, and industrial districts, all lit by hydroelectricity.

Such growth could not mask the menacing character of cities. Filthy streets and polluted air combined with strangers and anonymity to give cities a fearsome reputation, particularly for women. Rural-to-urban migration increased during the Progressive era, and Minneapolis was a destination for many women looking for work and adventure away from farms and small towns. Fears of white slavery and of prostitution motivated social reformers to start programs that would bring working women under their supervision. However, the rise of consumer culture provided stiff competition.

As the number of wage earners in the city grew, so did consumer options.

Commercial entertainments, including an amusement park, movie houses, and dance halls proliferated. Department stores overtook warehouse and catalog shopping, and the competition for customers included implementing new design and advertising strategies that changed the feel of certain streets and the purpose of adjacent sidewalks. Social reformers, particularly those working with the Young Women’s Christian Association

(YWCA) and Women’s Co-operative Association (WCA), worked to redeem cities and carve out space for women within them. Their efforts dovetailed with broader civic reform projects, which helped in developing a network of stewardship that had a shared goal of making Minneapolis a model metropolis.

203

Minneapolis, Electrified

For more than three decades, from the 1860s to the 1890s, Bridge Square was the

heart of Minneapolis. The area was a small triangle of land where Nicollet and Hennepin

avenues merged just before a bridge over the Mississippi River. It was often the first

place travelers saw upon arrival in the Mill City, as the Milwaukee Depot also opened

onto the area. It was “the banking and commercial center, the market center, and later,

with the 1878 completion … of city hall, the civic center as well.”2 Fewer than ten years after the first city hall was completed, it was apparent that the building was too small.

The second city hall, built five blocks south of the original, opened in 1895 and would hold county and city administrative offices as well as a jail.3 City hall’s departure from

Bridge Square hastened the spread of capital and commercial venues north, south, and

westward. The departure of business and civic affairs changed Bridge Square, and “it

became filled with seedy taverns and squalid flophouses” in addition to employment

houses that attracted day laborers and itinerant laborers stopping on their way through.4

Bridge Square, later re-named the Gateway, would become the target of social reformers and civic leaders who tried to redeem the area through design. Having such an area be the welcome mat for the city was disconcerting to civic leaders who wished to show their city’s best side to visitors. As the area succumbed to unfavorable elements, a new

2 Joanna Baymiller, “History of an Avenue,” Design Quarterly 117 (Hennepin Avenue, 1982): 7. 3 Paul Clifford Larson, Municipal Monument: A Centennial History of the Municipal Building Serving Minneapolis and Hennepin County, Minnesota (Minneapolis: Municipal Building Commission, 1991), 35- 38; Billy Steve Clayton, “Restoring the Minneapolis City Hall Clock,” Star Tribune, November 12, 2008. 4 Iric Nathanson, Minneapolis in the Twentieth Century: The Growth of an American City (St. Paul: Minnesota Historical Society Press, 2010), 145; Charles Rumford Walker, American City: A Rank and File History of Minneapolis (Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press, 1937), 38. 204

technology was introduced in an attempt to elevate its character and accelerate

development in the city.

Hydroelectricity was supposed to make the city safer, and it served as a catalyst

for outward development. The city was home to the country’s first hydroelectricity

system, which debuted in 1882.5 A central electricity station was constructed, and

“overhead wires were strung to saloons and shops on Washington Avenue.”6 Lights

would be turned off by 9:15 pm, 11:15 pm, 12:10 am, or could be left on all night, with

customers paying increasing rates for length of service.7 Electricity was unreliable and

dangerous; the overhead lines had caught fire in other cities and Minneapolitans worried

that the same would happen there. The city’s gas company, Minneapolis Gas, played on

these worries in hopes of edging out hydroelectricity and keeping its business the main means by which downtown was lit. The Minnesota Brush Electric Company was not an easy opponent, as it had allied with Mayor A.A. “Doc” Ames in his first term. To quash opposition, Minnesota Brush erected a “mast” in Bridge Square that hoisted eight arc lamps 257 feet into the air – the city’s “first ‘skyscraper.’”8 Within two years, the city

signed a contract with Minnesota Brush to light Hennepin, Nicollet, and Washington

avenues (see figure 5.1).9 Use of hydroelectricity also set Minneapolis apart from older

industrial cities. Manchester, England, one of the first industrialized cities in the world,

was described as “abominable” and “filthy” because of the “smoke nuisance” that

5 Lucille M. Kane, The Falls of St. Anthony: The Waterfall that Built Minneapolis (St. Paul: Minnesota Historical Society Press, 1987), 135. 6 Kane, The Falls of St. Anthony, 137. 7 Kane, The Falls of St. Anthony, 137. 8 Baymiller, “History of an Avenue,” 8. 9 Kane, The Falls of St. Anthony, 142. 205 pervaded the city in the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries.10 Stateside, Pittsburgh’s urban environment succumbed to significant air pollution, as “inhabitants and visitors alike commented on the cloud of smoke that obscured the natural beauty of the city’s landscape and tainted all buildings with a gray-black color.”11 Early adoption of the technology in industries steered the Mill City away from dealing with the gray and black soot that caked onto buildings in Manchester, Pittsburgh, and other industrial cities. The decrease in pollution meant that hydroelectricity not only improved social street life, but also helped Minneapolis maintain the “natural” aesthetic that boosters publicized.

10 Catherine Bowler and Peter Brimblecombe, “Control of Air Pollution in Manchester prior to the Public Health Act, 1875,” Environmental History 6:1 (February 2000): 76-77. 11 Anthony N. Penna, “Changing Images of Twentieth-Century Pittsburgh,” Pennsylvania History 43:1 (January 1976): 49. 206

Figure 5.1: “Gigantic lamp which was to light the city, Bridge Square,” approximately 1884. Source: Minnesota Historical Society Archives MH5.9 MP2.1.

Electricity had social as well as aesthetic and spatial impacts on Minneapolis's development. Touted as an agent of redemption for city streets, particularly in the beleaguered Bridge Square, electricity was supposed to re-cast the night and eliminate the threats that hid in darkened city corners. The Minneapolis Tribune reported on the light mast at Bridge Square and noted that in addition to natural opponents of the technology, such as the gas company, the types of citizens who were disturbed by the light mast were far from upstanding: “‘I don’t think the light is a bit nice,’ said a young lady who was riding with her beau; ‘tisn’t a bit better than riding by daylight.’…’Spoils our business 207

pard,’ said an evil looking man with his slouch hat drawn over his eyes; ‘we’ll have to skip out for other parts.’”12 The mast’s illumination meant that there were fewer places for criminals to work or for men and women to take advantage of dimly lit corridors. The article’s message was clear: dark was only advantageous for those engaging in immoral activities. As such, the mast – but more specifically, electrical light – was characterized as a redemptive force for the city.

The mast failed in its stated goal to flood the city with light; while the immediate area was well lit, it also threw many shadows that countered its benefits. Ultimately, electrical lighting would play an integral part in Minneapolis's growth, and was tasked with helping the city transcend the pollution – both environmental and behavioral – of older cities. And so a city that “had once resembled a New England town” began its transformation into a modern metropolis with “a youthful braggadocio” that would help it

“achiev[e] its own identity.”13

The Morality of Leisure Hours

As workdays shorter than ten hours became more common in Minneapolis, the

issue of working people’s free time became contested. Stewardship efforts had targeted

the working class at work, school, and home, but social reformers believed that

entertainment venues and the content being sold therein were equally important, and

required their attention to address questionable recreation and attempt to rectify it.

Workers with more time to spend in places of their choosing engaged with the culture of

consumerism as they began paying for entertainment at theaters, movie houses, and dance

12 Kane, The Falls of St. Anthony, 141. 13 Kane, The Falls of St. Anthony, 114. 208

halls. The number of such establishments grew, each likely hoping to profit from new

demand.

In the United States, labor’s fight for an eight-hour day was linked directly to

allowing the working class to have time for leisure and recreation.14 The demand for

shorter workdays alarmed opponents, who argued that long work days were the best

means to ensure employees lived clean, moral lives outside of work. In the summer of

1902, in the midst of the formation of a local Citizen’s Alliance chapter and the

development of the International Union of Flour Mill and Cereal Employees,

Minneapolis hosted the Convention of Employers and Employees. Speakers addressed

several hundred attendees on common issues employers faced; the eight-hour day was a

major topic. Elizabeth C. Wheeler, a social secretary for the Shepard Company in Rhode

Island, took a conservative approach to the issue. In her address at the convention she

queried whether the woman who “fit my gown spends her evening in a brothel” or if her

cobbler “frequents saloons out of work hours.” These were community issues, she

assured her audience, but she emphasized that “it even more concerns the employer.”15

The comment demonstrated that Wheeler, like many employees, saw workers’ bodies as

production vessels in which employers invested rather than seeing the workers as whole

human individuals with lives of their own. Moreover, the assumption was that if left with

more time outside of work, laborers would engage in acts that were somehow

objectionable and degraded their characters.

14 Roy Rosenzweig, Eight Hours for What We Will: Workers and Leisure in an Industrial City, 1870-1920 (New York: Cambridge University Press, 1983), 1-4. 15 Elizabeth C. Wheeler, “Opportunities of the Industrial Social Secretary,” Employers and Employes: A Full Text of Addresses Before the National Convention of Employers and Employes Held at Minneapolis, Minn., Sept. 22-25, 1902 (Chicago: Public Policy, 1902), 168-170. 209

Minneapolis reformers were agitating for better recreation options for the working

class in the early 1900s, but few agreed with Wheeler that workers could not be trusted

with their own time. Although the Employers convention took place in Minneapolis, there is ample evidence that many of the city’s social reformers did not subscribe to

Wheeler’s argument. Certainly the tone of the Teachers’ Survey discussed at length in

Chapter Three demonstrated that Minneapolis reformers were not seeking to obliterate

entertainment options for the working class. Instead the goal was to provide redemptive

places that were properly programmed that would syphon working-class people away

from deleterious commercial entertainments and place them under “proper” guidance.

Offering another perspective at the conference was professor of political science at the

University of Minnesota and president of Associated Charities Frank L. McVey. His talk,

titled “Economic Effects of the Eight Hours Day,” suggested to employers that they

could, in fact, improve their businesses if their employees had an eight-hour day. He

argued that with shorter hours came an “increased standard of living, wider

consumption,” and “a larger demand,” which meant that although goods sold at a lower

price, demand would be so high that “the continuous employment of labor” would be

necessary to “furnish the supply.”16 That is, as people became consumers and got a taste

for buying goods as well as for entertainment, they would want more. In order to satisfy

their wants, they would have to work more to earn the money. Thus, getting laborers to

enter a consumer cycle would cultivate a wider and more willing workforce. With the

growth of commercial entertainments and new shopping and dining experiences provided

16 Frank L. McVey, “Economic Effects of the Eight Hours Day,” Employers and Employes, 195. 210

by department stores, the working class became an integral part of the turn-of-the twentieth-century culture of consumption.

Leisure and Consumption in Minneapolis

Urbanization brought new means and methods of consumerism. How people spent their leisure hours and their wages in these emerging consumer landscapes has been assessed by historians. In 1899, Thorstein Veblen published his influential The Theory of the Leisure Class.17 In it, Veblen commented on the vile impacts of the growth of the

leisure class, a group whose time was not dedicated to production and who profited off

the labor of others. This predatory class set an example for “pecuniary emulation” that

involved “invidious comparison,” “conspicuous consumption,” and “conspicuous

leisure.”18 The leisure class’s consumption patterns were markers of status and set an

aesthetic and moral example that the working class was to emulate.

Emulation was read as an acceptance of leisure class cultural hegemony: “high-

bred manners and ways of living are items of conformity to the norm of conspicuous

leisure and conspicuous consumption.”19 Like the Teachers’ Club survey, The Theory of

the Leisure Class argued that people would endure “squalor and discomfort before the last trinket or the last pretence of pecuniary decency is put away.”20 In cities throughout

the United States, landscapes of consumerism facilitated the entrenchment of what

William Leach called the culture of consumption, which emphasized capitalism as “the

17 Thorstein Veblen, ed. by Martha Banta, The Theory of the Leisure Class (New York: Oxford University Press, 2007). 18 Veblen, The Theory of the Leisure Class, all terms in passing. 19 Veblen, The Theory of the Leisure Class, 53. 20 Veblen, The Theory of the Leisure Class, 59. 211

foundation of its aesthetic life and of its moral sensibility.”21 The culture’s defining

features were “acquisition and consumption as the means of achieving happiness; the cult

of the new; the democratization of desire; and money value as the predominant measure

of all value in society.”22 This characterization built on many of Veblen’s conclusions

and emphasized the competitive nature of consumerism and leisure during this period.

As more workers experienced shorter workdays, commercial entertainments

proliferated to capitalize on this new spending demographic.23 Commercialization of

leisure altered how working-class people spent their personal time.24 Entertainment

options such as movie theaters and dance halls, which proliferated along Minneapolis's

Hennepin Avenue, became popular attractions. When it came to working-class activities,

“leisure time remained a contested terrain, an arena of social life of such critical importance that the city’s social, political, cultural, and religious elites dared not abandon it to the whims of consumers and the marketplace.”25 Gender affected working-class

entertainment destinations. Whereas men could spend an evening in a saloon, the option

was not open for women, who instead opted for “emergent forms of commercialized

recreation, such as dance halls, amusement parks, and movie theaters,” all of which were

criticized by social reformers.26

21 William R. Leach, Land of Desire: Merchants, Power, and the Rise of a New American Culture (New York: Pantheon Books 1993), 3. 22 Leach, Land of Desire, 3. 23 David Nasaw, Going Out: The Rise and Fall of Public Amusements (New York: Basic Books, 1993), 5. 24 Kathy L. Peiss, Cheap Amusements: Working Women and Leisure in Turn-of-the-Century New York (Philadelphia: Temple University Press, 1986), 5-6. 25 Nasaw, Going Out, 5. 26 Peiss, Cheap Amusements, 5. 212

Theaters, Nickelodeons, and the Better Movie Movement

Theater was a form of commercial entertainment with a dual identity. Everything

from content and décor to audience and location affected whether or not social reformers

defined a theater as a detrimental influence. Historian Robert Sklar argued that, in movie

theaters, “the urban workers, the immigrants and the poor had discovered a new medium

of entertainment without the aid, and indeed beneath the notice, of the custodians and

arbiters of middle-class culture.”27 It did not take long for reformers to target movies for content as well as for the spaces in which they were shown. Many purpose-built theaters had high-end furnishings and marketed themselves as respectable venues.28 Others were

converted stores with simple folding chairs and heavy curtains over the windows that

showed movies after hours. Shortly after the turn of the twentieth century, theaters

became venues for variety shows and vaudeville as well as moving picture displays. In

1904, two “legitimate” theaters opened in Minneapolis. The Unique Theatre opened on

Hennepin Avenue, presenting itself as a “family theatre” that “offered refined vaudeville,

illustrated songs, and moving pictures.”29 Upon its opening, Mayor Haynes, newly- elected in the wake of the Doc Ames City Hall scandal, remarked that “‘Twenty five years ago, there was only one legitimate theatre and one disreputable one in Minneapolis, now there are six reputable ones and one disreputable one.’”30 In this instance, the theater

was deemed a positive entity mostly because its content was considered inoffensive.

27 Robert Sklar, Movie-Made America: A Cultural History of American Movies (New York: Vintage Books, 1994, second edition), 4. 28 Jessica Ellen Sewell, Women and the Everyday City: Public Space in San Francisco, 1890-1915 (Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press, 2011), 105, 112-113. 29 Kirk J. Besse, Show Houses: Twin Cities Style (Minneapolis: Victoria Publications Ltd., 1997), 38. 30 Besse, Show Houses, 1. 213

Some of the earliest moving pictures shown in Minneapolis were of events such

as an English horse race and the “arrival of a passenger train in Calais.”31 They were

ordinary scenes displayed in an extraordinary format, and moving pictures gained an

immediate following in the city. Mild content such as this began to give way to base

movies produced for growing audiences. The changeover in content reflected both the

availability of new options and a shift in who was consuming entertainment. As historian

Lawrence J. Hill noted, variety theaters reached their peak at a time when “53% of the

adult male population of Minneapolis was unmarried…[and] not likely to be attracted to

the ‘refined’ stage plays and concerts performed at legitimate theatres. The rowdier,

‘sexier’ entertainment provided at variety theaters was much more likely to appeal to

them.” 32

Indeed, many early movies were targeted at the urban bachelor class, and the

content reflected this audience. In the early 1900s, popular movies featured action

sequences including gun battles as well as scenes in which women were in “various

stages of undress” or “kisses and caresses” between men and women went on “without

benefit of plot.”33 It could, at times, be difficult for movie theater operators to find

enough “clean” content to put on in their establishments. Although there were legitimate

theaters that tried to put on exclusively “clean” shows, the ventures were rarely

successful because in spite of the “limited cultural value of a ‘song and dance man’” and

reformers’ attempts “to elevate the status of the working class by eliminating

31 Dave Kenney, Twin Cities Picture Show: A Century of Moviegoing (St. Paul: Minnesota Historical Society Press, 2007), 4. These pictures were shown in 1896. 32 Lawrence J. Hill, “Dives and Diversions: The Variety Theaters of Early Minneapolis,” Hennepin County History (Fall 1987): 5. 33 Sklar, Movie-Made America, 22, 23. 214 temptation,” the “laborers of the city demanded something more than a touring or stock company’s performance of Hamlet.”34 As the entertainment industry developed, movies like Up in Mabel’s Room, Getting Gertie’s Garter, and Ladies Night in a Turkish Bath replaced scenes of Calais or English horseracing.35

Theaters built to accommodate live entertainment began altering their offerings to attract a wider audience, showing vaudeville and burlesque on some nights of the week, but transitioning into “photoplay houses” on weekends.36 In an effort to capitalize on the movement and generate revenue, stores also converted their spaces to accommodate moving picture shows at night. Costing five cents for an entry, these were nicknamed

“nickelodeons.” One peculiarity with stores converted into nightly nickelodeons was the limitations of a store’s footprint versus that of a purpose-built theater. Stores in

Minneapolis, like those in many cities in the West, were long and slender; one particularly long nickelodeon was “about 20 feet wide and 165 feet deep… [and] could seat about four hundred people.”37 Nickelodeons were less than ideal spaces for entertainment, as the long and narrow buildings with no windows on the sides meant that space was tight and, unlike a theater, the floors were flat so being seated in the back meant limited screen visibility. Many theaters had managers present who were supposed to ensure that patrons behaved appropriately. Nickelodeons, on the other hand, did not have this level of supervision. They became venues that allowed social groups to mix and sexes to intermingle, much to social reformers’ consternation.38

34 Hill, “Dives and Diversions,” 8; Sklar, Movie-Made America, 24-26. 35 Frank M. Whiting, Minnesota Theatre: From Old Fort Snelling to the Guthrie (Minneapolis: Pogo Press, Inc., 1988), 58. 36 Besse, Show Houses, 1. 37 Kenney, Twin Cities Picture Show, 13. 38 Peiss, Cheap Amusements, 151. 215

As dual-purpose venues, nickelodeons also presented safety hazards to occupants

and nearby buildings. Film easily caught on fire, and the projectionist had to “[stop]

reeling the film for too long” lest “the machine’s arc lamp…ignite the highly flammable

nitrate stock.”39 Fire incidents such as at the Iroquois Theater in Chicago in 1903, the

largest theater fire disaster in American history, did not ease people’s minds as they

crammed into nickelodeons that had fewer fire prevention elements and means of escape

than did a new, purpose-built theater.40 The potential for conflagrations was even cited as

neighborhoods fought theaters being built in their vicinity.41

Other environmental factors affected theaters’ operations in Minneapolis. With

few options to control sweltering heat, most theaters closed in the summer.42 This

coincided with an annual population dip as laborers headed out to pick up agricultural

work during downtime in the mills. The Pantages, which opened on Hennepin Avenue in

1916, introduced temperature control to Minneapolis theaters. It had “eighteen tones [sic]

of metal piping to move the air, which had been cooled by tones [sic] of ice” to maintain

an average temperature of 70 degrees.43 This artificial environment was appealing, and

the theater was able to keep ticket prices down at a competitive 10 cents for a show or 20

cents for a matinee.44 The Pantages proved a popular summer destination and, for some,

likely usurped outdoor recreation on hot, humid August days.

39 Kenney, Twin Cities Picture Show, 19. 40 See also: Nat Brandt, Chicago Death Trap: The Iroquois Theatre Fire of 1903 (Carbondale: Southern Illinois University Press, 2003). 41 Kenney, Twin Cities Picture Show, 18. 42 Kenney, Twin Cities Picture Show, 4. 43 Besse, Show Houses, 29. 44 Besse, Show Houses, 29. Most of the theaters in Minneapolis at this time had ticket costs between 10 cents and two dollars, depending on where the seats were located. 216

While air conditioning was likely a great draw, many theaters turned to cheaper

options to attract customers. Some of the more shrewd theater managers openly targeted a

working-class audience by using giveaway gimmicks intended to appeal to customers

with tight economies. The Gayety opened in 1909 in a prime location: the corner of First

Avenue and Washington Avenue North, at the nexus of the warehouse district and the

industrial district, and on main transit routes that had streetcars linking it to residential

areas. People paid 10 cents admission to the theater, which had upscale décor. The price

was on par for theaters in the area, but it enticed its audience with giveaways. At each

performance a doll valued at $5 was given away in addition to other more sporadic prizes

such as $100 in foodstuffs.45 In 1917, one Gayety “newspaper ad announced ‘reduce your

cost of living by going to the Gayety,’” which played to economic strategizing that

undoubtedly influenced most working-class patrons’ entertainment decisions.46 These types of advertising tactics were at the heart of social reformers’ concerns over the role of commercial entertainment in the city. While some, like the authors of the Teachers’ Club survey, argued that recreation was an essential part of human existence, issues of home economics and class-based judgments arose in regard to working-class patronage of theaters. Certainly few believed that going to the Gayety would reduce their cost of living, but the chance of winning items likely influenced many budget-conscious customers to choose it over other theaters with similar shows.

One Minneapolis social reformer began a crusade against movie content in an effort to make theaters better entertainment venues. Catheryne Cooke Gilman moved to

Minneapolis with her husband Robbins Gilman to run the Northeast Side settlement

45 Besse, Show Houses, 4. 46 Besse, Show Houses, 4. 217

house.47 A graduate of the University of Chicago who gained experience working at Hull

House, Gilman had seen movies used as reform tools. She believed that improving the

content displayed at movie houses would be part of an overall effort to “reduce harmful

outside influences,” especially in regard to combatting juvenile delinquency.48 Working

with the WCA, Gilman researched and developed a comprehensive survey and plan,

titled Better Movie Movement, to improve movie houses and get theater owners and

operators to show better content willingly.49

Bad content was not always defined, but examples given included “objectionable

close-up scenes…drinking or bar room scenes…and lewd actions.”50 Gilman’s work did not call for censorship, though people often saw that as one of the Better Movie

Movement’s goals; her work mostly focused “on cultivation of a taste for ‘better films’ among movie house patrons and forcing exhibitors to respond to market pressures.”51

The distinction is an important one, as it demonstrates the initiative to be social stewards who guided but did not force people into choosing better entertainment content. This tactic was intended to change available options so that people would have more opportunities to patronize “clean” theaters. Although Gilman was confident that there was a market for clean entertainment, she was proven wrong. Demand remained high for

47 Winifred Wandersee Bolin, “Heating up the Melting Pot Settlement Work and Americanization in Northeast Minneapolis,” Minnesota History 45:2 (Summer, 1976): 60. 48 Cynthia A. Hanson, “Catheryne Cooke Gilman and the Minneapolis Better Movie Movement,” Minnesota History 51:6 (Summer, 1989): 204. 49 Women’s Co-operative Alliance, Better Movie Movement: The Minneapolis Better Movie Movement Plan and the Report of a Survey of the Minneapolis Motion Picture Houses: A Plan and a Study in the Interest of the ‘Better Movie Movement’ made by the Research and Investigation Department of the Women’s Co-operative Alliance (Minneapolis: The Women’s Co-operative Alliance, Inc., 1921). Minneapolis was not the only city going through such a crusade. See also: Holly George, “Municipal Film Censorship in Spokane, Washington, 1910-1916,” Pacific Northwest Quarterly 103:4 (Fall 2012: 176-189). 50 Donald Ramsey Young, “Motion Pictures: A Study in Social Legislation,” (Dissertation, University of Pennsylvania, 1922), 24. 51 Hanson, “Catheryne Cooke Gilman and the Minneapolis Better Movie Movement,” 207. 218

mainstream movie content and clean shows had many empty seats.52 Much of the WCA

survey focused on content delivered in theaters, but there were also questions regarding

the venues themselves, including ten questions regarding “ventilation, sanitation,

lighting, curfew enforcement, fire escape routes, and whether the house served as ‘a

trysting or spooning place’ for young people.”53 The inclusion of these questions showed

that even when reformers were targeting entertainment content, the quality of the space in

which it was delivered was of equal concern.

Throughout the Better Movie Movement and campaigns to improve and supervise

theater venues, these spaces were characterized as dangerous for respectable women.

Though there were claims that white slavery was nonexistent in Minneapolis, some

reformers still operationalized the concept to push their reform agendas. Charles

Williams Arnold, working with the Northwestern Society for the Prevention of Vice,

authored pamphlets about the dangers of movies and theater. He specifically targeted

venues that were open on Sundays. One piece, a broadside distributed in the city,

presented theaters being open on Sundays as feeding the white slavery market. As can be

seen in figure 5.2, the broadside had a bold heading: “TRIED AND FOUND GUILTY

OF GROSS IMMORALITY.” It gave nine examples of girls between 15 and 17 disappearing after having attended a show on a Sunday and four motion picture employees guilty of abducting or harming girls.54 There is no way of knowing whether

52 Hanson, “Catheryne Cooke Gilman and the Minneapolis Better Movie Movement,” 216. 53 Hanson, “Catheryne Cooke Gilman and the Minneapolis Better Movie Movement,” 208. 54 Charles Williams Arnold and Northwestern Society for the Prevention of Vice, Tried and Found Guilty of Gross Immorality (C.W. Arnold: Minneapolis, 1911-1916) Minnesota Historical Society Archives KFM5681.S8 T74 1911 219 these cases were fictional or what the circumstances were if they were real occurrences.55

Most of the cases highlighted the theaters as dangerous spaces, but case number 426 had an added element of danger – “last seen Sunday night in moving picture show, also in

Chop Suey house” – that of cavorting in a Chinese restaurant.56 The extra detail added ethnic scaremongering into the broader conversation about white slavery. Despite efforts simply to provide better content or more elaborate efforts to develop fears of kidnapping, theaters continued to be popular entertainment destinations for Minneapolitans. Theaters provided opportunities for conspicuous leisure, but because of the varying content shown and audiences attracted, reformers continued to characterize them as forces for culture as well as for immorality that often highlighted the tensions between the genteel respectability that the YWCA urged in its spaces and the dangers – both real and perceived – posed to women’s characters and bodies when they occupied public entertainment venues, such as movie theaters.

55 Gretchen Soderlund, Sex Trafficking, Scandal, and the Transformation of Journalism, 1885-1917 (Chicago: The University of Chicago Press, 2013), xii. Soderlund noted that white slavery charges are difficult to study as “a ‘real’ phenomenon” because they were “hotly contested in their day.” 56 Arnold, Tried and Found Guilty of Gross Immorality. 220

Figure 5.2: “Tried and Found Guilty of Gross Immorality,” 1911 broadside. Source: Minnesota Historical Society Archives KFM5681.S8 T74 1911

Women in Public Places: White Slavery and Vice

Women’s public presence in cities was met with fear over the sanctity of their bodies and characters. Among the most pervasive narratives of city danger for women was that of white slavery. The concept, that white women and girls were coerced, forced, or kidnapped and sold into prostitution, emerged in the late-nineteenth-century British press.57 White slavery panics often combined xenophobia, racism, and sexism with a fear

of urbanization, all of which were mapped onto women’s bodies in public. Dime novels

and newspapers alike monetized the panic and presented salacious “true” stories of

women being taken. In a time when public discussion of sex was entirely taboo, media

coverage of the topic allowed middle-class women to talk about the subject without

57 Soderlund, Sex Trafficking, 3. Soderland explains that the term had also been linked to labor struggles on both sides of the Atlantic in the mid-nineteenth century, but the proliferation of media relating to the sexual version of white slavery had altered its popular definition by the twentieth century. 221

threatening their purity.58 These fulsome “stories of sexual danger fascinated white

Americans,” and became entertainment subjects as people “consumed increasing numbers of white slavery narratives.”59 Sensationalism led to increased concern in many

American cities that this was happening right under people’s noses, as the media

presented it not as some distant danger, but as a real and present threat. The accounts

were often employed as a reminder that even though women were becoming increasingly

public figures, cities were not safe places for them.

For social reformers, especially those involved with the YWCA, cases of missing

women confirmed the need for their surveillance, particularly those who were young,

new to the city, and working. In one instance in 1912, a young woman who had moved to

Minneapolis from Dubuque, Iowa to take a job as a telephone operator became the

subject of worry. The headline – “’Phone Operator is Missing” – played on the common

perception that working women were particularly in danger of being victims of white

slavery.60 The clipping told of Miss Margaret Bell who lived in a girls’ boarding house

downtown and, one night, “left her rooming house to go to a restaurant three blocks

away. She has not been heard from since.”61 The YWCA was involved in searching for

the young woman, who had found work through its employment bureau. There were

several factors of Bell’s experience that combined to make reformers suspect foul play in

her disappearance: she was new to the city, lived in a downtown boarding house, and

went out at night unescorted. The next day, though, the headline read: “GIRL IS NO

58 Soderlund, Sex Trafficking, Scandal, and the Transformation of Journalism, 1885-1917, 1-23. 59 Brian Donovan, Race, Gender, and Ant-vice Activism, 1887-1917 (Chicago: University of Illinois Press, 2006), 1. 60 “’Phone Operator is Missing,” Minneapolis Journal, 11 January 1912. 61 “’Phone Operator is Missing,” Minneapolis Tribune, 11 January 1912. 222

LONGER MISSING.”62 The YWCA had telephoned the girl’s family in Dubuque, only

to discover that Bell had been staying with friends in the city. If Bell had not been in

contact with the YWCA, they could not have contacted her family, tracked her down, and

ensured that she was safe. The Minneapolis YWCA used cases like Bell’s to show how

necessary its work truly was to ensuring that there were safe places in the city for women.

Minneapolis was a destination for women leaving rural homes to find work, and

providing protection from the temptations of the city was central to stewardship efforts of

civic leaders and social reformers. As historian Joan Jensen noted, Minneapolis and St.

Paul were appealing choices for young women leaving farms. Unlike other heavy industrial cities like Milwaukee, the Twin Cities had large mercantile economies and thus had more opportunities for women.63 Young women believed that their domestic duties

would prepare them for long days of hard work, and they saw the city as an opportunity

to escape home and outdoor family chores.64 The prospect of being able to have time and

money for themselves trumped the warnings from groups like the Red Cross and YWCA.

The Minnesota Bureau of Labor took out ads in 1910 to warn women against coming to

cities for work unless “compelled to.” If a woman were so compelled, she must write

authorities in advance of her arrival to ensure that someone affiliated with an

organization would be there to ensure she made it off the train platform and into the

hands of the “right” people in the city.65

62 “Girl is no Longer Missing,” Minneapolis Tribune, 12 January 1912. 63 Joan M. Jensen, “Out of Wisconsin: Country Daughters in the City, 1910-1925,” Minnesota History 59:2 (Summer, 2004): 50. See also: Joan M. Jensen, Calling This Place Home: Women on the Wisconsin Frontier, 1850-1925 (St. Paul: Minnesota Historical Society Press, 2006). 64 Jensen, “Out of Wisconsin,” 49. 65 Jensen, “Out of Wisconsin,” 50. 223

It is clear that the idea of newly-arrived women alone in the city was distressing for reformers. Joanne Meyerowitz, studying Chicago, stated that women arriving there via rail reported a range of experiences upon their arrival. She noted that “thieves sometimes chose railroad stations as the most likely locations in which to find vulnerable prey,” adding that while men probably often fell victims to schemes, women were at special risk because “rapists, panderers, and mashers…chose women newcomers as their primary targets for sexual exploitation.”66 Train stations were marked as unsafe for women, particularly those who were new in the city and had no contacts. Likely aware of many stories of victimization in coming out of Chicago and elsewhere, social reformers took to securing the rail platforms as safer spaces for women arriving in Minneapolis.

In 1894, the YWCA and WCA began a Travelers’ Aid program with the goal of saving women from the city.67 The program involved giving temporary refuge to newly- arrived women and helping them find work while adjusting to city life in a safe place. It also, of course, brought more women under their gaze and guidance. The Travelers’ Aid program combined space and content under one roof. Being able to provide quarters to these women was essential in order to protect them from staying in the baneful options available near Bridge Square. The program had four workers from the YWCA and WCA who wore white and black and waited at Union Station and the Milwaukee Depot, where they “scan[ned] the crowds…for girls who…[were] traveling alone.”68 After identifying possible targets, the reformer would ask “‘Are you traveling alone?’…and if the answer

66 Joanne Meyerowitz, Women Adrift: Independent Wage Earners in Chicago, 1880-1930 (Chicago: The University of Chicago Press, 1988), 23. 67 C.S. Wallace, “Thirty Years in Retrospect,” 22 January 1924, Social Welfare History Archives, YWCA Box 1 Folder 1, 5. 68 “Women Working in Station to Save Girls from Tempters,” Minneapolis Tribune, 6 January 1912. 224 was “yes” the woman would be escorted to the Travelers’ Aid home.”69 Reformers believed that without their Travelers’ Aid home, women arriving in the city alone would otherwise succumb to the lowest quality boarding homes, putting their bodies and their characters in danger, as Bell had. The Travelers’ Aid group had a home located at 720

Third Avenue south.

The Third Avenue home was used for nearly a decade, when it was determined to be “inadequate” because it was too small to accommodate all those who needed it.

Moreover, most of the house was dedicated to sleeping space, which limited programming opportunities.70 In 1911, the Travelers’ Aid home moved west to 1714

Stevens Avenue near Stevens Square Park, in part to address this space deficiency. The new home was “fitted up attractively and dancing and music and entertainments of various kinds are provided free by the directors for the girls who wish to avail themselves of its shelter.”71 In an article from 1912, the group claimed to have “saved 442 girls from the temptations of the city” in the previous year, adding that without their intervention,

“any or all of that number might have fallen victims to the lure of the city’s tempters.”72

The statement reflected social reformers’ fears that the city itself could overwhelm women and that only their stewardship could help them learn how to navigate the city appropriately. Travelers’ Aid focused on providing women with ongoing education and fellowship to ensure that they would be strong enough to evade city perils. Moreover, the organization hoped that intercepting women early in their city residency would entice them into joining the YWCA to continue their character development with organizational

69 “Women Working in Station to Save Girls from Tempters,” Minneapolis Tribune, 6 January 1912. 70 Shutter et. al., Report of the Vice Commission of Minneapolis, 116. 71 “Women Working in Station to Save Girls from Tempters,” Minneapolis Tribune, January 6, 1912. 72 “Women Working in Station to Save Girls from Tempters,” Minneapolis Tribune, January 6, 1912. 225 guidance. Still, the city remained a threatening place for women and civic leaders would partner with social reformers in an effort to protect women in public and address problems posed by the presence of the world’s oldest occupation.

The Vice Report

Urban centers’ reputations as hostile environments for women sparked social and legal reform efforts. One of the major fears about women in cities, and a central tenet of white slavery reform, was that they would fall into prostitution. Between the turn of the century and the early years of World War I, cities across the country investigated prostitution and proposed countless solutions to the “vice” problem.73 In these vice reports, “reformers used white slavery stories to criticize police corruption, working-class amusements, consumerism, urbanization, the sexual double standard, male violence, women’s public roles, and immigration.”74 In 1910, Minneapolis mayor James Haynes ordered a study of vice in Minneapolis.

The fifteen-member Vice Commission included professors from the University of

Minnesota, public school officials, pastors, labor and employer representatives, social reformers, and physicians.75 In 1911, the Commission presented its findings. The final report contained critiques on many of the aforementioned issues and set up new opportunities for greater civic and reform interventions into the form and culture of the city and the lives of the working class. The report did not claim that prostitution could be eradicated, but it laid out a plan to develop a network of stewardship involving the city,

73 Donovan, Race, Gender, and Anti-vice Activism, 1887-1917, 1. 74 Donovan, Race, Gender, and Anti-vice Activism, 1887-1917, 2. 75 Shutter et. al., Report of the Vice Commission of Minneapolis, 7. 226

the University of Minnesota, and social reformers, to address the interconnected

structural problems that propagated vice. By segregating prostitution and maintaining a

low concentration of brothels in any one area, it could be kept below the limits of

toleration in Minneapolis and could continue to operate with limited impact on

Minneapolitans. Still, more redemptive places and programming would be required to

bring those who might engage in or with prostitution under the stewardship and

supervision of social reformers.

The report featured a brief overview of the state of prostitution and its (failed)

regulation in the past. Prostitution and gambling were at the heart of to the civic scandal

brought about by Mayor Doc Ames and his brother Fred, the police chief, which made

Minneapolis the subject of a Lincoln Steffens muckraking investigation in 1903.76 As

discussed in Chapter One, the Ames brothers allowed all manner of vice to proliferate

because they were receiving kickbacks from the institutions and individuals involved.

Doc Ames had been in power for his third non-consecutive term by 1902, when the city had more saloons than churches, and opium dens, prostitution, and gambling venues multiplied alongside them.77 The commission was tasked with preventing Minneapolis

from becoming a bawdy town and keeping it on track to fulfill the vision that boosters

imagined in the late-nineteenth century. The Vice Report focused solely on prostitution;

its central theme was asking how the city should regulate it, treat prostitutes, and prevent

young men and women from becoming interested in vice overall. The Committee

76 Lincoln Steffens, “The Shame of Minneapolis,” McClure’s (January 1903): 227-239. 77 Iric Nathanson, Minneapolis in the Twentieth Century: The Growth of an American City (St. Paul: Minnesota Historical Society Press, 2010), 44-45. 227

stressed that the city should accommodate women in public, and that any reform initiative

would involve adjustments to public space.

In its introduction, the report laid out three options for addressing vice. Each potential solution had a section dedicated to its pros and cons. The three courses of action were: (1) enforce the law, (2) tolerate it as inevitable, or (3) “repe[al] the laws against it, and pu[t] it upon a legal basis, licensing and regulating it, to end that it may be segregated and kept under medical supervision.”78 The Commission also sent out a survey

requesting input on the three recommendations to “representative citizens” – all male.79

The third option had significant support among both the Commission and the

“representative citizens.” The primary concern over its implementation, though, was the

location of the new red light district just after the old one had been dismantled. The Sixth

Ward’s vice “resorts” were cause for alarm not just because of the high concentration on

a single avenue, though. Most were located near an empty lot in which children played

and a building occupied by “about 150 families,” and so the argument for increasing

regulations against prostitution in the area was “rather in the nature of an abatement of a

local nuisance than a crusade against vice on moral grounds.” 80 One citizen suggested:

“Repeal Laws against social evil, license and regulate and keep under medical

supervision. Locate on Nicollet Island under City ownership.”81 In other words, the city should create a literal island of vice, adjacent to but physically separate from downtown.

Despite support for the legalizing recommendation, the commission determined that this was “a method foreign to the sentiments and feelings of the American people

78 Shutter et. al., Report of the Vice Commission of Minneapolis, 31. 79 Shutter et. al., Report of the Vice Commission of Minneapolis, 31. 80 Shutter et. al., Report of the Vice Commission of Minneapolis, 26. Italics in original 81 Shutter et. al., Report of the Vice Commission of Minneapolis, 32. 228

and repugnant to their moral sense.”82 There were also objections on the basis of medical inspection efficacy. The physicians on the Commission, one of whom, Mabel S. Ulrich, will be discussed later, argued that medical inspection of prostitutes (who were all assumed to be women) was treating only half of the problem. Because male patrons were not also being forced to undergo medical inspection, the spread of venereal diseases through prostitution could not be stopped with inspections of just the prostitutes.83 The

last compounding factor against legalizing it in one section of the city while prohibiting it

elsewhere concerned the impracticalities of enforcement under such a system. If this was,

in the view of the Commission, not the means by which prostitution would exist in

Minneapolis, the next best option was an informal “segregation.”

The Vice Commission sought practicable solutions to a “problem” that few

believed could ever be solved. Characterizing the presence of vice as a “nuisance” rather

than an abomination helped support the argument that tolerating it was the most effective

regulation provided that the city could ensure that it did not have negative effects on

children or families. For this to be successful, it had be kept separate from “good” areas:

Where vice is not segregated it tends to scatter. Respectable businesses and residence districts thus become infested with prostitutes who ply their trade with more or less secrecy. Their presence there is likely to contaminate young persons of both sexes who would not otherwise come into contact with them and constitute a neighborhood nuisance.84

It was, thus, safer for Minneapolitans to share a tacit agreement that prostitution, though a

82 Shutter et. al., Report of the Vice Commission of Minneapolis, 33. 83 Shutter et. al., Report of the Vice Commission of Minneapolis, 50. 84 Shutter et. al., Report of the Vice Commission of Minneapolis, 41. 229

moral evil, could not be ended and should be allowed in certain areas, with both police

enforcement and medical supervision, so long as it did not become a public nuisance. The

Commission acknowledged that there might be objections because “this would be

contrary to the law,” but ultimately argued: “‘Salus populi suprema lex,’ – the safety of the people is the highest law.”85 The concept, and its application in this instance, spoke to

the broader practices of civic stewardship. While the Commission believed that vice

could not be eliminated, it was motivated to find a way to allow it to continue while

limiting its negative influence on Minneapolitans.

The “tolerate and segregate” solution may have seemed the most benign, but it

meant that any woman on the streets could be suspected of moral indecency or of being a

target for white slavery. At the turn of the twentieth century, cities did not have many

places for women to be seen in public without being subject to judgment or questioning.

There were so-called “women’s miles,” which were “shopping streets that became

promenades where women placed themselves on display in appropriate costumes.”86

These were mostly daytime spaces and if women were there at night, it was expected that

they would be traveling with an escort. As women increasingly became a presence in the

urban public sphere, they “took to the streets in order to get to their destination.”87 The

expansion of public transit further enabled women to travel to cities and within them,

which would have significant spatial, not to mention economic impacts on the form of

downtowns, especially commercial districts.88 When between home and “women’s

85 Shutter et. al., Report of the Vice Commission of Minneapolis, 69. 86 Sarah Deutsch, Women and the City: Gender, Space, and Power in Boston, 1870-1940 (New York: Oxford University Press, 2000), 23. 87 Sewell, Women and the Everyday City, 1. 88 Sewell, Women and the Everyday City, 1-3. 230 miles” – both places where women could operate with fewer constrictions – women’s reputations were in peril. A woman walking alone in public was subject to

“strangers…reading her lone status as a badge of sexual misbehavior.”89 Walking on streets was close to, though clearly different from, street walking, but the chance for one to turn into the other was alarming for social reformers. The vice report contained a section on “street-walking” which claimed that since banning “saloons from harboring prostitutes…Street-Walking…has been greatly lessened as a factor in Public Prostitution

[sic].”90 While this was presented as an accomplishment, women on streets were still subjects of concern. The Commission noted that “there has been…an alarmingly large and increasing number of young girls in the streets at night, without proper escort.”91

Despite cities becoming more acceptable places for women, fears of amoral activities were mapped onto their bodies when they were in public.

The Vice Commission was careful to indicate the many factors that affected women who got involved in prostitution, and that women who decided to engage in vice often became trapped due to forced debts. The report stated that many women chose to enter into prostitution because of low wages in other occupations, a lack of education, and a lack of any positive programming available for them. In other words, women decided to become prostitutes because of a combination of damning structural causes.

Acknowledging that there was “a considerable number of women who are desirous of engaging in the business of prostitution,” the Commission urged greater protections for and support of women who became prostitutes.92 The report suggested that one of the

89 Meyerowitz, Women Adrift, 21. 90 Shutter et. al., Report of the Vice Commission of Minneapolis, 71. 91 Shutter et. al., Report of the Vice Commission of Minneapolis, 71. 92 Shutter et. al., Report of the Vice Commission of Minneapolis, 39, 40. 231

ways to help women leave prostitution was to change how they were punished for

breaking the law. “The hardened women who fall into the hands of the law as prostitutes

are not properly provided for,” the report stated, adding that “only the jails and

workhouses are open to them…such treatment is not corrective, but rather the reverse.”93

As an alternative to incarceration or a stint at the workhouse, the Committee suggested that the city should partner with a social agency to run a reformatory institution that would help restore morals to women who could, with such treatment, be saved rather than condemned.94 Social reformers thus placed themselves as the saviors of women in the

city. With their guidance, women could be reformed and restored as moral citizens.

The report’s recommendations emphasized the multi-faceted structural factors that allowed vice to endure and called for a network of stewardship to address them. Each of the suggestions contained a link to another concurrent civic or social reform initiative.

Members that comprised the Committee came from varying backgrounds, but combined their knowledge across many fields to prepare their suggestions on how best to treat the contributing factors of vice. They suggested that the best means of preventing women from entering into vice was not the elimination of prostitution, but to address the underlying structural factors that disproportionately affected women. As a result, legislation was not presented as a treatment to the vice problem; civic stewardship rather than law was touted as the best approach. There were four avenues for prevention: “(a) along Educational lines, (b) in larger Recreation facilities, (c) in better Economic conditions, and (d) in certain provision for institutional care.”95 These recommendations

93 Shutter et. al., Report of the Vice Commission of Minneapolis, 118. 94 Shutter et. al., Report of the Vice Commission of Minneapolis, 118. 95 Shutter et. al., Report of the Vice Commission of Minneapolis, 113. 232

were tied to the schools-as-social-centers movement discussed in Chapter Three, the

ongoing fight for better working conditions, and social reformers’ endeavors to provide

recreation options and spaces for workers during their leisure hours. The prevention of

vice, then, required city actors working together. Tolerance and segregation of

prostitution would only be a workable solution if resources were directed at saving young

women and men from engaging in vice.

Provision of alternative spaces and activities was a major component of

preventing vice from becoming a nuisance. The Commission believed that women who

entered into prostitution were influenced by immoral public entertainments and

environments, including everything from a boarding house used by prostitutes to the

entire streetscape:

One of the most disturbing phases of the present situation in Minneapolis, and an alarming social symptom, is the large number of young girls in the streets at night in the downtown sections, and in the business districts of the outgoing sections. They may be found in numbers loitering about the fruit stores, drug stores and other popular locations, jaunting hotel lobbies, crowding into the dance halls, the theaters and other amusement resorts; also in the saloon restaurants and the chop suey places and parading the streets and touring about in automobiles with men. It would not be fair to charge that all or a large proportion of these girls are prostitutes. It is perfectly plain, however, that many of those who are not, are on the direct road.96

Each of the places listed above involved consumerism taking place in spaces that were not operated or guided by reformers. The implication was that some of these women were already lost to the temptations of the city, but that the bulk of women who might be found

96 Shutter et. al., Report of the Vice Commission of Minneapolis, 76. 233 at fruit stores or in hotel lobbies could be saved if they were offered alternative venues in which to spend their leisure hours.

Redemptive Places

Social reformers and civic leaders in Minneapolis believed in environmental determinism, which linked spatial quality to character development. Commercial entertainments, often delivered in substandard spaces, sparked social reformers’ efforts to provide space and programming that would positively contribute to Minneapolitans’ development as citizens. The YWCA developed redemptive places, which Daphne Spain defined as “sites of assimilation,” that were intended to form the characters of their inhabitants, which she compared to factory floors producing “manufactured goods.”97

Settlement houses, YWCA and YMCA buildings, social center schools, and other redemptive places taught newcomers how to “negotiate the city” and “combin[ed] characteristics of public and private space” in a way that made them a “critical part of the urban fabric,” especially during the Progressive era.98 Many of the spaces they created offered opportunities for surveillance and stewardship of working-class people, particularly women workers. The role of space, so central to the housing reforms discussed in Chapter Four, was once again clear as reformers began developing their own venues for programming that would situate people in uplifting venues and deliver appropriate programming for character development.

97 Daphne Spain, How Women Saved the City (Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press, 2001), 24. Italics in original. 98 Spain, How Women Saved the City, 27. 234

With domestic spaces small and overcrowded, people increasingly went outside their homes to spend their growing leisure hours. Social reformers’ initial intention was to get working-class people into these curated, redemptive spaces so they would experience uplift simply by being there. However, this was too passive and was not reformative enough. Compounding these shortcomings was the drawback that passive uplift through simply occupying decorous spaces did not entice people to join associations and subscribe to their broader teachings. To combat this, social reformers – once again influenced by national and international movements – became more programmatic in their work as they adopted elements of popular entertainment and recreation to entice people into their spaces. Social reformers believed they could best minister to their target population, through “positive” programming delivered in ideal environments.

The Minneapolis YWCA as a Redemptive Place

The quality of interior spaces was a major issue for the YWCA. The group’s leaders clearly subscribed to elements of theories of environmental determinism and believed that placing working-class women in well-appointed spaces would contribute to their uplift and inspire upward aspirations. The redemptive places of YWCAs (like those of YMCAs) “represented organized attempts to construct social order in a time of intense demographic, technological, and cultural change.”99 As both organizations became more programmatic in their approach to reform, their spatial requirements also changed. This strategic transition was reflected in the Travelers’ Aid program, which moved to a house

99 Spain, How Women Saved the City, 20. 235 with enough space to accommodate dancing, reading, as well as sleeping quarters.

YWCA and YMCA spaces “had to fulfill a dual and sometimes contradictory mission: to attract [clients] and shape their characters.”100 Rooms also had to be balanced between being large enough to accommodate activities and small enough to provide clear sight lines that facilitated reformers’ surveillance over those in the building. In Minneapolis, the YWCA provided decorous rooms that emulated middle-class parlors in an attempt to entice working women into the organization’s guardianship.

In 1903, the YWCA opened a new building to serve a growing city. Located at 87

Seventh Street south, just one block off of Nicollet Avenue, design and ornamentation were deemed as crucial elements for reform. In its annual report, the YWCA included this comment and justification of the interior décor:

We have had a very occasional question as to whether we were not too elegant, and would not drive away the young women who may most need the benefits of our Association. If this question has ever come to any of you, I wish you might understand the situation and do and answer it with equal conviction. First – elegance that is harmony and appropriateness, ought always be elevating in its influence. I am sure I speak for our entire Furnishing Committee when I say that the one thing we strove after was to have substantial and durable things and not to get elaborate or ornate furnishings which could certainly be out of place in such a building…if I could tell you…how even the poorest girl who comes here has felt at home – or been made to feel so – and many have so feelingly expressed their appreciation of being able for the first time in their lives sharing and enjoying such a beautiful place.101

100 Paula Lupkin, Manhood Factories: YMCA Architecture and the Making of Modern Urban Culture (Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press, 2010), 61. Italics in original 101 “Annual Reports, 1903-06,” Social Welfare History Archives, Minneapolis YWCA Box 2: Annual Meetings, Annual Reports, Folder 1. Underlining in original document. 236

In other words, the elegant environment was just as important in supporting the YWCA’s

mission as the programming that would go on within it. The building’s parlor worked as a

bridge between domestic and public space, particularly for working-class women whose

homes likely did not have such amenities. In many ways, the YWCA treated its building

as a re-creation of a middle-class parlor, an area that functioned as a bridge between

public and private space and working-class realities and middle-class aspirations where

women “displayed their good taste.”102

Six interior photos of this YWCA illustrate the home-like nature of these spaces.

Figure 5.3 contains images depicting the main rooms. The lunchroom, intended to serve hundreds of girls at the lowest cost possible, was perhaps the plainest space, as its function dictated its form. Expressions of middle-class domestic taste are apparent.

Pictures hang on most of the walls and rugs cover much of the hardwood flooring. Heavy curtains serve to separate an informal and formal seating area, and painted panels divided the main room from another area. An upholstered bench with oversized pillows made the space between two columns more functional, and there were chairs set up throughout each room to cultivate a level of comfort that would entice patrons to stay longer.

102 Lupkin, Manhood Factories, 62. 237

Figure 5.3: Interior and exterior shots of the Minneapolis YWCA. Sources: Interior images from Minneapolis Photograph Collection at the Hennepin County Central Library, M5837, M5838, M5839, M5840, M5841, M5842, M5843; Exterior picture from Horace B. Hudson, A Half Century of Minneapolis (Minneapolis: Hudson Publishing Company, 1908), 77.

238

The Minneapolis YWCA’s emphasis on décor was found in other agencies across the United States that targeted women for their reform efforts.103 However, organizations

like the YMCA that targeted men did not have the same concern over furnishings and

embellishments, though form and materiality remained important in shaping character.

Typical YMCA buildings being erected across the country had “conservative styling and

understated formal qualities” with simple layouts, minimalist furnishings, and décor that

was “intended as a homosocial world in which an upright, principled masculinity would

be cultivated through contact with other men, rather than women.”104 While older YMCA

buildings had large halls that were intended to host events like religious revivals, those

built around the turn of the twentieth century had smaller rooms that could be used as

movie halls or gyms.105 Minneapolis's central YMCA, located near the warehouse district

on Tenth Street and Mary Place north, opened in 1892. Its exterior was more ornate than

the YWCA discussed above, but the interior was the reverse. The rooms themselves may

have been grand, but the furnishings and décor were comparatively sparse. The stairwell

featured exquisite wood paneling and the front parlor had seating areas, but overall the

interior mirrored a men’s club rather than a middle-class parlor. Both the YMCA and

YWCA had pianos in their parlors; men can be seen in Figure 5.4 standing and singing around it. The lunchrooms of the YWCA and YMCA share the most design overlap, though it appears that the YMCA lunchroom was tucked in a basement or an otherwise windowless area. In the lower left image of figure 5.4, a woman can be seen working

103 Marta Gutman, “Inside the Institution: The Art and Craft of Settlement Work at the Oakland New Century Club, 1895-1923,” Perspectives in Vernacular Architecture 8: People, Power, Place (2000): 253. 104 Lupkin, Manhood Factories, xv, xvi. 105 Lupkin, Manhood Factories, 115. In 1919, the YMCA opened a twelve-story structure that incorporated these formal changes at 96 South Ninth Street, just two blocks away from the 1903 YWCA building. Mary Ann Nord, The National Register of Historic Places in Minnesota: A Guide (St. Paul: Minnesota Historical Society Press, 2003). 239

behind the lunch counter serving the male patrons. The YWCA’s focus on interior décor

reflects a broader belief that well-appointed spaces were part of developing proper femininity in women who used the space, whereas the YMCA’s sparse yet functional furnishings were intended to instill “principled masculinity” in clients. Together, the institutions modeled the “proper” gender roles that middle-class reformers sought to inculcate in their working-class clients. Firmly situated in the belief that their spaces could improve women’s lives and help them develop good, moral characters,

Minneapolis YWCA leaders sought ways in which to get women into their doors. This mission intensified as the number of commercial entertainments and consumer venues grew and workers had more leisure hours to spend how they wished.

240

Figure 5.4: Interior and exterior images of the Minneapolis Central YMCA. Source: Interior images from Kautz Family YMCA Archives ya000379, ya000380, and ya 000384; Exterior image from Hudson, A Half Century of Minneapolis, 77.

Dr. Mabel S. Ulrich and Sex Education

One Vice Commission member made it her mission to deliver accurate sex

education and provide spaces for working women to receive affordable medical

treatment. Dr. Mabel S. Ulrich, a Cornell-trained physician moved to Minneapolis in the

early 1900s with her husband, also a physician. Upon arrival, she partnered with the

YWCA and began working in the city and as a traveling lecturer. Her perspective was clear in the Vice report. She distrusted legislation as an agent of change and argued that

241 only a social education could strengthen people’s morals to the point that they could better resist temptation.106 She also believed that men needed as much sex education as women because their ignorance disproportionately hurt women. Ulrich’s position on sex education set her apart from many social reformers of the time. She believed that preadolescent children should be spoken to directly and frankly about how their bodies worked and should be informed on the mechanics of sex and reproduction.107 One historian stated that “Ulrich’s pamphlets resembled Margaret Sanger’s sex-education materials targeting working-class women.”108 Ulrich’s work was not judgmental and she made no public endorsement of actions like sterilization that had public support elsewhere. In addition to being a traveling lecturer and serving on city and state commissions, Ulrich also helped to open a dispensary for working women and penned a series of sex education pamphlets during World War I.

In 1910, Ulrich and the YWCA partnered to open a redemptive place dedicated to women’s health. The Working Women’s Evening Dispensary was open to “every girl who yearns for association or is in need of medical care.”109 Located above Voegeli’s drugstore on the corner of Washington and Hennepin avenues, it was open until 10pm

(figure 5.5). This location was near many women’s workplaces and was not too distant from the theaters on Hennepin Avenue. As can be seen in figure 5.6, Voegeli’s was located across the street from Donaldson’s department store, offering working-class women free space in a district focused on consumerism. Staying open until 10pm meant

106 Mabel S. Ulrich, “Constructive Preventive Work through Moral Education,” Journal of Social, Sanitary, and Moral Prophylaxis 6 (1915): 53-54. 107 Ulrich, “Constructive Preventive Work through Moral Education,” especially 53-55. 108 Robin E. Jensen, Dirty Words: The Rhetoric of Public Sex Education, 1870-1924 (Chicago: University of Illinois Press, 2010), 88. 109 “Free Dispensary open for Girls,” Minneapolis Journal, January 4, 1910. 242 that women would be able to spend time there after work, but it also meant that women leaving the dispensary would be traveling at night, possibly without escort. In addition to access to low-cost doctors and dentists, the dispensary offered recreation space, domestic science courses, and had “some one [sic]…present each evening to tell [women] how to care for their health.”110 The dispensary satisfied many of the concerns Minneapolis social reformers had voiced: by giving young working women a non-commercial space in which they could nurture their moral development under proper guidance. Under Ulrich’s guidance, the dispensary grew in popularity and was considered a successful YWCA partnership program.

Figure 5.5: Voegeli’s Drug Store. Source: Minneapolis Photograph Collection at the Hennepin County Central Library, M1680.

110 “Free Dispensary open for Girls,” Minneapolis Journal, January 4, 1910. 243

Figure 5.6: Donaldson’s Department Store, with Voegeli’s visible in the bottom right corner. Source: Minnesota Historical Society Archives MH5.9 MP3.1D

Teaching about sex and corporeal health in the early-twentieth century was not without challenges, though. Advocates of frank, straightforward discussions about body and sexual health faced resistance from people who did not believe such interventions were necessary or even appropriate. As venereal disease rates rose in the early twentieth century, there was increasing public concern over the epidemic, which became “one of the vectors along which modern Americans were drawn into a widespread public conversation about the transmission of sexual knowledge.”111 Venereal diseases were still seen as the result of interactions with immoral women, especially prostitutes, engaging

111 Julian B. Carter, “Birds, Bees, and Venereal Disease: Toward an Intellectual History of Sex Education,” Journal of the History of Sexuality 10:2 (April 2001): 216. 244 with men ignorant of the consequences.112 However, Ulrich always made sure to note that men had to share the venereal disease burden. This belief formed the basis of her objections to the assumption that semi-regular medical inspection of prostitutes would make the occupation completely safe. Elements of this objection appear in the Vice

Report as well, likely due to her presence on the Commission. Ulrich also argued that men needed to change their behaviors to be more like those they expected from women, stating that:

In the past when women were considered as much men’s property as their cattle, men demanded that they should use far more self-control than they ever expected from themselves. Today we know that men must be taught to live just as cleanly and morally as the girls they expect to marry.113

The inclusion emphasized men’s roles in preventing or spreading venereal disease, and placed the moral and physical hygiene burden on them as much as on women.

When World War I erupted, venereal disease rates skyrocketed among the British and Canadian Expeditionary Forces, and the issue had not yielded by the time the

Americans entered the war. The Canadian Expeditionary Force “considered VD a moral and disciplinary problem as well as a disease,” and commonly quarantined affected soldiers “behind barbed wire.”114 The men were shamed, but the blame was placed on

“England’s army of industrious harlots” who had corrupted Canada’s upstanding young men.115 The common action of blaming women for men’s contraction of venereal

112 Ulrich, “Uncle Sam Needs Leaders,” 14. 113 Ulrich, “Uncle Sam Needs Leaders,” 12. 114 Desmond Morton, When Your Number’s Up: The Canadian Soldier in the First World War (Toronto: Random House of Canada, 1993), 200-201. 115 Morton, When Your Number’s Up, 200. 245

diseases was one of Ulrich’s central causes, and she capitalized on the war’s

circumstances to educate the public. “In the past,” Ulrich wrote, “we have had the excuse,

such as it was, of ignorance” on matters of sex, but “today the war has brought us face to

face not with theories, but with unescapable facts and figures. The time for silence and drifting is over. The war has forced the issue of sex education.”116

Ulrich penned a number of pamphlets during and after the war that connected

sexual knowledge with acts of citizenship. In 1918, Ulrich joined a panel of medical and

social welfare experts to write “A Reasonable Sex Life for a Man,” which recommended

that men seek “friendly association with women of high character,” arguing that men and

women needed to work together to direct the “sex instinct” into materially productive

actions that would support rather than detract from the war effort.117 Together, they could

“transform” their “sex energy” into the caring for children, “the development of civic

spirit,” and “the informing and strengthening of patriotic purpose.”118 “So a man’s sex life,” the pamphlet concluded, “becomes part of his reasonable service as a citizen and a lover of his kind.”119 Ulrich’s second pamphlet, “Mothers of America” published in

1919, stated that proper sex education was part of mothers’ “patriotic duty.”120 In her

work with the YWCA, writing pamphlets, and in opening the Minneapolis dispensary,

Ulrich’s educational stewardship efforts were spread across many arenas. She was able to

reach large audiences with some fairly provocative messages about the importance of sexual education and changing expectations for men and women. The dispensary would

116 Mabel S. Ulrich, “Mothers of America,” Minnesota State Board of Health, Division of Venereal Diseases (St. Paul, 1919) 4-5. Bold in original. 117 Minnesota State Board of Health, “A Reasonable Sex Life for a Man,” (St. Paul, 1918), 6. Minnesota Historical Society Archives HQ56. 118 Minnesota State Board of Health, “A Reasonable Sex Life for a Man,” 6. 119 Minnesota State Board of Health, “A Reasonable Sex Life for a Man,” 7. 120 Ulrich, “Mothers of America,” 15. 246 become a model for other YWCA programs that sought to attract working women during their leisure hours. Creating redemptive places and developing programming that would entice workers during leisure hours became an even more critical project as leisure hours increased. However, at the end of the nineteenth century, a new type of consumer venue populated Minneapolis's downtown that would develop respectable public space for women of all classes.

Department Stores and A Landscape of the Urban Culture of Consumption

Department stores developed a respectable consumer environment in downtown

Minneapolis. As Hennepin Avenue developed into a theater and entertainment street,

Nicollet Avenue transformed from a palatial residential district into a High Street that was a destination for Minneapolitans and tourists alike. In the 1870s, there was only limited development. Within the next decade, Nicollet Avenue emerged as the city’s main “fashion and retail center” that usurped Washington Avenue as the new “haunt of the exclusive shopper.”121 By the last decade of the nineteenth century, “large office structures” as well as retail developments and industry “were encroaching on neighborhoods that only a decade earlier had been largely residential.”122 Development of these former residential areas went quickly, and real estate agents encouraged the growth.

A 1902-1903 real estate brochure demonstrated the increasing demand for the area that was then “Upper Nicollet” but would, as little as three years later, be a part of the city’s developed core. “Upper Nicollet values are increasing daily…and this corner is a most

121 Baymiller, “History of an Avenue,” 9; Minneapolis Golden Jubilee, 1867-1917: A History of Fifty Years of Civic and Commercial Progress (Minneapolis: Tribune Job Printing Company, The Lakeland Press, 1917), 32. 122 Larry Millet, Lost Twin Cities (St. Paul: Minnesota Historical Society Press, 1992), 114. 247

valuable one” it stated in its advertisement of a set of three buildings with stores on the

bottom and residential rentals on the top two floors as “very cheap” for $20,000.123

Although the buildings were not palatial, they were filled with potential as they had a 66-

foot frontage on Nicollet and “old tenants have occupied these stores and flats for many

years…the trade of adjoining flats and residences guarantee constant rental of stores at

increasing prices.”124 Department stores and white-collar businesses were the main agents of Nicollet Avenue’s transformation. High-end façades and fashionable décor exuded respectability. Display windows transformed sidewalks into vectors of passive consumerism and enticement. Minneapolis-based Donaldson’s and Dayton’s department stores grew from small buildings in which a small selection of goods were sold to grand structures that provided a physical home to the culture of consumerism in the city.

Donaldson’s was one of the first department stores on Nicollet Avenue. The building’s most distinguishing feature, a glass dome, became Minneapolitans’ shorthand for the store: the Glass Block. The original Glass Block was “a one story building, copied from one in Chicago…[with] a floor, some pillars a roof and show windows at the street.”125 Donaldson’s did not remain a one-story shop for long. By 1884, the building

expanded to cover the entire block between Sixth and Seventh streets on Nicollet, and its

glass dome was elevated to the sixth floor, providing patrons with a view of the city. Four

years later, Donaldson’s underwent another expansion. This time, local architects Long

and Kees were involved and worked to make the building larger without impeding floor

123 Edmund G. Walton, Edmund G. Walton’s Illustrated Register of Residential Estates to be Sold (Minneapolis, 1902), 23. Minnesota Historical Society Archives HD277.E35 1902. Twenty thousand dollars in 1903 currency roughly equates to over $540,000 in 2015. http://www.usinflationcalculator.com/ (accessed February 21, 2015). 124 Walton, Houses for Sale, 23. 125 Mitchell, “Growth of the Retail District,” Minneapolis Golden Jubilee, 1867-1917, 32. 248 space with intrusive supports. Using steel and brick as exterior materials, the firm was able to have floors with up to twenty feet between columns, which gave the space an expansive feel unlike any other building in Minneapolis at the time.126 The Glass Block became a curiosity; Minneapolitans “stared in wonder” at the building that had “nothing visible in the way of walls.”127 For almost two decades, Donaldson’s was the premiere shopping destination on Nicollet Avenue, billing itself not only as a store but also as a must-see for tourists.128

By 1903, Donaldson’s had competition from a new local department store.

George Dayton had been a clearinghouse operator in southwest Minnesota, but real estate speculation got him involved in Minneapolis's growth. Beginning with the construction of an eight-story building at Sixth and Nicollet in 1893, Dayton continued buying land and buildings along Nicollet until he “owned more…frontage than any other one man.”129 He established Dayton’s, a department store, in 1903 at the corner of Third

Street and Nicollet, though it later moved to be kitty corner from its competitor (figure

5.7).130 Initially, Dayton’s did not have the showy architecture that made Donaldson’s famous, but instead built its reputation by pioneering interior design layouts, advertising, and providing a variety of goods at widely varying price points.

126 Donald R. Torbert, “The Advent of Modern Architecture in Minnesota,” Journal of the Society of Architectural Historians 13:1 (March 1954): 19. 127 Mitchell, “Growth of the Retail District,” Minneapolis Golden Jubilee, 1867-1917, 32. 128 J.S. Mitchell, “Growth of the Retail District: Department Stores are Monuments to Early Efforts,” in Minneapolis Golden Jubilee, 1867-1917, 124. 129 James Gray, You Can Get It At Dayton’s (Minneapolis: n.p., 1962), 33. And Minneapolis Golden Jubilee, 1867-1917, 95. 130 Gray, You Can Get It At Dayton’s, 36. 249

Figure 5.7: Dayton’s Department Store (left) on Nicollet Avenue. Source: Minneapolis Photograph Collection at the Hennepin County Central Library M0094 Many of the stores on Nicollet Avenue featured the hallmark of commercial institutions: window displays. Large windows “dramatically altered the appearance of city streets” and reflected the growing “desire to show things off” while also whetting desires of potential consumers walking by.131 New department store buildings had

“exteriors…[that] presented a massive and impressive spectacle to the consumer,” and

Dayton’s and Donaldson’s bore similar architectural hallmarks such as ground-level window displays, welcoming entrances, and simple edifice decorations intended to exude a high-class character to passers-by.132 They appealed to passersby on the sidewalk,

131 Leach, “Transformation in a Culture of Consumption,” 325. 132 Susan Porter Benson, Counter Cultures: Saleswomen, Managers, and Customers in American Department Stores, 1890-1940 (Urbana: University of Illinois Press, 1986), 17. 250 extending the store’s influence outward and creating points of “interchange” that mixed consumerism and the simple act of walking downtown.133 Display windows typically had an opaque background that hid the store’s interior, making it a sort of “autonomous space” the designs of which “acknowledged the importance of the sidewalk by making the line between the inside of the shop and the sidewalk ambiguous.”134 Women walking on sidewalks outside of department stores were encouraged to imagine themselves wearing or using the items on display as they “examined the goods…as well as their own reflections in the plate glass windows and the mirrors cannily placed to pander to their vanity.”135

These designs were intentional and did not appear in other types of downtown buildings. For example, one of Minneapolis's main wholesalers that survived the department store boom was Butler Brothers, located a few blocks north of Dayton’s and

Donaldson’s on First Avenue and Sixth Street north (figure 5.8). Butler Brothers opened in 1906, with an exterior featuring “arches and corbeled parapets” that gave a “grave and severe heaviness” to the building which had “masonry walls and ‘mill construction’ interior supports carried on concrete footings.”136 This construction meant that, unlike

Donaldson’s which used steel supports, floor space at Butler Brothers was more consistently intruded upon by supports and therefore the same open, airy feeling of the department store could not be mimicked in the warehouse. The building had eight storeys, two basements, and “a total area of 556,000 square feet” – just shy of four times

133 Wolfgang Schivelbusch, Disenchanted Night: The Industrialization of Light in the Nineteenth Century (Berkley: The University of California Press, 1988), 146. 134 Sewell, Women and the Everyday City, 34-36. 135 Benson, Counter Cultures, 18. 136 Torbert, “The Advent of Modern Architecture in Minnesota,” 22-23. 251 larger than Dayton’s at the time.137 Butler Brothers was not concerned with designs that would attract consumers, as it sold “no goods at retail,” only at wholesale to merchants.138 The massive exterior and crowded interior of the Butler Brothers building could not compare to Dayton’s or Donaldson’s, which were intentionally designed with open floors and street appeal (figure 5.9). These differences set Nicollet Avenue apart from other downtown corridors, defining it as a fashionable consumer district as well as a respectable environment for women. These small details were enough to make Nicollet into a fashionable shopping avenue. Further interior design tweaks were used to lure customers into one store over another.

Figure 5.8: Streetscape of Butler Brothers Warehouse. Source: Minneapolis Photograph Collection at the Hennepin County Central Library, M0534.

137 Gray, You Can Get It At Dayton’s, 55; Minneapolis Golden Jubilee, 1867-1917, 179. 138 Minneapolis Golden Jubilee, 1867-1917, 179. 252

Figure 5.9: The Nicollet Avenue corner shared by Dayton’s (left) and Donaldson’s (right), with bustling street and sidewalk traffic. Source: Minneapolis Photograph Collection at the Hennepin County Central Library, R109.

In an effort to make his store stand out, George Dayton hired Charles Larson as a designer to help in developing window displays and ad campaigns for newspapers and to guide Dayton in figuring out the best way to divide the store’s floors.139 Originally, the floors were laid out in the following way:

139 Gray, You Can Get It At Dayton’s, 45. 253

[First floor had] linens, wash goods, bedding, silks, woolen goods, veiling, laces, ribbons, notions, gloves, hosiery, shoes, candy, knit underwear, men’s furnishings, jewelry, flowers, umbrellas, leather goods, drugs, stationery. [Second floor had] departments devoted to patterns, lingerie, blouses, coats, suits, dresses, millinery, petticoats, children’s wear and infants’ clothing. [Third floor had] rugs, draperies, and the executive offices. [Fifth floor had] stock rooms, and into a corner of this space small tables were introduced with a slightly furtive air, in the midst of so much formidable enterprise, as places where employes [sic] might eat their noon meals.140

Although convenient for shoppers, the problem with this layout was that the goods that women purchased most frequently were available on the main floor, which meant that they had few reasons to go to other floors unless looking for something specific. By the early 1910s, Dayton’s expanded and had three street-facing fronts – one on Nicollet and one each on Seventh and Eighth streets – and had added eight floors that were serviced by six elevators.141 With expansion came a redesign of floor space; “the main floor [was] devoted to the display of dry goods and all the little things that appeal to the better sensibilities of the lady shopper” as women’s and children’s clothing as well as millinery moved up to the third floor.142 This arrangement meant that if women came in for clothing for themselves, their husbands, or their children, they had to pass these petits choses on their way to upper floors, thus tempting them with unintended purchases.

Inside the store, shoppers experienced an airy atmosphere with “blouses…displayed on low, wide tables making it easy to fully view all that was available.”143 These expansions and re-designs were only made possible because women were increasingly involved in

140 Gray, You Can Get It At Dayton’s, 39. The fourth floor was not mentioned; it is likely that the floor was leased out to other vendors. 141 Gray, You Can Get It At Dayton’s, 68, 75. 142 Minneapolis Golden Jubilee. 1867-1917, 95. And Gray, You Can Get It At Dayton’s, 68. 143 Mary Firestone, Images of America: Dayton’s Department Store (Charleston: Arcadia Publishing, 2007), 28. 254 public consumer spaces. Department stores were safe zones for women, whether they were shopping, working, dining, or simply enjoying a public space that catered to them.

That women were the crux of the success of his business was not lost on George

Dayton. He believed that his store should appeal to shoppers of all classes. As a result of this conviction, the store made:

an effective bid for the patronage of the woman who could afford to buy her costumes from the coutouriers of Paris. At the same time it must appeal to the housewife operating on a moderate budget. And still it must not neglect the woman, the needs of whose family were numerous, whose allowance out of the wages of her husband must be stretched as far as possible.144

This approach is what gave Dayton’s a true edge on Donaldson’s, which remained more fixed on middle- and upper-class clientele; with these accommodations, Dayton’s made this new consumerism an acceptable activity for respectable women of all classes. While

Dayton’s upper floors were dedicated to the newest arrivals, the basement was a very separate entity both in space and in patrons. Termed the “bargain basement,” the area featured off-cuts and scraps of material, last-season fashions, and close-out items at steep discounts.145 The bargain basement was not hidden or tucked away. In fact, the store built an annual “inventory sale” and large advertising campaign around it. Like many other department stores of the day, Dayton’s used innovative newspaper ads to publicize their event. Ahead of the 1903 sale, Dayton’s took out a series of ads in local newspapers that targeted women and promoted the deals on which thrifty shoppers could capitalize:

144 Gray, You Can Get It At Dayton’s, 71. 145 Gray, You Can Get It At Dayton’s, 59. 255

On the first day of the campaign there appeared, clear across a page of the Minneapolis Tribune, a strip two inches wide, left completely blank except for the figure of a woman moving into view from the right hand side with a great air of resolution. On the following day in the same expanse of white space three women were visible. On the third day there were four; on the fourth, a man urgently hurrying his wife along had been added to the parade; on the fifth some children had appeared and the pageant half- filled the page. Next day it was a little longer still and the word ‘Monday’ with a question mark above further teased the attention of the shoppers…the advertisement on the actual opening day engulfed a two- page spread with a picture of shoppers surging now across two full pages. The columns below were filled with the listings of bargains.146

The ad was innovative and, in its depiction of women leading the way, demonstrated that the company was aware of its core patrons. It took until the fourth day for a man to show up in the ad, and even then he was “hurrying” his wife along to the sale. To add another special element to such sales, free food was also offered to shoppers; the most economical of whom could get bargains on material objects while “saving” money by getting a free meal of “cream lobster with brown bread and fruit salad.”147 Over the next decade, Dayton’s developed “a steady, systematic program of advertising in the daily newspapers, by direct mail, and later by radio” so that “the citizens think of Dayton’s when they had shopping on their minds and talk about it after they had visited.”148

Further enticing women to Nicollet Avenue was the addition of lunch and tea rooms in department stores. These created entirely new spaces in which women could enjoy public city life. They were part of department store owners’ overall strategy to bring people into their businesses. As stores expanded both in size and merchandise variety, “customers’ visits naturally lengthened as they chose from more items…and

146 Gray, You Can Get It At Dayton’s, 40-41. 147 Gray, You Can Get It At Dayton’s, 41. 148 Gray, You Can Get It At Dayton’s, 79. 256

examined…beguiling novelties.”149 In an effort to attract an ever broader public into the

stores as well as to get people to spend more time and money once inside, “store

managers began to provide facilities” such as “lavatories with the most modern fittings,

richly appointed lounges supplied with newspapers and stationery, restaurants catering to

a woman’s palate.”150 Tea rooms featured light menus and “were places where…women

could be comfortable working in public and where society could accept their earning a

living.”151 It was also a place where women, those who worked and those who visited

stores from their middle- or upper-class dwellings, were situated in idealized

environments that supposedly displayed the most sophisticated tastes.

Donaldson’s became “one of the first merchandisers in the country to combine

dining and shopping.”152 There were six eating areas, each with distinctive décor: the

Gentleman’s Café, the Dutch room, and “the Ivory, Gothic, Japanese, and Silver Grey rooms.”153 The Silver Grey room was among the most ornate; lit by electricity, it also had natural light “filtered through stained glass which depicted geometricized trees.”154 The

Japanese Room featured “sugi panels” and “Japanese architectural ornaments for the doors and windows.”155 This room played to middle- and upper-class interests in “exotic” décor, but was not intended to be a simulation of Japanese culture or experiences.156

149 Benson, Counter Cultures, 20. 150 Benson, Counter Cultures, 20. 151Cynthia A. Brandimarte, “‘To Make the Whole World Homelike’: Gender, Space, and America’s Tea Room Movement,” Winterthur Portfolio 30:1 (Spring 1995): 1. 152 Michael Conforti, ed., Art and Life on the Upper Mississippi, 1890-1915 (Cranbury, NJ: Associated University Presses, Inc., 1994), 76. 153 Conforti, ed., Art and Life on the Upper Mississippi, 76. 154 Conforti, ed., Art and Life on the Upper Mississippi, 76. 155 Conforti, ed., Art and Life on the Upper Mississippi, 76. 156 Sewell discussed the emergence of ethnic cafeterias, diners, restaurants, and tea rooms in turn-of-the- century San Francisco. However, these establishments were primarily patronized by white, middle-class people looking to “slum” or have a superficial experience in a Chinese, Japanese, Mexican, or Bohemian environment. Sewell, Women in the Everyday City, 84-87. 257

Donaldson’s tea room “was known as a special place to lunch, with sparkling

chandeliers, elegant furniture, and fine linens.”157 It, like other tea rooms, was as much a place to see as to be seen. Dayton’s also had a tea room on the fourth floor, in addition to a “Ladies Lounge” that was known simply as the “Rest Room,” which was a “spacious retreat for women shoppers who often stayed for longer periods to read, write a letter, or simply relax,” and a “men’s grill” on an unspecified floor, though likely it was not on any of the floors that were primarily targeted toward women shoppers.158 Women of different classes might share these spaces, but that there were multiple eateries that catered to different price points suggests that diners would be separated more often than not. The

Ladies Lounge would have catered to all women who entered the store, though.

Eateries extended the purpose of department stores and gave women a new, respectable venue to patronize. Going out for lunch was not only fashionable, but a simultaneous demonstration of conspicuous consumption and conspicuous leisure. The

Minneapolis Journal wrote on the “fad” of women eating lunch in public in 1902, declaring that “there are two classes of women who take their luncheons at the tea rooms and restaurants. One is made up of the business women who go every day and the other includes those who are down town shopping or who have come especially for lunch as a change from the home meal.”159 Many women continued to bring meals from home, but

supplemented them with items like coffee purchased at a tea room, lunch counter, or

restaurant.

157 Pat Kennedy Crump, “Florence Nelson Kennedy, Fashion Illustrator,” Minnesota History 53:3 (Fall 1992): 90. 158 Firestone, Images of America, 31. 159 “The Woman Who Lunches Down Town: Her Fads and Ways and the Habits – More Sensible as a Rule than the Pie-Loving Man,” Minneapolis Journal, April 12, 1902. 258

Furnishing dining areas in department stores helped change Minneapolis's downtown landscape for women of all classes. It helped legitimize Nicollet Avenue as a respectable place for women to be seen regardless of if they were working class and on a lunch break or elite and out for a day of shopping that would include a stop in the Grey

Room. Downtown also became a home for many working women in Minneapolis. By

1919, almost one-third of women workers there lived “away from home” in apartments or boarding or rooming houses, and the “central” area that included downtown had the highest numbers of women living on their own.160 Although many women competently managed their budgets, reporting on these new spending habits still emphasized flightiness and indulgence:

If a woman wants to economize she invariably cuts down her luncheons. There is one little woman who has been going without sweets for a month to pay for a chiffon she had no business to buy, for it cost more money than she could afford, and was not in the line of necessities. But it was pretty and a woman can eat bread and milk with equanimity if she is sure of her frills and furbelows. This particular woman was a month without ices and cream puffs and when the chiffon was paid for, she went to the nearest tearoom, for it was lunch time and ordered a meal that cost half her savings. Women can economize to a certain limit and then they break out into extravagance that sadly reduces their accounts.161

In this excerpt, it is apparent that although this woman was practicing her own economic strategy to consume as she wished, overall women were considered to be too fickle to be consistent with money management. While women lunching was generally acceptable,

160 “Special Studies, District + Race Maps,” Social Welfare History Archives, YWCA 1919 Volume II, Folder 3, 89. 161 “The Woman Who Lunches Down Town,” Minneapolis Journal, April 12, 1902. At the turn of the twentieth century, women were thought to have undeveloped palates and it was commonly believed that they had an aversion to meat. Common foods available on menus of the time included “ornamental salads and desserts” that included fish, poultry, or eggs but rarely red meat. See: Laura Shapiro, Perfection Salad: Women and Cooking at the Turn of the Century (New York: Modern Library, 2001), 6, 95. 259 the practice was still politicized by observers. The article portrayed the woman as a wage-earner who, despite her budgeting, consumed irresponsibly and above her means. It also provided an example of public invidious comparison, as it praised this woman for consuming, but chastised the strategy she used to ensure she could afford the purchase.

Even in the simple act of eating a noon meal publicly, women’s leisure time and spending habits were contested.

New sites of consumption and leisure were also workplaces for a largely female workforce, and their living and leisure space often existed in close proximity to their workplace. Working-class women were able to engage in public consumerism because they were earning wages in jobs located in places such as factories, small shops, and department stores. Their work and their increasingly public presence sparked a reform effort to improve the spaces within which women worked that would complement the ongoing efforts to address public entertainment and consumer venues.

Reform in the Woman’s Workplace

The YWCA and employers at companies with high numbers of women workers both saw opportunity in working women’s need for a noon meal that would address the economics of buying lunch while developing a new forum for reformers to get their messages out. Some large companies with largely-female workforces devoted space that was separate from sites of production for women to occupy during and after work hours.

Dayton’s, Munsingwear, and Wyman, Partridge & Co. all made formal changes to their buildings in order to provide spaces for their female employees to lunch as well as to recreate. Dayton’s provided an employee lunchroom in an area on the second floor of the

260

building – adjacent to classrooms for employee development – in addition to the low-cost

lunch counter located in the “bargain basement.”162 Wyman, Partridge & Co., like

Munsingwear, was a textile factory and the majority of workers were women. One newspaper article commended the company for its comparatively high wages and safe working spaces. In the basement, there was an area in which employees would eat their lunches.163 The lunchroom served 420 “girls” at once and meals consisted of “two ham or

other meat sandwiches, bread, pickles, pie, fruit of the season and coffee” at a cost of 10

cents.164 The room was “painted white” and, it was noted, “like all the remainder of the building, the sanitary conditions are perfect”165 There was no note of ornate furniture,

exotic wallpaper, or cream puffs and ices being on the menu. Unlike the decorous eateries

of department stores, these lunchrooms put function ahead of form. Both Munsingwear

and Wyman, Partridge & Co openly linked these improvements in form and service to

attempting to invest in women to keep them as long-term employees or to entice them to return to the company after any breaks in working.

The same notions of benevolent stewardship that governed the flour mills’ management strategies appeared in these three companies. Munsingwear, which changed its name from the Northwest Knitting Company, went to great lengths to provide social space and service to its workers. In a 1919 study, the YWCA listed the factory as an area of concern because so many young women living on their own worked there, and

162 Gray, You Can Get It At Dayton’s, 82; Kristal Leebrick, Dayton’s: A Twin Cities Institution (Charleston: The History Press, 2013), 28. 163 “Wyman, Partridge & Co. Solve the Problem of Labor Supply by Furnishing a Big, Cheerful Workroom, Paying Good Wages and Taking Care of the Factory Girls’ Comfort and Safety,” Minneapolis Journal, July 22, 1906. 164 “Wyman, Partridge & Co. Solve the Problem,” Minneapolis Journal, July 22, 1906. 165 “Wyman, Partridge & Co. Solve the Problem,” Minneapolis Journal, July 22, 1906. 261

suggested that increased resources and guidance was needed for this population.166

Perhaps to assuage these fears, Munsingwear published a “yearbook” that celebrated the

company’s technological and social advances. One of the major themes throughout was

demonstrating that the Munsingwear factory was a respectable place that attended to

women workers’ development. The company committed space to a recreation room, rest

room, infirmary, and classrooms in which “social services” were delivered to employees.

Figure 5.10 is a picture of the “Employment Department” located in one corner of the recreation room. In the forefront, women are seated around a table and several of them

are flipping through what appears to be a magazine or newspaper. In the background, five

women sit lined against the wall under American flag bunting and a fixture on the wall

with a Bald Eagle figure at the top. Munsingwear did offer Americanization programs,

and considering the décor of this particular section of the recreation room this appears to

be where they took place. On the far left, and in an oval insert, is Miss Frances Little, the

Employment Manager, who interviewed potential Munsingites. This area was under her

supervision, and Little’s job was to advise prospective employees about which job might

suit them best.167

166 YWCA Survey 1919, Volume 3 “Statistical Tables, Lists, and Scheduled,” Social Welfare History Archives, Box 10 “Program Records,” Folder 4. 167 The Success of Well Doing (Minneapolis: Munsingwear Corporation, 1921), 39. Hennepin County History Museum Archives.7. 262

Figure 5.10: Employment Department of the Munsingwear factory. Source: The Success of Well Doing, 6.

There were other service rooms available in the complex, including an in-house

dentist and doctor, both services the company provided for free.168 Of course, while

Munsingwear touted this as a benefit for employees, employer-provided medical services presented privacy concerns. Although these services were free for employees, there were undoubtedly been instances when Munsingwear workers would prefer to patronize

Ulrich’s dispensary rather than the medical department at work. Munsingwear also provided a rest room, recreation room, and library for workers to enjoy during breaks and after their shifts were complete. As seen in figure 5.11, these spaces were clean but not as opulent as a department store dining room and less domestic than the lunch room at the

YWCA. With high ceilings and visible beams, electrical tracts, heating pipes, and fire

168 The Success of Well Doing, 42-44. 263 sprinklers, the recreation room had an institutional feel that likely served as a reminder to women using it that they were at work. At noon, an orchestra “made up entirely of

Munsingites” played to women eating their lunches.169

169 The Success of Well Doing, 39. 264

Figure 5.11: Interior images from Munsingwear; from top to bottom: rest room, recreation room, and library rest room, recreation room, and library. Source: Success in Well Doing, 36, 40, 46.

265

The company joined in the broader network of stewardship that sought to supply

space and programming for Minneapolitans. Munsingwear stated that “an enterprise

thrives only as it is able to produce through its workers a production of the best quality.

The workers, as individuals, produce ‘quality’ work only when they work in co-operative

harmony under wholesome and happy surroundings.”170 This sentiment echoed broader

stewardship efforts in the city. It could be seen in boosters’ vision of an economically

successful and aesthetically pleasing city, flour mill owners’ employer-run unions, the school-as-social-center movement, the Minneapolis Civic and Commerce Association’s work on housing, and in the YWCA’s own documents on reform work. Throughout the city in the early 1900s, the provision and condition of space was treated as a critical concern for keeping Minneapolitans moral and making Minneapolis a model metropolis.

Providing lunch and recreation space was part of emergent management practices

that extended the network of stewardship into work places. Like Munsingwear, Dayton’s

was dedicated to guiding its employees’ development. George Dayton subscribed to the

notion of benevolent stewardship, which was made apparent in his efforts to push the

idea of family and fellowship both among his employees and in the broader community.

Teetotaler and strictly religious George Dayton believed that he could guide his

employees’ development into respectable women through company-provided

entertainments within the store and beyond. The company held “parties…dinners… [and]

impromptu entertainments” for its employees in the store as well as sponsoring “baseball

teams, bowling teams, glee clubs, [and] orchestras” for employees to participate in on their own time. Between the in-house entertainments and after-work organized activities,

170 The Success of Well Doing, 7. 266

Dayton’s tried to steer its employees away from the movie houses, saloons, or dance halls.171 There was to be no wondering, as Elizabeth Wheeler did, whether Dayton’s saleswomen went to brothels or took in seamy commercial entertainments in their leisure hours, because the company offered ample programming and offered stewardship at and away from work. Of course, like Munsingwear’s stewardship efforts, this guidance was part of marketing Dayton’s as a respectable place for women to work as well as to patronize. In addition to recreation and entertainments, Dayton’s offered schooling to its employees. Ima Winchell Stacy, George Dayton’s sister-in-law, developed a

“commercial school” for Dayton’s employees. It began as an experiment, and eventually

New York University would borrow the program to create the School of Retailing.

During the three-year program, employee-students attended two hours of class weekly for three terms a year.172 The school:

undertook in every way to maintain the atmosphere of a good ‘prep’ institution. Some of its courses were intended to make up for deficiencies in fundamental instruction – ones in arithmetic spelling, even deportment. There were also courses in salesmanship and textiles. But quite as important were those designed to give the student a broadened view of his world – studies in composition, history, geography, ‘civics.’173

Dayton’s commercial school enticed girls out of the city’s public high schools and was part of the inspiration behind the movement to make education more “practical” in the city, as discussed in Chapter Three. Still, to Dayton’s, it represented an investment in employees as much as in Minneapolis's future. Developing “good” or “upstanding”

171 Gray, You Can Get It At Dayton’s, 71. 172 Firestone, Images of America, 27. 173 Gray, You Can Get It At Dayton’s, 93. 267

employees as measured by middle-class values and perspectives would translate directly into developing ideal citizens. Investing in store personnel was seen as necessary both

from an economic and social point of view. The YWCA also provided noon meals to

working women, in the hope that it would attract them to become members of the

organization. With a menu of “soup, a meat stew or hash, potatoes, two other vegetables,

one of which is always tomatoes, rolls, bread, sauce, pie or pudding, coffee and

chocolate,” the lunchroom served approximately 650 women and girls daily.174 However,

the organization believed that there was still an underserved population of working

women who were unable to get away from their workplaces during their lunch break.

The YWCA, working in a network of stewardship, also partnered with factories to

provide lunch and minister to employees at work. Although a successful program, serving

these meals was not getting women to come into the building at other hours. One report

of the Noon Rest Committee, which oversaw the program, stated that “the majority of

girls who frequent our rooms to avail themselves of the privileges of the lunch apartment

are not seen here at any other time. Some of them do not even come into our pleasant

parlor and reading room to enjoy the easy chairs and comfortable couches.”175 Though a pleasant space was available, the YWCA could not attract women to become members.

Through years of low conversion rates of noon lunch attendees into members, the YWCA remained hopeful that some good was being done. “Altho [sic] we might not see good

174 “The Woman Who Lunches Down Town,” Minneapolis Journal, April 12, 1902. 175 Noon Rest Committee Minutes, 1895-1907, Social Welfare History Archives, YWCA Box 6, December 27, 1895. The Noon Rest Committee likely had the “lunch apartment” at its 808 Nicollet Avenue location at this time. 268

results from the noon programs,” a report from 1906 noted, “they were certainly

uplifting, throwing, as they did inspiration for higher things into the lives of the girls.”176

Esther M. Erickson and Neva Chappell ran the Noon Visit program. Both were extension workers who traveled throughout the country and worked as the noon visitors in Minneapolis.177 Chappell and Erickson were invited into factories that wanted to offer

their employees lunch but did not have the means to do so. The two would go to factories

and speak in areas in which employees ate their lunches about the YWCA’s

programming and then would invite them to the nearest branch.178 In one study, the

YWCA reported that 63 percent of employees ate in employer-provided lunch rooms, so

the noon visitor program represented an opportunity to make direct contact with the

organization’s target audience.179 They made dozens of visits a month to various factories, including: Fuller Laundry, North Star Shoe Manufacturing, Cream of Wheat

Food Co., Bemis Bag Co., Bates and Kendall Pants and Jacket Factory, Lillibridge Candy

Factory, Hooker Cigar Manufacturing, and Northwestern Knitting Works (later to be named Munsingwear).180 While Erickson and Chappell reported success in getting

women interested in the YWCA, there were still times when audiences were

“unresponsive” and some had “a tendency to be saucy and disturb those who care to

176 Noon Rest Committee Minutes, 1895-1907, Social Welfare History Archives YWCA Box 6. From December 1906. 177 Elizabeth Wilson, Fifty Years of Association Work among Young Women, 1866-1916 (New York: National Board of the Young Women’s Christian Associations of the United States of America, 1916); “The Esther M. Erickson YWCA Photograph Collection,” Wichita State University Special Collections & University Archives. 178 “Chappell, Erickson Visits to Local Factories, 1902-03,” Social Welfare History Archives, YWCA Collection Box 10, “Program Records,” Folder 1, Record from 20 May 1902. 179 “Special Studies, District + Race Maps,” Social Welfare History Archives, YWCA 1919 Volume II, Folder 3, 85. 180 “Chappell, Erickson Visits to Local Factories, 1902-03,” Social Welfare History Archives, YWCA Collection Box 10, “Program Records,” Folder 1. Records from May, June, and August 1902. 269

listen.”181 To reach this particularly difficult audience, the seasoned reformers brought with them a “Victor Machine” to play music, and quickly enthralled most of the women in the room.182 The organization had appeared confounded when women simply did not want to inhabit the well-appointed lounge located in the YWCA building. This manner of passive uplift was likely not as appealing as active and engaging entertainments like dance halls, movie theaters, or even window shopping on Nicollet Avenue. Chappell and

Erickson’s adoption of one form of popular entertainment, music played on a gramophone, demonstrated that if the YWCA provided activities or programming they may be more successful in attracting women into appropriate, reformer-curated spaces.

In Minneapolis as elsewhere, the YWCA became more programmatic during the

Progressive era. Initially, this transition meant that the organization borrowed from popular culture. It held “clean” circuses to compete with a traveling circus that set up shop in the southeast part of the city in the summer.183 The YWCA also began screening

short movies, adopting a technology it had assessed as a detriment in many contexts.

Social reformers’ role in the broader civic network of stewardship was to provide

uplifting venues and programming in which people could spend their leisure hours. This

provision became particularly critical during a time when domestic space was at a

premium for most of the city’s working-class population. Reformers as well as theater

and department store managers attempted to capitalize on this lack of home space.

181 “Chappell, Erickson Visits to Local Factories, 1902-03,” Social Welfare History Archives, YWCA Collection Box 10, “Program Records,” Folder 1. June 18, 1902, speaking of the Bates and Kendall Pants and Jacket Factory. 182 “Chappell, Erickson Visits to Local Factories, 1902-03,” Social Welfare History Archives, YWCA Collection Box 10, “Program Records,” Folder 1. June 18, 1902. 183 “Department Store Girls in Freak Circus,” Minneapolis Journal, September 29, 1912. 270

Theaters proliferated as department stores innovated new design and advertisement practices to entice women to patronize them.

The fear that working people, particularly women, would fall victim to the deleterious city sparked outreach programs by employers and social reformers alike. As seen in the Teachers’ Club survey, many reformers saw recreation as a human need.

Attempting to combat the degrading influence of commercial entertainments and venues, social reformers positioned themselves as recreation stewards. Social reformers, city leaders, and employers developed a network of stewardship that intended to guide the social development of the Minneapolis working class. These groups reached into work places, homes, and schools, and, in combating commercial entertainments and attempting to provide uplifting alternatives, tried to shape public space as well. As part of implementing a more programmatic approach to social reform, the YWCA, WCA, and

YMCA embraced the recreation movement that was sweeping the United States at the turn of the twentieth century. In the late aughts, their buildings would be renovated to provide gyms and even a pool. Recreation programming was very successful and would lead the organizations to seek more venues for their activities. They would turn to the city’s vast park network, initiating a “park program” that included “band concerts and community singing.”184 Citing a “lack of community buildings in the North District,” the

YWCA noted that it took advantage of the outdoor spaces created by the Park Board and the programming developed by its Recreation Department, which was led by a YMCA worker.185 As park spaces changed from pleasure grounds to active sites of organized

184 Grace E. Pratt, A Study of Community Conditions: North District: An Extensive Survey of Environmental Causes of Juvenile Delinquency and a Summary of the Programs of the Constructive Agencies and Institutions Working in the Community. (Minneapolis: Women’s Co-operative Alliance, Inc., 1925), 35. 185 Pratt, A Study of Community Conditions, 35. 271 recreation, social reformers were connected in yet another way to the larger web of civic stewardship that existed during the Progressive era in Minneapolis.

272

Chapter Six: Parks to Recreation

Make a more beautiful Minneapolis and it will be a better Minneapolis, and the great Minneapolis will inevitably follow.1 -Charles Loring, 1904

Charles Loring wrote this in an editorial for the Minneapolis Journal in 1904. A long-serving president of the Parks Board, Loring was given the title of “Father of the

Parks System” for his endless lobbying to acquire and improve land to make parks for all

Minneapolitans.2 Although Loring is better remembered, Horace W. S. Cleveland was, in fact, the father of Minneapolis parks. A pioneering landscape architect, he made the plans that would guide Loring.3 Though not a comprehensive city plan, Cleveland’s work

provided the outline for how Minneapolis would develop. More importantly, Cleveland’s

design ethos, which emphasized the role of nature in parks and parkways and practical

designs in making cities livable for inhabitants of all classes, provided the ideological

foundation for the city’s development. Civic leaders in Minneapolis, as elsewhere, turned

to “environmental intervention as a means of improving both the social and the physical

attributes of cities.”4 Owing to Cleveland’s influence, the most prominent environmental interventions in Minneapolis took the form of parks.

1 Charles Loring, “Mr. Loring Suggests a Lot of Things that it would pay to do if we had the Progressive Spirit to do them,” Minneapolis Journal, June 12, 1904. Charles Loring Scrapbooks, Volume 1, page 128. 2 Charles Loring, History of the Parks and Public Grounds of Minneapolis (St. Paul: Minnesota Historical Society, 1912 repr. with postscript from William Watts Folwell, 1918), 608. 3 Cleveland, Suggestions for a System of Parks and Parkways, for the City of Minneapolis (Minneapolis: Johnson, Smith, & Harrison, 1883). 4 Howard Gillette, Jr., Civitas by Design: Building Better Communities from the Garden City to the New Urbanism (Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press, 2010), 5. Roy Lubove discussed environmental interventions in early twentieth century Pittsburgh, and though he did not explicitly define the term, it can best be understood as amendments to the urban form that were part of a broader effort by business, reformers, and politicians to improve the ailing city’s social and physical health. By the 1920s, environmental interventions were taken over by professional city planners. Roy Lubove, Twentieth-Century Pittsburgh: Government, Business, and Environmental Change (Pittsburgh: University of Pittsburgh Press, 1969), 20. 274

Minneapolis's park system developed alongside changing reform and stewardship

ideologies. Its early parks were pleasure grounds, intended to provide relaxed respite

from the hectic urban environment. Under Cleveland’s guidance, these pleasure grounds

were placed throughout the city in an effort to ensure that all Minneapolitans could enjoy

the spaces. In the late 1890s, the park system was altered to accommodate popular recreation in an effort to make parks compete with consumer entertainments. Lunch counters, dining rooms, pavilions with music and theater, and bicycle storage were all added to these recreation parks to entice users there instead of saloons or movie theaters.

This set of accommodations helped to align the Park Board with social reformers’ efforts,

as discussed in Chapter Five, to develop redemptive places that would uplift the city’s

population. The final iteration of Minneapolis parks as discussed here was the transition

from recreation parks into reform parks with playgrounds. The playground movement

was brought to Minneapolis in the late 1890s, and with it came an ideology that promoted

organized recreation and supervised play. This ideology immediately gained traction in

Minneapolis, but it required formal changes to parks in order to put it into action. Thus,

in a span of little more than two decades, Minneapolis parks went from breathing spaces

intended for forms of light recreation to sites of active recreation and play that were guided by park supervisors and even the form of parks themselves.

By virtue of their beauty, parks were commonly characterized as essential contributions to the city’s economic growth. Booster pamphlets set parks as a central

element of the city’s identity. One offered up a city motto that combined the city’s

industrial reputation with its garden aesthetic: “The City of Flour and Flowers.”5 Loring

5 Minneapolis Civic and Commercial Association, “Minneapolis, Where You are Always Welcome,” 21. Minnesota Historical Society Archives F613.M15 M58 1912z. 275

once wrote that “it has been demonstrated in Minneapolis and St. Paul that no investment

of public funds has brought greater returns financially than those invested in the parks

and playgrounds, and none has brought more pleasure and added more to the health of the

citizens.”6 As discussed in Chapter One, including parks in the city’s development plans

was supposed to demonstrate that Minneapolis was a civilized settlement. The parks

system reflected the eastern roots of many of the city’s founders, but was not an ersatz

replica of parks in the East. A planned parks system was intended to prompt people to

recall bucolic New England scenes, and also to emphasize the unique setting and

incredible opportunities offered in the young Minneapolis. The first role of parks in

Minneapolis was to demonstrate that this was not a frontier boom town unworthy of long-

term investment, nor was it an overgrown urban center like Chicago, St. Louis, New

York, or Boston – plagued by the consequences of rapid growth. Cleveland’s plan demonstrated that environmental interventions were part of the city’s identity and would complement as well as guide its growth. The inclusion of green spaces would be planned, and their shape and use would be determined by professionals. Their programming and form would become part of the broader network of stewardship that social reformers and civic leaders believed would make Minneapolis a model metropolis.

Parks in the City

Parks were intended to keep city inhabitants in touch with nature, but mid- nineteenth century designs often created sites of exclusivity. Setting aside land that would remain “natural” was supposed to combat the noxious urban environment while also

6 Loring, History of the Parks and Public Grounds of Minneapolis, 599. 276

giving people a mental break from urban hustle and bustle. In the mid-nineteenth century,

Transcendentalism had gained traction in the United States, and its emphasis on nature in

its unaltered state laid the groundwork for later conservation efforts.7 Proponents of

urban conservation, heavily influenced by the movement, argued that including nature in

cities was the primary means of defense against common issues to that plagued many

American urban centers. During the 1830s, there was a “park craze” during which cities like New York and Boston began acquiring land that would be dedicated to green spaces.

Wealthy New Yorkers supported these measures, in no small part due to the effects parks

would have on “draw[ing] elite residents and rais[ing] the city’s tax base.”8

The same economic argument was made by those who argued that establishing a

Park Board in the city’s early years would help set it apart. As outlined in Chapter One,

the Board was created due to the efforts of a group of prominent citizens – among them

George Brackett (former mayor and involved in flour milling), John S. Pillsbury (flour

milling), Benjamin F. Nelson (paper and pulp milling), Daniel Bassett (banking,) and

Dorilus Morrison (water power and milling), and of course Loring – who petitioned the

city and then state to establish one. In 1883 the state legislature created the Minneapolis

Parks Board and, despite lingering local opposition, the Board immediately took an

activist role.9 The Board, comprised of appointed men, was given the power to make

special assessments, condemn land, and acquire land as it saw fit.10 The Board’s first

7 Galen Cranz, The Politics of Park Design: A History of Urban Parks in America (Cambridge: MIT Press, 1982), 7. 8 Catherine McNeur, Taming Manhattan: Environmental Battles in the Antebellum City (Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 2014), 47. 9 First Annual Report of the Board of Park Commissioners of the City of Minneapolis (Minneapolis: Harrison & Smith, Printers, 1883), 3. 10 David C. Smith, City of Parks: The Story of Minneapolis Parks (Minneapolis: The Foundation for Minneapolis Parks, 2008), 23. 277

move was to hire Cleveland to develop a plan framework within which the city would

grow. Cleveland’s aesthetic style combined with a practical vision that became a

founding tenet of Minneapolis's booster vision for future growth. Although the Board

commonly used economic growth as a way to garner wider support, the city’s park

system was never truly confined to a simple economic venture.11

There was a more romantic motivation for the park craze. Frederick Law

Olmsted, who, together with Calvert Vaux, designed Central Park in Manhattan, saw “the

intrusion of rural beauty and idyllic calm into the ‘urban wilderness’” as soothing to the

“battered nerves and senses of factory workers and their harried employers.”12 Like many

upper-class reformers working in the mid- to late-nineteenth century, Olmsted believed

that Central Park could provide a space in which the elite and the working class could

mingle and the latter could experience some degree of redemption as a result of the

encounter.13 Of course, his intentions did not match up with the political and financial

realities of Central Park’s early years, when it received significant criticism for being the

province of the wealthy.14 New York City’s wealthiest saw the park as an opportunity to

exercise control over a public space – the opportunities for which were waning – while

also creating an island of upper-class civility that would be difficult for lower classes to

access. 15 However, Roy Rosenzweig and Elizabeth Blackmar noted that due to the

political actions and physical presence of working-class New Yorkers in the park, by the

11 “Value of Ornamentation,” unknown newspaper, 1901. Charles Loring Papers, Volume 1, 1871-1921, page 84. Minnesota Historical Society Archives. 12 Dominick Cavallo, Muscles and Morals: Organized Playgrounds and Urban Reform, 1880-1920 (Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press, 1981), 21. 13 McNeur, Taming Manhattan, 214. 14 Roy Rosenzweig and Elizabeth Blackmar, The Park and the People: A History of Central Park (Ithaca: Cornell University Press, 1992), 7. 15 Sven Beckert, The Monied Metropolis: New York City and the Consolidation of the American Bourgeoisie, 1850-1986 (New York: Cambridge University Press, 2001), 50. 278

1890s it was no longer an exclusive space and became more “eclectic” in terms of who

used it and how.16

Cleveland joined with Central Park’s many early critics. In his Landscape

Architecture, as Applied to the Wants of the West, Cleveland presented his argument for developing new cities with forethought and for placing naturally landscaped parks throughout a city so as to make them accessible to the entire population. Damning the

planning and implementation of Central Park, Cleveland wrote that “it will be no population of laboring poor that well dwell in [its] vicinity…it will be only on an occasional holiday that the toiling denizen of the central business marts, can afford the time or the means to go with his family to those distant gardens.” That this assertion was

“not a mere theory” he said, was proved by the park’s development and usage.17 These

criticisms of Central Park revealed the foundation of his passion for ensuring that parks

would not be exclusive spaces. Throughout Landscape Architecture as well as his

supporting document for the Minneapolis plan, he urged that parks of equal quality be

placed throughout cities in order to ensure maximum impacts in people’s lives. Cleveland

did laud New York City’s efforts to purchase land for parks (something which he

lambasted Chicago for failing to do), but urged Minneapolis not to make the same mistake of waiting until development occurred – and money was available – to acquire park land.18 However, at the time Cleveland’s was a minority voice. By the end of the

nineteenth century, another urban design movement emerged that would have significant

impacts on the form and aesthetics of American cities.

16 Rosenzweig and Blackmar, The Park and the People, 339. 17 Horace William Shaler Cleveland, Landscape Architecture, as Applied to the Wants of the West: With an Essay on Forest Planting on the Great Plains (Chicago: Jansen, McClurg, & Co., 1873), 43-44. 18 Cleveland, Suggestions for a System of Parks and Parkways, 3, 4. 279

The intersection of environmental intervention, with its attendant emphases on aesthetics and efficiency, and the desire to instill order in the chaotic and tumultuous years of the Progressive era are clearly seen in the emergence of the City Beautiful movement. Galen Cranz’s influential work The Politics of Parks Design described parks and their planning as “part of the rise of modern institutions – the successive attempts to gain control over the social and physical consequences of urbanization in the context of industrial capitalism.” She added that in the past, they were used “in the processes of creating social, psychological, and political order, of planning and controlling land use, and of shaping civic form and beauty.”19 Planners employing the aesthetic “hoped to redefine public life” as they “reconfigure[d] the landscape.”20 The Chicago World’s Fair in 1893 put the ornamental and prescriptive movement on a national stage. It provided a showcase for the burgeoning City Beautiful movement, which focused on “promoting architectural improvement and man-made elegance” in order to “impr[ess] the world with the nation’s wealth and enterprise.”21 Architect Daniel Burnham worked with John

Wellborn Root, Frederick Law Olmsted, and Henry Sargent Codman to design the famous “White City,” so named for the materials and treatment of the main buildings at the installation’s central court. Its neoclassical design and strictly planned layout gave

“an illusion of efficiency, order, and cleanliness.”22 The White City was, of course,

19 Cranz, The Politics of Park Design, xii. 20Daniel M. Bluestone, “Detroit’s City Beautiful and the Problem of Commerce,” Journal of the Society of Architectural Historians 47:3 (September 1988): 246. 21 Shen Hou, “Garden and Forest: A Forgotten Magazine and the Urban Roots of American Environmentalism,” Environmental History 17 (October 2012): 821; Small-scale elements of civic beautification certainly predated the Chicago World’s Fair. However, Daniel Burnham’s large-scale vision helped define the City Beautiful movement that emphasized a broader vision for civic reconfiguration that characterized the movement premiered with it in 1893. See: Jon A. Peterson, “The City Beautiful Movement: Forgotten Origins and Lost Meanings,” Journal of Urban History 2:4 (August 1976): 415-434. 22 Daphne Spain, How Women Saved the City (Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press, 2001), 49. 280 virtually devoid of persons of color and was barely attended by the working-class people who built it and dwelt outside its walls.23 However, the installation was intended to demonstrate that cities could be beautiful, functional, and inspiring while elevating the character of urbanity.

Although the White City received some scathing criticism at the time, it inspired other cities to build or renovate with the ornamentation and aesthetic vision of Burnham et al’s City Beautiful masterpiece.24 Plans from the movement’s heyday featured major

reconfigurations of city space including demolishing established city blocks and

overriding local aesthetics in favor of wide boulevards, large civic squares, and

monolithic neoclassical structures.25 The movement demonstrated the faith in environmental interventions to alter fundamentally the character of cities as well as the people within them. For most American cities, though, executions of such plans was rare, and City Beautiful elements would mostly appear in the form of “a comely park, a clean street, a dignified city hall” that, even though on a much smaller scale,

“enabled…proponents to blend civic boosterism with reform.”26 The White City showcased civic beauty and kick started American professional planning. Although civic

23 David Silkenat, “Workers in the White City: Working Class Culture at the World’s Columbian Exposition of 1893,” Journal of the Illinois State Historical Society (1998-) 104:4 (Winter 2011): 266-300. Silkenat argues that those who worked on building the Exposition formed a working-class consciousness based on their shared experience in the project. This consciousness existed outside of the city’s industrial and ethnic identities. See page 267. See also: Spain, How Women Saved the City, 16. 24 Washington, DC was the only major city to receive significant renovation as part of the movement. The McMillan Plan financed Burnham and Frederick Law Olmsted, Jr. to implement eighteenth-century plans drawn by Pierr L’Enfant. No American city would be built entirely according to the movement’s principles, but many would include elements of the “stately plazas and systems of embellished boulevards, radial avenues, and waterside promenades” that were hallmarks of the style. Spain, How Women Saved the City, 50; Bluestone, “Detroit’s City Beautiful and the Problem of Commerce,” 245. 25 For an example of such a plan, see the Mawson Plan for Calgary. Thomas Mawson, Calgary: A Preliminary Scheme for Controlling the Economic Growth of the City (Calgary: The City of Calgary, 1914). 26 Peterson, “The City Beautiful Movement,” 430. 281

leaders in Minneapolis embraced the opportunities to link civic form with booster claims

of health, efficiency, and happiness of residents, they rejected the idea of a City Beautiful reconfiguration that was proposed in 1917, and instead of paved public squares the city continued to focus its civic improvement efforts on parks, pockets of natural beauty that acted as a contrast to the built city in which they were situated.

In the 1880s, Minneapolis civic leaders committed to environmental interventions as a means of guiding the city’s development when they hired Cleveland to make a parks plan. Cleveland was an advocate of making long-range master plans, a perspective that made him especially appealing to Loring who encouraged Park Board to commission him, in part, to ensure that their city would not end up overcrowded and polluted like so many older industrial urban centers. In Cleveland’s early career, he partnered with Robert

Morris Copeland in a firm called Copeland & Cleveland, based in Boston. In 1856, responding to New York City’s purchase and preparation of the land that would become

Central Park, the partners authored a short pamphlet, titled A Few Words on the Central

Park.27 Cleveland’s basic approach to landscape architecture and his tendency toward

developing master plans rather than building on an incremental, ad hoc basis were clear

in the text. In a section that presaged Daniel Burnham’s “make no little plans,” Cleveland

and Copeland wrote:

[I]t is foolish to say that we should plan only what we can immediately execute. The design should embrace all possible, or at least all probable wants, and adapt itself to them from the beginning…We have heard it objected that it is not safe or wise to plan too largely at first…To this we reply, that in this, as in every public or private enterprise, the truest economy lies in considering beforehand every possible necessity, and

27 Robert Morris Copeland and H.W.S. Cleveland, A Few Words on the Central Park (Boston: Copeland & Cleveland, 1856). 282

beginning the work knowingly, making the needful appropriation not only of money but of time for its accomplishment.28

Cleveland’s design ethos and aesthetic worked to develop practical – yet beautiful – natural spaces of repose in cities that were, unlike Central Park, accessible for all. His writings were among the first to use the term “landscape architecture” to describe the work that combined architectural design principles, biology, and horticulture into a new field.29

A Plan for Minneapolis

Cleveland was part of the city natural movement, the practitioners of which

emphasized allowing the natural environment to dictate city forms. City naturalists

“advocated that access to the beauty of nature should become a public right and not be

limited to the fortunate few,” a concept central to Cleveland’s 1883 plan for

Minneapolis.30 City naturalists did believe in environmental interventions, but they were

not interested in the type of master planning that overrode or subdued nature as seen in

City Beautiful plans. Their designs were intended to enhance natural features and bring

city dwellers into close contact with nature so that they might reap the ameliorative

benefits of such a setting and, ideally, come to understand the principles of conservation

28 Copeland and Cleveland, A Few Words on the Central Park, 2, 5, as found in Norman T. Newton, Design on the Land: The Development of Landscape Architecture (Cambridge: The Presidents and Fellows of Harvard College, 1971), 310. 29 Newton, Design on the Land, 312. Newton claims that Cleveland’s Landscape Architecture as Applied to the Wants of the West was the first book to use the phrase, though Olmsted had included it in earlier pamphlets. 30 Shen Hou, The City Natural: Garden and Forest Magazine and the Rise of American Environmentalism (Pittsburgh: University of Pittsburgh Press, 2013), 188 and Cleveland, Suggestions for a System of Parks and Parkways, 4. 283

and preservation of natural landscapes.31 In Cleveland’s plan for Minneapolis, the

Mississippi River was the centerpiece of the city. On 2 July 1883, he presented a map

with simple red markings (figure 6.1), and provided a short document to the Park

Commissioners, Suggestions for a System of Parks and Parkways, for the City of

Minneapolis. In the document, Cleveland claimed that he had “endeavored so far as possible to remain in ignorance of ownerships, in order that my decisions might be governed solely by a regard to the public good.”32 In other words, he did not purposely

design parks or boulevards to be near property already owned by any particular

individuals (which would be a public expenditure to improve the value of privately held

land), nor did he purposefully propose a route to go through certain areas (forcing the city

to buy land held by private citizens). Though seemingly a small point, this was his way of

declaring that this system was not intended, like Central Park, to be a financial boon for

the city’s wealthy. His plan consisted of a boulevard belt around Minneapolis – later to be

called the Grand Rounds – that also connected to several parks. Though some of the areas

were already developed when he set the boulevard boundaries, he argued that developing

the entire system as quickly as possible was imperative for ensuring the highest financial,

health and aesthetic returns on investment. His association with the city natural movement was clear in his avocation of transforming terrains vagues, or “pieces of land not cultivated or built upon,” such as river banks or marshy areas, the physical attributes

31 The movement is concisely described in Shen Hou’s work that focused on the movement’s main publication, a magazine called Garden and Forest. See: Shen Hou, “Garden and Forest: A Forgotten Magazine and the Urban Roots of American Environmentalism,” Environmental History 17 (October 2012): 813-842. 32 Cleveland, Suggestions for a System of Parks and Parkways, 14. 284 of which would make them difficult or costly to develop for industrial or residential uses.33

Figure 6.1: Map of Minneapolis showing Park System. Source: Cleveland, Suggestions for a System of Parks and Parkways, n.p.

Most of all, Cleveland urged the city to protect and enhance its “priceless jewel” – the Mississippi River – and highlight this “most attractive and most conspicuous ornament of the city.”34 The land along the Mississippi was “covered with a beautiful

33 John Brinckerhoff Jackson, Discovering the Vernacular Landscape (New Haven: Yale University Press, 1984), 129; Cleveland, Suggestions for a System of Parks and Parkways, 21-22. 34 Cleveland, Suggestions for a System of Parks and Parkways, 6. 285

growth of trees” and would make a “park of a perfectly unique character, which would

be…solely for the use of pedestrians.”35 Developing these thickly wooded, semi-swampy

areas was not only to protect the “unique character” of this land, it was also to ensure that

the area would not become infested with mosquitoes or become a dumping ground for

neighboring residential areas. Cleveland warned that if these lands were not turned into

parks, they would “certainly become the plague spot and breeding-place of moral and

physical pestilence and disease.”36 His central placement of the Mississippi and advocacy for interventions to improve yet preserve natural landscapes that would be otherwise unusable reflected his dedication to city natural principles.

One common theme in Cleveland’s plan was his passion for practicality that

merged with the ornamentation tastes of the period. Instead of City Beautiful, though, he

promoted a more natural city that would not be as uniform in aesthetic. His city natural

ideas had much overlap with City Beautiful practitioners, best seen in the belief that

design and environmental interventions could rationalize urbanization and improve city

life for residents. In addition to pest and disease control through park development on the

river banks, Cleveland’s plan called for “broad avenues planted with trees” not only for

aesthetics, but also because they were “the best possible barriers against the spread of

conflagrations.”37 Using environmental interventions to enhance, rather than to conquer

the natural features of the city was also important to Charles Loring who guided the city’s

park development. Loring was very successful at implementing Cleveland’s plan and

even at expanding on the original vision.

35 Cleveland, Suggestions for a System of Parks and Parkways, 12-13. 36 Cleveland, Suggestions for a System of Parks and Parkways, 13. 37 Cleveland, Suggestions for a System of Parks and Parkways, 6. 286

In 1886, Cleveland moved to Minneapolis and opened a landscape architecture

firm with his son, where he continued to design parks for Minneapolis as well as other

cities.38 He had a close relationship with the Parks Board, especially with Loring and

William Watts Folwell, and used his position to continue urging the early purchasing of

potentially valuable lands so as to ensure that parks would be present in the inner city, not

just the periphery where wealthy people tended to live.39 Between Cleveland’s 1883 plan

debut and the mid-1910s, Minneapolis underwent significant growth. The city acquired most of the land Cleveland had designated for boulevards or parks, and added dozens of small neighborhood parcels to the system under Loring’s leadership.

By the turn of the twentieth century, the vision of parks as sites of inter-class

mingling and as places that should be as much for the working class as they were for the

elites had led to a change in the practice of park design. The transition was apparent in

Cleveland’s works as well as in the practices of leaders on the Minneapolis Park Board.

In 1900, former president of the University of Minnesota and the future superintendent of

parks and president of the Minnesota Historical Society, William Watts Folwell,

partnered with Christopher W. Hall to write a treatise on the importance of parks titled

“Minnesota Parks for Minnesota People.”40 The text mostly suggested that the state begin

preserving lands for conservation and park use, but the way in which Folwell and Hall

defined the purpose of parks reflected Minneapolis's usage of greenspaces. “What will

38 Newton, Design on the Land, 316. 39 The sentiment is clear in many of Cleveland’s writings, including: Horace William Shaler Cleveland, Landscape Architecture, as Applied to the Wants of the West: With an Essay on Forest Planting on the Great Plains (Chicago: Jansen, McClurg, & Co., 1873); Cleveland, Suggestions for a System of Parks and Parkways; and intermittently in writings, as covered throughout Smith, City of Parks, particularly chapter seven “Folwell Joins the Fray,” 47-52. 40 William Watts Folwell and Christopher W. Hall, “Minnesota Parks for Minnesota People,” Minneapolis Journal, March 10, 1900. Minnesota Historical Society Archives SB482.M6 F54 1900. 287

parks do?,” one section asked. The answer: parks “promote health and invigorate the

weak. On visiting a park the invalid draws a long breath, feels better and soon is better

and stronger, people in health forget their cares and children gambol as only children

can.”41 The authors further argued that the state of Minnesota needed to develop parks so

that those who were “least favored with worldly advantages” could still experience the

“aroma of nature” as did those who could travel to Yosemite or the Grand Canyon.42 In

conjunction with the principle of making parks more accessible gaining traction, a new

recreation movement emerged at the end of the nineteenth century that emphasized

formal reconfiguration to support organized play and spectatorship.

From Pleasure Grounds to Recreation Parks

As the city changed, though, so did the use and purpose of its parks. Many cities had large sections of designed and developed green space that functioned as pleasure grounds. These were distinct iterations of parks that were spaces of “unstructured pursuits” which “encouraged family excursions and recreation” such as “racing, galloping and jumping, polo playing, bicycle riding, merry go-round, toboggan sliding,

coasting on rinks, watching shows such as circuses and shooting matches, tennis and

croquet, baseball and lacrosse, military maneuvers, and mass meetings.” 43 In

Minneapolis, most of the parks fell into this category. Some, like Lake Harriet and

Minnehaha Park, were considered to be the city’s most prized park possessions because

of their unique environmental features – a natural lake with an accessible shore and a

41 Folwell and Hall, “Minnesota Parks for Minnesota People,” 7. Bold in original. 42 Folwell and Hall, “Minnesota Parks for Minnesota People,” 12. 43 Cranz, The Politics of Park Design, 6, 63, 7. 288 babbling creek with splendid waterfalls. Pleasure grounds were sites of relaxed repose wherein people independently engaged in leisure activities, but around the turn of the twentieth century, people’s interest in such spaces had waned. In order to make parks attractive once more – and to make them competitive with new commercial forms of entertainment like movies and department stores – the Minneapolis Park Board began to reconfigure some sites by adding refectories and pavilions that accommodated fashionable recreation activities such as soft drink parlors, dining rooms, and bicycling.

These formal changes were aimed mostly at adults and families.

Changes in labor practices and demographics altered city rhythms. As discussed in Chapter Five, many working-class Minneapolitans began to enjoy increases in their leisure time but the availability of commercial entertainments was alarming to social reformers and civic leaders who wished to guide the ways in which workers spent their time. The Young Women’s Christian Association (YWCA) was attempting to develop uplifting indoor spaces, but it could not always provide enough space to meet demand, nor could it compete with the redemptive power of outdoor natural venues offered by

“the park’s fresh air and rich landscape that were a kind of cure for the urban citizen.”44

Early city parks were pleasure grounds intended to offer “relief from the evils of the city.”45 These grounds were designed such that every tree, shrub, set of flowers, or undulation was part of a larger scheme to hide the city and make occupants forget the noises, smells, and congestion of the city in which the park existed. Pleasure grounds did not have many formal accommodations for rigorous activities. Unstructured pursuits such

44 Garth Rockastle, “Loring Park: An Enlightened and Romantic Space,” in Berlowe et al, Reflections in Loring Pond: A Minneapolis Neighborhood Examines its First Century (Minneapolis: Citizens for a Loring Park Community, 1986), 21. 45 Cranz, The Politics of Park Design, 5. 289

as walking, picnicking, sailing, skating, cross country skiing, or playing recreational

baseball or tennis were carried out in these parks, but rigorous recreation or official

league sports with spectators did not have a place there.46 Cleveland and Loring believed

that the parks should be an escape from urban conditions, and that included protecting

them from the creep of commercialism. But a “surge in interest in organized recreation”

during a time of financial difficulties for the Parks Board would lead to changes in park

forms and purposes.47 Like the YWCA, parks had to compete with “destructive agencies”

like dance halls, pool rooms, and soft drink parlors.48 They also competed with

department stores and their lunch rooms and dining rooms as fashionable places to be seen. At the end of the nineteenth century, the Minneapolis Parks Board began adopting elements of popular recreation. Lunch counters, dining rooms, bicycle paths, boat rentals, music shows in pavilions, and even a zoo transformed the parks from pleasure grounds

suited for unstructured pursuits into recreation parks.

Recreation parks were positioned as competitors to commercial entertainment.

Loring was a student of national and international park uses, and often included in his

writings the work of professionals who studied parks. In the annual report from 1893, he

included extensive quotes from Dr. Elgin R.L. Gould, a statistician with the Department

of Labor, professor at the University of Chicago, and long-time supporter of cultivating

46 Cranz, The Politics of Park Design, 5, 15. 47 Rockcastle, “Loring Park: An Enlightened and Romantic Space,” in Berlowe et al., Reflections in Loring Pond, 21. 48 Fern Chase et al., A Study of Community Conditions: South District (Women’s Co-Operative Alliance, Minneapolis, 1926), 5. Social Welfare History Archives at the University of Minnesota, YWCA Box 10 Folder 2. The Minneapolis Vice Commission identified soft drink parlors as being commonly used by women running clandestine brothels. Marion D. Shutter et. al., Report of the Vice Commission of Minneapolis (Minneapolis: Press of Henry M. Hall, 1911), 74. Soft drink parlors were also spaces in which there was little supervision, which was always alarming for social reformers. 290

open space for urbanites’ enjoyment:

The time will come…when people will more generally understand that the best way to keep toilers of our cities from saloons and abodes of vice, is to give them better and more wholesome recreation. There is everything in the surroundings of city working classes to drag down, but little to uplift. The moral influence of parks, especially with provisions for recreation…would be very great.49

Loring’s use of Gould’s research was intended to show the important role parks could

play in the city’s social health. Parks’ economic value to the city had been, and would

continue to be, highlighted as among their best virtues.50 However, Cleveland and Loring

had worked so that the parks were not just an economic bonus for the wealthy nor would

they be exclusive sites that, at least informally, were the province of the elite. To compete

with the saloons and abodes of vice, though, the form of some Minneapolis parks would

need amendment.

Across the United States and Britain, cities were considering reconfigurations of

parks that would accommodate more popular recreation amenities. As Carole O’Reilly

demonstrated, the Edwardian period in Britain brought significant change to park

intentions and usage, as “park managers found themselves in direct competition with

49 Tenth Annual Report of the Board of Park Commissioners of the City of Minneapolis (Minneapolis: Harrison & Smith, Printers, 1893), 15. This quote has been misattributed to Loring directly. Although it is a sentiment that he clearly supported, it came from an 1888 presentation Gould made in front of the American Statistical Association. The quote is misattributed in: Burt Berlowe et al., Reflections in Loring Pond, 22. 50 MCCA, Minneapolis: Where You are Always Welcome; Minneapolis Commercial Club, Fifty Facts and Then Some Forceful Figures about Minneapolis: The Mighty City. Minneapolis Commercial Club, 10 January 1910. Minnesota Historical Society F613.M15 F43 1910; Minneapolis: Metropolis of the Great North West; In Views that show its Possessions in the Architecture of Commerce and of the Arts, in the Beauties of its Parks, Lakes, Boulevards and Waterfalls (Buffalo: W.G. MacFarlane and Union and Times Press, 1900). In Minnesota History Center Archives F613.M15.M56 1900z; James Linn Nash, “Shifting Commercial Center of Gravity,” Minnesota Historical Society Archives F613.1915 N368 1908. 291

private leisure providers and attempting to anticipate future trends in an expanding leisure

population.”51 In the United States, one Milwaukee reformer estimated that the city’s

“inhabitants…spent most of [their leisure] time in activities unrelated to educational

development and moral ‘uplift.’ For instance, the vaudeville, burlesque, and legitimate

theaters played to a weekly audience of nearly 350,000, out of a total population of

400,000.”52 As parks changed from passive to active sites, they became part of the

process of modernizing leisure, which saw “organized pastimes repla[ce] informal and

spontaneous recreation.”53

Folwell followed Loring as president of the Parks Board. He argued in support of

making recreation accommodations in parks, but maintained that all improvements must

be in the public’s best interest. According to historian David C. Smith, “Folwell was the

steadying influence on the park board” as he “showed little tolerance for schemes that he

did not perceive to be in the public interest.”54 He, like Loring, believed that public parks

should be venues for all Minneapolitans to enjoy. In 1895, Folwell’s first year as

president, he stated that although finances were tight due to the ongoing depression, the

Board should consider continuing to fund and care for bathing houses. He claimed that

simple “floating bath houses on the Mississippi River” would satisfy the “wants of a very

large proportion of our population.”55 Such provisions were not officially within the

Board’s mandate, and it was unclear whether the city or the Board should pay for their

51 Carole O’Reilly, “‘We Have Gone Recreation Mad’: The Consumption of Leisure and Popular Entertainment in Municipal Public Parks in Early Twentieth Century Britain,” International Journal of Regional and Local History 8:2 (November 2013): 112. 52 Cavallo, Muscles and Morals, 40. 53 Claude S. Fischer, “Changes in Leisure Activities, 1890-1940,” Journal of Social History 27:3 (Spring 1994): 453. 54 Smith, City of Parks, 69. 55 Thirteenth Annual Report of the Board of Park Commissioners of the City of Minneapolis (Minneapolis: Harrison & Smith, Printers, 1895), 24. 292

construction and maintenance. Of course, Folwell believed that the city should provide

the Board money to oversee the bath houses. “Unless civilization takes the back track,”

he stated, “modern cities in the next generation will provide at public expense for bathing

in establishments rivaling the baths of old Rome, not only in summer but in all

seasons.”56 It was a sharp comment pointed at City Hall, intended to remind officials that

parks were not just an aesthetic improvement but also had impacts on social hygiene and

sanitation.

The Park Board had partnered with other organizations to provide recreation

amenities in certain parks. One way to avoid the long-term financial commitment of

providing recreation amenities on their own was for the Board to allow others to build

and operate attractions on park land. One of the best examples of this was the erection of

the Lake Harriet pavilion. Located in the southwest corner of Cleveland’s Grand Rounds

parks system, Lake Harriet was a favorite recreation spot for Minneapolitans. In 1879, the

Twin City Rapid Transit Company (TCRT) made it a stop on its line, which facilitated

thousands of people to journey there in their leisure time.57 In order to make the lake more attractive, the company also built a large pavilion that would host bands and entertainment troupes.58 The pavilion and ease of access made Lake Harriet a significant

draw, and the Park Board began renting out boats for recreational use as a way to

56 Thirteenth Annual Report of the Board of Park Commissioners of the City of Minneapolis, 24. 57 Goodrich Lowry, Streetcar Man: Tom Lowry and the Twin City Rapid Transit Company (Minneapolis: Lerner Publications, 1979), 68-69. The TCRT also developed an amusement park at Big Island, located in Lake Minnetonka. The lake was not included in the Grand Rounds and had been a very exclusive location until 1905, when the TCRT debuted a line that went from downtown Minneapolis to Excelsior, on the lake’s shore. From there, if people wanted to get to the TCRT-run Big Island, they would have to pay a second fare to ride in a “streetcar boat” that would transport them across the lake. James W. Ogland, “Picturing Lake Minnetonka,” Minnesota History 57:6 (Summer, 2001): 296, 304. 58 John W. Diers and Aaron Isaacs, Twin Cities by Trolley: The Streetcar in Minneapolis and St. Paul (St. Paul: Minnesota Historical Society Press, 2007), 30, 51. 293

capitalize on the popularity.59 Folwell, however, was not entirely comfortable with the

recreation turn at the lake. While he fully supported amendments that would serve the

public good – such as bath houses – the pavilion was a venue that, at times, provided

entertainment that he considered to be unbecoming for the parks. He stated as much in

the Board’s 1895 annual report, adding that:

People resort to a park…to enjoy in peace and quiet the beauties of nature, the air, the sky and clouds, the waters, the lawns and copses. The variety show and the vaudeville may have their place, but that place is not a park maintained at the public expense. It is, therefore, to be expected that so soon as the means can be afforded the board will avail itself of its privilege under the contract to buy and own the pavilion and devote it to uses appropriate to its location.60

In other words, it was acceptable to use parks as venues of light recreation and

entertainment, but the public should not be made to subsidize low-brow entertainment

that would be found in private theaters on Hennepin Avenue. The statement also reveals

Folwell’s dedication to the “natural” state of parks. Although he would oversee some

significant additions to the system, parks’ roles as urban pockets of nature was still

important.

While the Board was redefining its role in Lake Harriet’s recreation, it was also

working on reconfiguring Minnehaha Park to become a site of recreation. Minnehaha

Park was the crown jewel of the parks system. Loring once described it as “a New

England picture set in a prairie frame.”61 It was a popular destination for all classes of

59 Smith, City of Parks, 60. 60 Thirteenth Annual Report of the Board of Park Commissioners of the City of Minneapolis (Minneapolis: Harrison & Smith, Printers, 1895), 27. A “copse” is a small thicket of trees. 61 Ninth Annual Report of the Board of Park Commissioners of the City of Minneapolis (Minneapolis: Johnson, Smith & Harrison, 1893), 4. Minnehaha Park was actually Minnesota’s first state park (only the 294

Minneapolitans especially and was touted as a tourist destination. Between 1895 and

1910, a number of additions to Minnehaha Park reflected the development of the city’s recreation parks that, through formal changes, encouraged light activity such as dining and cycling. In 1895, the Board opened a small zoo there. Within a few years, its holdings had expanded from a few deer and bears to wolves, swans, angora goats, and a pelican, among many others. Despite the growth of the zoo and its incredible popularity,

Superintendent Theodore Wirth found it to be cruel to animals and unbecoming of the fine Minneapolis Parks system, so he closed it in 1907.62 St. Paul’s Como Park, designed

by Cleveland, developed a zoo in a similar manner to Minnehaha Park. Beginning with a

few donations of animals, the zoo became a major attraction to the recreation park and pleasure ground. Unlike Minneapolis, St. Paul decided to keep the animals and, during the 1930s, built large facilities to keep them and offered it as a free attraction for

visitors.63

The Park Board worked to make Minnehaha Park accessible for Minneapolitans

and to incorporate it into the larger park system. In the 1893 Annual Parks Report, Loring

was delighted to inform readers that the land to finish Minnehaha Parkway, a route that

connected busy Lyndale Avenue to Minnehaha Park, had been acquired.64 Over the next

decade, the Board began making accommodations for bicycles along boulevards that

connected parks, and to make Minnehaha Parkway an attractive and safe route for those

second one in the country when it was acquired in 1889). But the funds to secure it had come from a handful of Minneapolis capitalists, and the city’s Park Board oversaw its development. Smith, City of Parks, 46. 62 Sixteenth Annual Report of the Board of Park Commissioners of the City of Minneapolis (Minneapolis: Harrison & Smith, Printers, 1898), 44. Smith, City of Parks, 99. 63 Andrew J. Schmidt, “Pleasure and Recreation for the People: Planning St. Paul’s Como Park,” Minnesota History 58:1 (Spring, 2002): 50. 64 Ninth Annual Report of the Board of Park Commissioners of the City of Minneapolis (Minneapolis: Johnson, Smith & Harrison, 1893), 4. 295

enjoying the newly-popular recreation of cycling.65 Cycling emerged both as a sport and

as a leisure activity in the 1870s, but by the 1890s it had become a favorite activity of

middle-class women.66 Although there was debate over the appropriateness of women

engaging in cycling, the activity became entwined with the all-American ideal Gibson

Girl, “who participated in coed cycling, golf, tennis, and horseback riding.”67 That the

Board was so insistent on accommodating bicycles – and, of course, their riders –

indicates that recreation parks were not intended to be gender-exclusive spaces. Still, for many Minneapolitans a bicycle was a luxury item, so the accommodation did have implicit class biases. Though later parks would have gender-segregated zones, recreation parks were intended to appeal to men and women. In 1898, another bicycle pathway connecting to Minnehaha Park was constructed. The path was “1,000 feet long and 8 feet wide” and connected to a path that went to Fort Snelling in St. Paul.68 Figure 6.2 depicts

Minnehaha Parkway’s route west from Minnehaha Park and its extension southward

toward the “Fort Snelling Reservation.” The Park Board’s embrace of the bicycle craze

was also reflected in the buildings they developed for Minnehaha Park.

65 Fifteenth Annual Report of the Board of Park Commissioners of the City of Minneapolis (Minneapolis: Johnson, Smith & Harrison, 1897), 25. 66 Steven A. Riess, Sport in Industrial America, 1850-1920, Second Edition (London: John Wiley & Sons, 1995), 42. 67 Riess, Sport in Industrial America, 42, 59. 68 Sixteenth Annual Report of the Board of Park Commissioners of the City of Minneapolis (Minneapolis: Johnson, Smith & Harrison, 1898), 44. 296

Figure 6.2: Map showing Minnehaha Parkway and Minnehaha Park. Source: Twenty- third Annual Report of the Board of Park Commissioners of the City of Minneapolis (Minneapolis: Johnson, Smith & Harrison, 1905), 24.

A new pavilion and refectory building helped propel Minnehaha Park into the city’s premiere recreation park. While Lake Harriet had a pavilion and accommodations for entertainment, the Board worked with partners to provide entertainment there and the character of that park was more boisterous than at Minnehaha. In 1899, plans for a new pavilion were included in the Board’s annual report. Some of the amenities included reflected the role of a recreation park as competition for commercial “destructive” entertainments. The pavilion’s design in addition to its programming would ensure that

Minnehaha Park’s buildings would be uplifting spaces that would not detract from the natural beauty in which it sat. As seen in figure 6.3, the main floor of the pavilion was

297

mostly an interior café hall with a covered porch and open pergola area. There were two

private dining rooms and a small “Ladies” room. These provisions were similar to the

spaces Dayton’s and Donaldson’s offered to entice women into their stores downtown.

Figure 6.3: First Floor Plan of Pavilion at Minnehaha Park. Source: Seventeenth Annual Report of the Board of Park Commissioners of the City of Minneapolis (Minneapolis: Johnson, Smith & Harrison, 1899), 46.

The plans for the basement (figure 6.4) further revealed structural accommodations for popular recreation. The basement was not intended to be out of

298

sight, but it did house some of the back-of-house functions for the building. The kitchen and pantry were to be situated in the basement, likely freeing up more picturesque main floor space for dining areas. In the top right corner, a “police office” and “cell room” were present, in addition to the emergency room. At the time of these plans, the Board employed thirteen policemen who were tasked with protecting park property and guiding visitors.69 On occasion, they did apprehend people for various crimes, and although the

park police were a small force, that space designated for them was purposefully included

in the new pavilion reflects the importance the Board placed on surveillance as

enforcement in parks.70 The basement was also the reception area for bicyclists. As can

be seen in the plan, there were two entrances that linked to the bicycle paths.71

69 Seventeenth Annual Report of the Board of Park Commissioners of the City of Minneapolis (Minneapolis: Harrison & Smith, Printers, 1899), 42. 70 Although some annual reports would give the number of arrests and tickets given out, it was never made clear what, exactly, the offenses were. 71 Smith, City of Parks, 66. The pavilion at Lake Harriet was built to accommodate up to 800 bicycles. 299

Figure 6.4: Basement Plan of Pavilion at Minnehaha Park. Source: Seventeenth Annual Report of the Board of Park Commissioners of the City of Minneapolis (Minneapolis: Johnson, Smith & Harrison, 1899), 47.

Four years after the pavilion, there was a proposal to put a refectory at Minnehaha

Park as well.72 As can be seen in figure 6.5, the refectory, too, catered to the popular

recreations of the early-twentieth century. Surrounded by open terrace, it had a sizeable

dining room as well as a lunch counter that served “soft drinks.” Of course, soft drink

counters, like movies, were a form of recreation with a fluid identity. Social reformers

would define “soft drink parlors” as “destructive agencies,” but like their work with

72 Twenty-First Annual Report of the Board of Park Commissioners of the City of Minneapolis (Minneapolis: Harrison & Smith, Printers, 1903), 18. 300

cleaning up movie content and the venues in which they were shown, the context in

which these recreations were found dictated their acceptability and appropriateness. 73

The recreation park setting, imbued with the uplifting aspects of nature and the

surveilling presence of police officers, served to elevate the soft drink counter.

Figure 6.5: Refectory Plan for Minnehaha Falls. Source: Twenty-First Annual Report of the Board of Park Commissioners of the City of Minneapolis (Minneapolis: Johnson, Smith & Harrison, 1903), 46.

73 Fern Chase et al., A Study of Community Conditions: South District An Extensive Survey of Environmental Causes of Juvenile Delinquency and a Summary of the Programs of the Constructive Agencies and Institutions Working in the Community. (Minneapolis: Women’s Co-operative Alliance, Inc., 1926), 5. Social Welfare History Archives at the University of Minnesota, YWCA Box 10 Folder 2. 301

The physical accommodations made to include popular recreations in the parks

did pull people away from saloons, dance halls, and department stores, but they did not

replace these activities. A comparison of the records for liquor license applications from

1903 and 1911 show entrepreneurs’ responses to the growth in demand for alcohol-

serving establishments; in 1903 there were 266 applicants, by 1911 there were 426

applicants.74 As discussed in Chapter Five, movie theaters also continued to grow in

number in the first decade of the twentieth century, indicating that there was no shortage

of patrons for these forms of entertainment. Some feared that consumerism was creeping

too much into the park system. In 1904, the Board allowed a commercial peanut stand to

be set up at the entrance of Minnehaha Park. It, unlike the eateries inside the pavilion and

refectory, was owned by a private citizen. Loring argued it was a “desecration of the

park,” but he was unable to convince the Board to evict the stand.75 The transition from

pleasure grounds to recreation parks was marked, primarily, by the formal adoption of

and accommodation for popular recreation activities. These proved to be very attractive

for Minneapolitans who, by their very presence, would support further transformation of

the parks’ roles. Building on already-held park land marked a transition for the Park

Board. Cleveland had long urged that land acquisition should take precedence over any improvements.

The zoo, bicycle paths, soft drink parlor, and dining rooms with picturesque views

represented the Board’s slow embrace of more active park spaces. With these accommodations, “the relatively small group of elite citizens who pushed for a park

74 Proceedings of the City Council of the City of Minneapolis, Minnesota from January 1, 1903 to January 1, 1904 (Minneapolis: City Council, 1904) and Proceedings of the City Council of the City of Minneapolis, Minnesota from January 1, 1911 to January 1, 1911 (Minneapolis: City Council, 1912). 75 Charles Loring, “With Apologies to Longfellow,” Minneapolis Journal, May 17, 1904. 302

board was imperceptibly relinquishing control of parks to the people who used them.”76

As the Board made accommodations, the city’s parks became increasingly popular with

its growing population. Some, like local elite woman Henrietta Jewett Keith, saw this

increased usage as a detriment to the sanctity of parks. In 1922, Keith published a book of

poetry titled Pipes ‘O Pan in a City Park.77 In it, she wrote a screed about the ways in

which immigrants were using Loring Park:

I hate to confess it, but even in Our Park there is a fly in the ointment. Fellow citizens of Czecho-Slovak, or Greek or ‘Eyetalian’ extraction, literally swarm over it on Sunday evenings and holidays. They wheel small Slovaks, in awful red woolen caps, about in precious go-cards; they pre-empt the benches and lie around on the grass, strewing it with remains of frankforters, dough-nuts and greasy paper bags, in defiance of all the Park Board’s rules and regulations, conspicuously posted. And they regard ME as if I were a worm. And do THEY pay any of the taxes for acquiring and maintaining this beauty spot? They do not.78

Her comment reflected the fact that working-class Minneapolitans, including new

immigrants, were using the parks in their new leisure time on week nights and Sundays.

While Keith was outraged at the ways in which these newcomers were using “her” park,

the complaint describes the many ways in which users appropriated park space to accommodate their needs. In Keith’s view, these users’ informal enjoyment of park space was complicated by their identities as eastern and southern Europeans. Moreover, despite the fact that Keith considered them “fellow citizens” – that is, fellow Minneapolitans – she did not see them as part of her class. By pointing out that these new users did not

76 Smith, City of Parks, 64. 77 Henrietta Jewett Keith, Pipes ‘O Pan in a City Park: By a Daughter of Pan (Minneapolis: Colwell Press, 1922). 78 Keith, Pipes ‘O Pan in a City Park, 57. 303 support the parks through tax payments, Keith was also suggesting that she, and other

Minneapolitans of her class, had more ownership over this public space than did

working-class Minneapolitans who clearly enjoyed the parks and all they had to offer. In the end, occupation and use began to affect Board decisions about the development of

new parks and the forms of existing parks. Though Henrietta Jewett Keith may have

lamented the passive pleasure grounds of the late-nineteenth century, the Park Board began responding to the increase in usership of park spaces that occurred as a result of and concurrent to accommodations of popular entertainment. The potential of parks as sites of redemption meant that social reformers and many members of the Board would continue to program and accommodate them in an effort to continue enticing members of the working class to them. In this way, the growing numbers of working-class

Minneapolitans using the parks had a somewhat more significant influence in the future of park planning and programming than did the taxpayers. The next iteration of park space – playgrounds – marked a broader shift in thinking about the role and purpose a city park should play.

The Playground Movement and the Re-Forming of Park Space

The Parks Board began overhauls on neighborhood parks that transformed them into reform parks. The main characteristics of reform parks included the placement of playground equipment, the addition of showers or pools, and changing open green space into fields for organized sports such as baseball diamonds. Users of these parks were often under the guidance of supervisors, and were typically segregated by age or

304 gender.79 Reform parks supplanted most of the city’s pleasure grounds. They were not spaces of disengagement with the urban condition; they were active spaces of stewardship by social reformers and civic leaders alike. The Park Board determined programming for most reform parks, though they were also used by schools and social reformers as venues to carry out their particular programs. The inclusion of playgrounds in reform parks was intended to provide clean spaces in which children could play.

Reform parks took different forms than did recreation parks or pleasure grounds. The space was prescriptive and, even in the absence of signs or supervisors, directed the types of play and recreation that occurred on these grounds.

Developing playgrounds in active parks was intended to provide space and programming that would mold children according to middle-class American values. In the late-nineteenth century, the concept that childhood and adolescence were separate stages of life from adulthood became more widely accepted.80 This distinction altered how reformers approached youth under their gaze, and spurred them to develop specific programming to help guide them “through these volatile years and shiel[d them] from inappropriate temptations.”81 New national reform groups, such as the Playgrounds

Association of America (PAA) “campaign[ed] to make the provision of play and recreation for American citizens of all ages a public responsibility.”82 The federal government even established a Children’s Bureau in 1912, which further confirmed the nation’s focus on children and adolescents as distinct entities in need of special

79 Cranz, The Politics of Park Design, 63. 80 James Marten, ed., Children and Youth during the Gilded Age and Progressive Era (New York: New York University Press, 2014), 3. 81 Marten, ed., Children and Youth during the Gilded Age and Progressive Era, 3. 82 Deborah Valentine, “Playing Progressively? Race, Reform, and Playful Pedagogies in the Origins of Philadelphia’s Starr Garden Recreation Park, 1857-1904,” in Children and Youth during the Gilded Age and Progressive Era, Marten, ed., 21. 305

guidance.83 As was discussed in Chapter Four, schools were re-cast in Minneapolis

during the Progressive era to be sites of stewardship and surveillance. Reformers argued

that as the previous cornerstones of child development, family and religion, were stunting

children’s development and social reformers would have to pick up the slack.84 Raising

moral, hardworking children was of concern to the growth of the city as well as the

nation. For many reformers, “the movement to organize children’s play was not so much

a reform undertaken on the child’s behalf, as was legislation limiting the employment of

children, but a medium created to reconstruct and control his moral values.”85

Minneapolis civic leaders and social reformers pointed to rising juvenile delinquency

rates as proof that the city’s children did not have positive outlets for their energy.86 Their patronage of pool halls and movie theaters as well as their presence in streets and empty lots meant that children often occupied deleterious environments which, according to reformers, retarded their development into productive citizens. Providing opportunities and spaces for organized play, Minneapolis reformers were part of the national “sporting boom of the early 1900s,” which “was supported by the rise of new theories of play that advocated organized youth sport, supervised by adults to control the behavior of youths…[that] would build character, fitness, and morality.”87

83 Marten, ed., Children and Youth during the Gilded Age and Progressive Era, 17. 84 David Snedden, The Problem of Vocational Education. (Boston: Houghton Mifflin Company, 1910), iv. 85 Cavallo, Muscles and Morals, 17. 86 See: Edward F. Waite, “The Physical Bases of Crime: From the Standpoint of a Juvenile Court,” in Physical Bases of Crime: A Symposium (XXXVIII Annual Meeting of the American Academy of Medicine, Minneapolis 14 June 1913 (Easton, PA: American Academy of Medicine Press, 1914), 106-113; Grace E. Pratt, A Study of Community Conditions, North District: An Extensive Survey of the Constructive Agencies and Institutions Working in the Community (Minneapolis: Women’s Co-operative Alliance, Inc., 1925). Social Welfare History Archives at the University of Minnesota, YWCA Box 10 Folder 2. 87 Riess, Sports in North America: A Documentary History, Volume 6 Sports in the Progressive Era, 1900- 1920 (Gulf Breeze, Fla: Academic International Press, 1998), xvi. 306

The use of parks, playgrounds, and sport by social reformers during the

Progressive era has received attention from historians. Roy Rosenzweig’s Eight Hours

for What We Will was a ground breaking analysis of the tensions surrounding the ways in

which Worcester, Massachusetts’s working class spent its leisure time and the ways in

which the city’s elites and social reformers attempted to control their activities.88 The

book included a chapter on parks, which defined them as “weapons in the same moral

crusade against working-class disorder, degeneracy, and drinking as the temperance

movement.”89 Worcester was divided between the wealthy west side and the working-

class east. Rosenzweig argued that the city’s park commissioners upheld this class-based

spatial segregation as they debuted their comprehensive park plan in 1886, which called

for several pleasure grounds in the west and but a few playgrounds in the east.90 The city’s working class made the most of this segregation and enjoyed unsupervised play and recreation in the few green spaces provided in their neighborhoods.91 However, in

the mid-1910s, the city’s elite embraced the national playground movement and began to

implement programming in working-class playgrounds. These playgrounds were well

staffed and implemented a system of surveillance and control in the spaces in which

working-class people formerly exercised exclusive control in an effort to mold a new

generation of “good” citizens and pliable workers.92 The elite actors in Rosenzweig’s

research were intent on controlling working-class public behaviors and allowed class,

ethnic, and religious-based prejudices to guide their actions, while the working class

88 Roy Rosenzweig, Eight Hours for What We Will: Workers & Leisure in an Industrial City, 1870-1920 (New York: Cambridge University Press, 1983). 89 Rosenzweig, Eight Hours for What We Will, 127. 90 Rosenzweig, Eight Hours for what we Will, 135. 91 Rosenzweig, Eight Hours for what we Will, 137. 92 Rosenzweig, Eight Hours for what we Will, 143, 148-149. 307 negotiated the city’s spaces on their own terms and often undermined the elites’ intentions. Rosenzweig’s book remains one of the most significant works on working- class recreation, but his chapter on parks in Worcester highlights the unique elements of the Minneapolis park system and playground movement.

Like Worcester, Minneapolis had “scenic parks” such as the areas around Lake

Harriet, Lake Calhoun, and the entirety of Minnehaha Park. Unlike Worcester, these sites did not become parks simply because they were near wealthy residential areas. Rather,

Cleveland had advocated for these sites to become parks based on their natural features of lakes, creeks, and (non-industrial) falls. The area east of the Mississippi, a predominantly working-class neighborhood, is noticeably bereft of lakes and other natural features that would make the centerpiece for a similar “scenic” park. This did not mean there were no parks in this area, though. Logan Park, originally called First Ward Park, was included in

Cleveland’s 1883 plan (figure 6.6). Cleveland – who normally eschewed ornamentation – called for a fountain to be installed in order to compensate for the lack of natural features that made Minnehaha or Loring parks more scenic.93

93 David C. Smith, “Parks, Lakes, Trails and So Much More: An Overview of the Histories of MPRB Properties,” (Minneapolis: Minneapolis Park and Recreation Board, 2008): 124-5. 308

Figure 6.6: Site of Logan Park, Enhancement of Cleveland’s 1883 Plan. Source: Cleveland, Suggestions for a System of Parks and Parkways, n.p.

Cleveland, Loring, and Folwell worked to ensure that parks not tied to natural features would be evenly distributed, and when Theodore Wirth became

Superintendent of Parks in 1906 his goal of having “a neighborhood park within six blocks of residents’ homes” carried their shared ethos forward.94 The comparatively low density of Minneapolis compared to larger cities and the lack of “defined” slum areas such that there were pockets of poor housing interspersed with average housing throughout most of the city meant that the development and uses of parks differed greatly

94 David Dierdauer, “The Legacy of Theodore Wirth and How He Shaped the Minneapolis Park System,” 8. James K. Hosmer Reading Room, Hennepin County Public Library. SB 482.M62 M647 2000 SCMC. 309 from Worcester or even Chicago and New York City.95 Minneapolis civic leaders and social reformers turned to social, economic, and environmental interventions in their attempts to steward the city and its population into becoming a model metropolis. While having a large park system was considered a matter of civic pride, providing safe spaces in which children could play (which would double as spaces in which users could be supervised and surveilled) became a priority at the turn of the twentieth century.

Children looking for play grounds often capitalized on lost spaces in their neighborhoods. Roger Trancik defined lost space as “the undesirable urban areas [that make] no positive contribution to the surroundings or users. They are ill-defined, without measurable boundaries, and fail to connect elements in a coherent way.”96 They took the

forms of alleyways, vacant lots, and streets with low traffic, all of which sparked concern

among social reformers who feared that such spaces would retard “proper” character

development. The Minneapolis Park Board once again turned to environmental

intervention to provide redemptive places for the city’s working-class population. As

parks’ forms changed to accommodate organized sports, “ad hoc playgrounds” began to

95 Several documents claim that Minneapolis lacked defined slums, including: Minneapolis Civic and Commercial Association Housing Committee, The Housing Problem in Minneapolis; Minneapolis Civic and Commercial Association, Industrial Survey of Minneapolis. Minnesota Historical Society Archives, HC108.M7M64. On density of neighborhoods, in 1910 Minneapolis's density per square mile in 1910 was 6,016 residents per square mile. This number can be compared to Chicago (11,806 per square mile) or New York City (16,621 per square mile), or even St. Louis (11,189 per square mile). U.S. Bureau of the Census, Table 14 “Population of the 100 Largest Urban Places: 1910.” http://www.census.gov/population/www/documentation/twps0027/tab14.txt (accessed March 28, 2015) 96 Roger Trancik, Finding Lost Space: Theories of Urban Design (Hoboken: John Wiley & Sons, Inc., 1986), 4-5. While terms like “vernacular landscape” and “tactical urbanism” or “everyday urbanism” also address spaces that have not received formal interventions by professional planners or architects, in the instance of Progressive era youths in Minneapolis seeking out unsupervised, open play grounds none of the terms are entirely appropriate. Vernacular landscape implies a more formal impression on the lots and streets in which children played, while tactical or everyday urbanism implies an organized effort to improve or change a place. Children’s lasting impression on these spaces were not of improvement, but simple ephemeral enjoyment. Rosenzweig and Blackmar, The Park and the People, 4-5; Emily Talen, “Do-it- Yourself Urbanism: A History,” Journal of Planning History 14:2 (May 2015): 135-148. 310

disappear.97 The informal play grounds that developed in empty lots and on streets were

deemed deleterious, noxious, and particularly dangerous because youths gathered there

without adequate adult supervision. Social reformers pointed to impromptu play grounds

as dens of immorality that could have irrevocable negative effects on children’s

characters, which would damn them as individuals and hurt the collective as they grew up

and were expected to become contributing members of society.

As discussed in Chapter Four, the Minneapolis Civic and Commerce Association,

in partnership with social reformers, undertook a study of poor housing conditions.98 The

report pointed to the growing sections of dilapidated housing in the city, and urged for

housing regulations based on model codes that would protect the city as a whole and

ensure that everyone had access to light, air, and water. It also argued that overcrowded

domestic space forced children to seek play spaces in streets and vacant lots. In figure

6.7, children are pictured gathered on a balcony above a “Slavic lodging house” located

in the basement. The combination of poor environmental conditions and the potential that

the only adult supervision present was likely foreign-born meant that accommodating these children in a proper playground with appropriate supervision was especially urgent.

Tenements that were built to the edge of the sidewalk and too close to one another were called out throughout the document for eliminating valuable yard space in which neighborhood children could play and creating derelict alleys. Figure 6.8 depicts “three

hundred and thirty feet of ashes and filth – the sole playground for the children of the 40

97 Jackson, Discovering the Vernacular Landscape, 130. 98 Minneapolis Civic and Commercial Association Housing Committee, The Housing Problem in Minneapolis. 311 families in the row.”99 Although tenements bore the brunt of criticism in the housing report, housing typology was not the sole determining factor in the creation of deleterious lost spaces. Working-class residential areas that were mostly detached houses intended to house single families offered subpar spaces for children as well. These overcrowded residences that had yards also contributed to pollution of spaces used as play grounds. In figure 6.9, a “neglected yard” is pictured with “ashes, garbage, manure” all “on undrained premises.”100 These areas were directly adjacent to housing and were affected by improper disposal of ashes, the organic detritus that was the result of keeping live animals in cities, and garbage. These areas highlighted were not, however, called out as the most egregious play grounds for local children.

99 Minneapolis Civic and Commercial Association Housing Committee, The Housing Problem in Minneapolis, 72. 100 Minneapolis Civic and Commercial Association Housing Committee, The Housing Problem in Minneapolis, 70. 312

Figure 6.7: Children Gathered on a Porch. Source: Minneapolis Civic and Commercial Association Housing Committee, The Housing Problem in Minneapolis, a Preliminary Investigation made for the Committee on Housing of the Minneapolis Civic and Commercial Association (Minneapolis, 1915[?]), 26. Minnesota Historical Society Archives HD7304.M5 A4.

313

Figure 6.8: An Alley Filled with Garbage. Source: Minneapolis Civic and Commercial Association Housing Committee, The Housing Problem in Minneapolis, 72.

314

Figure 6.9: Yard with Garbage. Source: Minneapolis Civic and Commercial Association Housing Committee, The Housing Problem in Minneapolis, 70.

The “Brick Block,” located in the near Northeast neighborhood was held up as an

example of children claiming dismal lost space. As seen in figure 6.10, it was essentially

a vacant lot, with tenements surrounding it on three sides. Although an open ground and

seemingly clear of the pollution of the previous lost space play grounds, it lacked the

uplifting elements of designed nature as found in parks and featured no defining form that

would implicitly guide styles of play. Figure 6.11 shows the children who frequented the

Brick Block, including an African American boy and several Syrian children who

“need[ed] better training for citizenship than is furnished by the crowded tenement” and

315 this barren play space.101 The housing report was conducted in 1913 and 1914, as the

Park Board was working to improve its playground provisions and programming. The national playground movement found a home in Minneapolis in the late-nineteenth century, but it took time before the first play apparatus would be put in a park.

Playgrounds would become outdoor redemptive places that would act as “sites of assimilation” for immigrants, newcomers to cities, and for children of the working-class who, it was assumed, needed guidance for proper character development.102

Figure 6.10: Brick Block Play Ground. Source: Minneapolis Civic and Commercial Association Housing Committee, The Housing Problem in Minneapolis, 16.

101 Minneapolis Civic and Commercial Association Housing Committee, The Housing Problem in Minneapolis, 75. 102 Daphne Spain, How Women Saved the City, 24. Italics in original. 316

Figure 6.11: Children of the Brick Block. Source: Minneapolis Civic and Commercial Association Housing Committee, The Housing Problem in Minneapolis, 76.

The Playground Movement in Minneapolis

In the late-nineteenth century, the playground movement developed in the United

States. Early play grounds were “simply places children could play safely” and were

“originally free of adult supervision.”103 However, in the last major transformation of parks during the Progressive era, the Minneapolis Park Board implemented playgrounds throughout the city. Cranz termed these reconfigured sites “reform parks,” in which rigorous play and recreation activities were expected. Reform parks provided space

where people learned social context and cues and had trained supervisors on hand to help

103 Steven Riess, City Games: The Evolution of American Urban Society and the Rise of Sports (Champaign: University of Illinois Press, 1989), 134. 317 direct and organize activity, because “activity in itself would no longer suffice; it had to be organized by knowledgeable leaders to mold the user’s experience effectively.”104 The transition from pleasure grounds as sites of informal recreations into sites of active reform meant that the city’s network of stewardship had expanded to yet another realm.

Social reformers and civic leaders were already operating in work places, schools, homes, and commercial entertainments, now they had set their sights on broad public space in the form of parks.

Social reformers, particularly settlement workers, were early proponents of the playground movement. They developed “wholesome recreational activities to attract neighborhood youth” and kept them from deleterious environments of commercial entertainments.105 Early play grounds had equipment such as merry-go-rounds that were enjoyed on a casual basis and did not require organization for engagement. However, the playgrounds of the Progressive era were quite different from these early sites.

Recreational programming for children was a way for reformers to mold children according to middle-class American values. The distinction of childhood and adolescence as separate stages of life altered how reformers approached youth under their gaze, and spurred them to develop specific programming to help guide youth “through these volatile years and shiel[d them] from inappropriate temptations.”106 Parks provided an ideal venue in which reformers could direct organized play. As historian Dominick

Cavallo noted, advocates of organized play “did not want children to relax, or nonchalantly pass the time of day on playgrounds…[it was] educational, not

104 Cranz, The Politics of Park Design, 66. 105 Steven A. Riess, Sports in North America: A Documentary History, Volume 6 Sports in the Progressive Era, 1900-1920 (Gulf Breeze, Fla: Academic International Press, 1998), 116. 106 Marten, ed., Children and Youth during the Gilded Age and Progressive Era, 3. 318

recreational.”107 For many reformers, “the movement to organize children’s play was not

so much a reform undertaken on the child’s behalf, as was legislation limiting the

employment of children, but a medium created to reconstruct and control his moral

values.”108 In cities throughout the country, social reformers asserted that “city

playgrounds…would be the womb from which a new urban citizenry – moral,

industrious, socially responsible – would emerge.”109

In the last years of the nineteenth century, civic leaders began a push to give the

playground movement a home in Minneapolis. Mayor Robert Pratt, Reverend Marion D.

Shutter, Loring, and Folwell convened in 1898 at a public meeting held at the West Hotel

“to consider the playground movement” and discuss which parks were good candidates to

be reconfigured into playgrounds.110 Although the city had acquired significant tracts of

land to satisfy Cleveland’s initial plan, the group lamented the lack of accessible parks

for citizens living in the center of the city. It was pointed out that Glenwood Park, in the far northwest of the city, was an ideal site for a playground, but “its only fault [was] inaccessibility by car lines.”111 This shortcoming would undercut Cleveland’s principle

of ensuring parks were accessible and usable by a cross-section of users. Shortly after the

meeting, the Minneapolis Improvement League sent out a mailer requesting donations to

facilitate new playgrounds. “What investment,” the mailer queried, “would insure better

returns than providing a place where little children can have the benefit of pure air and

107 Cavallo, Muscles and Morals, 22. 108 Cavallo, Muscles and Morals, 17. 109 Gillette, Jr., Civitas by Design, 12. 110 “Idea is Popular: Public Playground Movement Has a Good Start,” unknown newspaper. Loring Scrapbook Collection, Box 1 Volume 1, 1871-1922, 61. Likely 1898. 111 “Idea is Popular: Public Playground Movement Has a Good Start,” unknown newspaper. Loring Scrapbook Collection, Box 1 Volume 1, 1871-1922, 61. Likely 1898. 319

sunshine and be free from the dangers and the pernicious influences of the street?”112 The

mailer stated that the new playgrounds would go in two congested areas; the first on a

piece of land located on Thirteenth Avenue and Second Street South (just two blocks

away from the Red Light District discussed in Chapter Five), the second on Washington

Avenue between Sixth and Seventh Avenues North.113

Loring defended the request for donations, stating that playgrounds were crucial

for civic health.114 Rosenzweig characterized wealthy citizens’ land donations for park use as “gestures of civic generosity” that “reinforced a paternalist social structure, which gave dominant roles” to prominent business leaders and politicians.115 Unlike

Worcester’s elite, though, land donated in Minneapolis was not made into scenic parks for the wealthy. Loring, looking to shore up support, even asked Cleveland to write in support of the playground movement.116 In what would be one of his last written works,

Cleveland wrote an article in 1898 titled “The Influence of Parks on the Character of

Children.”117 In it, he echoed previous assertions that the accessibility of parks was

critical to fulfilling their purpose in cities. He “contended that the park’s primary purpose

was to provide ‘the occasional relief of the quiet seclusion of rural scenes’; this…was

especially important for children, particularly those from the ‘poorer classes.’”118

112 “Dear Friend,” mailer, 13 July 1899. Minnesota Historical Society Archives Loring Scrapbook Collection, Box 1 Volume 1, 1871-1922, 67. 113 “Dear Friend,” mailer, 13 July 1899. Loring Scrapbook Collection, Box 1 Volume 1, 1871-1922, 67. 114 “Idea is Popular: Public Playground Movement Has a Good Start,” unknown newspaper. Loring Scrapbook Collection, Box 1 Volume 1, 1871-1922, 61. Likely 1898. 115 Rosenzweig, Eight Hours for what we Will, 134. 116 Newton, Design on the Land, 317. 117 Richard E. Foglesong, Planning the Capitalist City: The Colonial Era to the 1920s (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1968), 115. 118 Foglesong, Planning the Capitalist City, 115. 320

Although playgrounds had many supporters in Minneapolis, it would take a new Park

Board superintendent to make them a priority.

Theodore Wirth was a Swiss immigrant who had worked as a horticulturalist in

Central Park and in Connecticut before moving to Minneapolis in 1906.119 Like

Cleveland, Wirth had had a few formative experiences in Central Park that would form the foundation of his view on parks. In one instance, just before moving to Minneapolis to take the superintendent position, Wirth took a shortcut across the grass on his way home from work. But “a police officer hiding in the bushes caught him” and he was

“forced to retrace his steps and walk home on the paths.”120 The encounter upset him deeply, and he vowed that such restrictions would not be in place in parks he might control in the future. He reasoned that parks were supported by tax money, and therefore people should be able to use them as they wished.121 Clearly his vision coalesced with those of Folwell, Loring, and Cleveland. Upon taking the superintendent position in

Minneapolis, he reviewed the role of park police. The previous superintendent had defined the role of park police as a light one; they were in the parks primarily for “the protection of public property and the accommodation and personal safety of visitors.”122

When Wirth became the Superintendent of Parks, he echoed this sentiment. He believed that “park police should not be enforcers so much as educators on proper park decorum, keeping park-goers in line with a friendly word of caution or advice instead of a club or a ticket.”123 In other words, they would be stewards and good Samaritans, not rigid rule

119 Dierdauer, “The Legacy of Theodore Wirth And how He Shaped the Minneapolis Park System,” 2, 3. 120 Dierdauer, “The Legacy of Theodore Wirth And how He Shaped the Minneapolis Park System,” 2. 121 Dierdauer, “The Legacy of Theodore Wirth And how He Shaped the Minneapolis Park System,” 3. 122 Fifteenth Annual Report of the Board of Park Commissioners of the City of Minneapolis (Minneapolis: Harrison & Smith, Printers, 1898), 18. 123 Smith, City of Parks¸83. 321

enforcers there to control the public space. This view on the role of police in parks factored into the ways he defined playground implementation in the city. Park supervisors and recreation leaders, not police, would set most limits on acceptable park activities and define the types of play that would go on in playgrounds.

Not coincidentally, the first year Wirth was superintendent, the city got its first playgrounds. There were several sites located throughout the city selected to receive play equipment ranging from a “horizontal ladder,” “climbing poles,” “swinging rings,” and

“see-saws.”124 Beyond such additions, Wirth was also responsible for accepting an offer

from a local Young Men’s Christian Association (YMCA) to lead recreation

programming in the city’s parks. In 1907, C.T. Booth became the “Supervisor and

Instructor of playgrounds,” splitting his time between the YMCA and the parks, and

formalizing a connection between social reformers and the Park Board in the network of

stewardship.125 The partnership marked a formal marriage between social reformers and

the Park Board, which was populated almost exclusively by civic leaders. Booth

advocated separating playground users by sex and by age, something that was a common

practice in reform parks and playgrounds throughout the country.126 Recreation leaders,

most of whom were connected with the YMCA, were hired “to stimulate and organize

sanctioned activities” as well as to encourage certain behaviors. The Minneapolis Park

Board defined its ideal leader as a man who “‘should always appear neatly dressed,

cleanly shaven, with well-groomed hair.”127 In other words: the recreation leaders must

124 Twenty-Fourth Annual Report of the Board of Park Commissioners of the City of Minneapolis (Minneapolis: Harrison & Smith, Printers, 1906), 26. 125 Twenty-Fifth Annual Report of the Board of Park Commissioners of the City of Minneapolis (Minneapolis: Harrison & Smith, Printers, 1907), 37. 126 Cranz, The Politics of Park Design, 63. 127 Berlowe et al, Reflections in Loring Pond, 22. There were female recreation supervisors as well, but no description was found pertaining to their proper attire and appearance. 322

be good examples in hygiene and dress for those recreating in the parks – an ideal to model and be modeled to emulate. Playgrounds provided ideal stewardship venues for civic leaders and social reformers. They were able to guide some children who would otherwise be found in noxious lost spaces or commercial entertainment venues.

Playgrounds did not replace lost spaces or movie houses as destinations for children, but they were well attended. Booth reported that the playgrounds were very popular, with an attendance just shy of 500,000 annually by 1909.128

Making playgrounds out of existing parks required formal alterations to the grounds. The reconfiguration of Logan Park showed the physical alterations made to accommodate the active park and playground ideologies to which Wirth subscribed. In the Park Board’s first annual report, the portion of land was described as just over ten acres with “a level surface an is in the midst of the rapidly increasing population of that populous ward, and is reached well by the system of streets and avenues of the East

Division as by the street car line.”129 The plot was chosen mostly due to its centrality to

the growing population of the Northeast neighborhood. As seen in figure 6.12, the park’s

original pleasure ground design had a bifurcated green space anchored by a small

fountain. The south end featured large open fields that would facilitate unstructured play

and the north end had an extra set of pathways that divided up the lawns into smaller

parcels, which would better facilitate quiet and less active activities in the park. Logan’s

topography was flat and inconspicuous. It was this banality that led Cleveland to call for

128 Twenty-Seventh Annual Report of the Board of Park Commissioners of the City of Minneapolis (Minneapolis: Harrison & Smith, Printers, 1909), 64. 129 First Annual Report of the Board of Park Commissioners of the City of Minneapolis (Minneapolis: Harrison & Smith, Printers, 1884), 6. 323

a fountain to be placed there and that made it a good candidate for a playground

transformation.

Figure 6.12: First Ward (Logan) Park Original Plan. Source: Cleveland, Suggestions for a System of Parks and Parkways, n.p.

324

Twenty-five years after Cleveland’s original design, Wirth proposed a

“transformation” that would incorporate formal play areas. As seen in figure 6.13, the

north side of the park would be replaced with tennis courts, merry-go-rounds, sand boxes, outdoor gymnasiums, and a general recreation building. Booth’s insistence that playground spaces be segregated by age and gender had clearly influenced Wirth’s design for the park, as the outdoor gymnasiums were labeled specifically “Men’s Out-Door

Gymnasium” and “Women’s Out-Door Gymnasium.” While these were the only spaces to be specifically labeled, the designation might lead users to believe that the west and east sides of the park, at least on the northern half, were also to be gender-segregated spaces. The southern half was reconfigured into a hybrid of a pleasure ground and active park. Wirth still included scenic details that emphasized the picturesque over the practical, including the curvilinear pathways, trees and shrubs, and large green fields. The fields, however, were interfered with through the placement of flower beds, which limited unstructured play opportunities that had existed there previously. Moreover, the fountain – a purely ornamental addition to the park – was replaced by a wading pool that still served as a water feature but was more appropriate for Logan Park’s transformation into an active park.

325

Figure 6.13: “Suggestive Plan for the Transformation of Logan Park into a General Recreation Ground.” Source: Twenty-Sixth Annual Report of the Board of Park Commissioners of the City of Minneapolis (Minneapolis: Harrison & Smith, Printers, 1908), n.p.

326

Logan Park was not the only site that was reconfigured into an active park during

Wirth’s tenure as Park Superintendent. Many other parks would make accommodations

for baseball diamonds, football fields, or tennis courts in addition to ladders, see saws,

and merry-go-rounds to appeal to children. Another site that accommodated facilities tied

to the recreation and playground movement was the Parade. In 1908, after more than

three years of petitions by the YMCA, local high schools, and Wirth himself, the Park

Board finally agreed to install an athletic park section there.130 In some ways, the

Parade’s development complimented that of Logan Park. Both were designated centers of

recreation and their new designs would distinctly change the place of parks in

Minneapolis. The Parade’s athletic park (figure 6.14), like Logan Park’s fieldhouses, provided programmed space for organized recreation. However, the Parade had a grandstand.131 This accommodation appealed to yet another growing trend in recreation

and play in the early-twentieth century: spectatorship. Organized sports were touted as

practical and ideal means of keeping people fit and inculcating them with a teamwork

mentality and respect for authority. But in a time of movie houses and over-the-top

ornamentation in parks and department stores, it is no surprise that sports were turned

into a spectacle.132 While the reconfiguration of smaller parks was intended to making it

easier for more people to play and actively recreate, the addition of a grandstand

contributed to a redirection of recreation in parks. This transition was part of the

modernization of leisure, as “commercial entertainment, especially spectacles such

130 “Annual Report of Minneapolis Board of Park Commissioners 1908,” 71 James K. Hosmer Reading Room, Hennepin County Public Library; Smith, “Parks, Lakes, Trails and So Much More,” 193-4. 131 “Annual Report of Minneapolis Board of Park Commissioners 1908,” 71 James K. Hosmer Reading Room, Hennepin County Public Library. 132 Cavallo, Muscles and Morals, 103. 327 as…professional sports, replaced self-generated and active leisure.”133 Professional baseball and league kitten ball had taken off at the turn of the twentieth century in

Minneapolis, and while sports that encouraged spectatorship initially got a chilly reception from social reformers, it became an acceptable form of entertainment once regulated.134 The Parade would service the stewardship desires of both civic leaders and social reformers to both provide functional recreation for people and divert them from

“destructive” commercial entertainments. In a 1919 survey, the YWCA specifically cited the playgrounds at several schools as being particularly useful for their uses. Their recreation programs proved to be a major draw, which helped to entrench their role as stewards of the city’s social development. The YWCA identified the Parade “with its numerous tennis courts and base ball and foot ball fields” as “the city’s principal playground for adults.”135

133 Fischer, “Changes in Leisure Activities, 1890-1940,” 453. 134 The Minneapolis Millers made their American Association baseball league debut in 1902. Games were especially popular entertainment as they could be attended by men, women, and children without social scorn, unlike theaters and dance halls. Rex Hamann, The American Association Almanac: A Baseball History Journal: 1902-1952 (3:1 September/October 2003), 9. On the professionalization of baseball and its relationship to social reform and urbanization, see Riess, City Games, 1989. Kitten ball was the precursor to softball that was invented by Lewis Rober, a firefighter in Minneapolis, and debuted in 1895. It was a popular sport for men and women and was the only iteration of softball in Minneapolis until the 1930s. See: Smith, City of Parks, 133. 135 “Summary of Central District Report, 1919,” Box 10, Folder 2, page 32. Minneapolis YWCA Collection, Social Welfare History Archives. 328 Figure 6.14: Proposed Arrangement of the Athletic Field at the Parade. Source: Twenty- Sixth Annual Report of the Board of Park Commissioners of the City of Minneapolis (Minneapolis: Harrison & Smith, Printers, 1908), n.p.

Between Cleveland’s first park system plan and the turn of the twentieth century,

Minneapolis's parks underwent significant transformations. The three iterations of

Minneapolis parks – pleasure grounds, recreation parks, and active parks or playgrounds

– were all physical manifestations of emerging urban planning theories and reform ideologies. Each accommodation, from pavilions and rectories to merry-go-rounds and grandstands, reflects the changing interpretation of the purpose of city parks between

1895 and 1915, a crucial time of urbanization in Minneapolis. In a 1926 survey, the

329 YWCA included a map of Minneapolis parks that indicated the types of recreation available at each park (figure 6.15). The map shows the robust growth of the park system, which would not likely have been possible if it were not for the ethos of environmental intervention and land acquisition Cleveland urged and civic leaders like Loring, Folwell, and Wirth continued in their work with the Park Board. When compared with

Cleveland’s simple 1883 plan, the 1926 park system demonstrated the dynamic roles of parks and the ways in which interventions and accommodations affected their form and purposes over time.

330 Figure 6.15: Map Showing Locations and Types of the Recreational Activities. Source: Theodore Wirth and Karl B. Raymond, “Map Showing Locations and Types of the Recreational Activities Conducted by the Department of Recreation of the Board of Park Commissioners, Minneapolis, Minn.,” (Minneapolis: Board of Park Commissioners, 1926). James K. Hosmer Reading Room, Hennepin County Public Library. UMN35758

331 As is evident from the 1926 map of available recreations in Minneapolis's parks, the Park Board’s efforts to provide varied recreation opportunities in these spaces throughout the city continued to develop after the period under study. Wirth’s goal of placing a park within every six blocks did not come to fruition, but the system did continue to grow and park distribution was fairly even, with the exception of downtown.

Accommodations for new types of recreation continued, as is evidenced by the three golf courses in place in 1926. The transformation of park grounds reflected broader changes in the city’s social development. As social reformers and civic leaders worked on broadening their stewardship efforts, the parks transformed from unguided, pleasure grounds to recreation parks intended to compete with commercial entertainments to active parks with playgrounds that gave children safe spaces to play and adults the opportunity to play and watch organized sports. These formal changes accommodated active play for those engaging in organized sports and more passive pursuits for those attending simply as spectators, all within the same venue. The changes were concurrent with efforts by social reformers and civic leaders to act as stewards for the city’s economic, social, and physical development. Attempting to establish the open shop, studying and suggesting housing regulations, proposing new curricula and school functions, and reforming commercial entertainment content were seemingly disparate causes but were markers of a general ethos of stewardship shared by Minneapolis's elites that favored intervention. Park spaces, as environmental interventions, were the formal manifestations of these increasing stewardship efforts during the Progressive era.

332 Conclusion

More and more, modern cities are approaching and even exceeding the old Greek conception of cities as bodies having a consciousness and a purpose and a field of endeavor all their own. So many things are expected of cities and attempted by them in these days, and so many more things will be demanded of them in the future, that the planning of them becomes more and more important as the days of extreme ‘laissez faire’ recede into the past. -Edward H. Bennett and Andrew Wright Crawford, Plan of Minneapolis, 1917. 1

The above was included in a 1917 comprehensive city plan for Minneapolis. It

was, effectively, a call for a major city intervention that would overhaul some existing

streets, demolish existing neighborhoods, and instill a neoclassical and City Beautiful- esque aesthetic in a city that was founded on practical, city natural principles. The plan’s origins began eight years before its debut, when members of the Minneapolis

Commercial Club decided to form a Civic Commission to “consider the question of a city plan.”2 Members of the Commission came from a variety of other organizations,

including “the Commercial Club, Chamber of Commerce, the Board of Park

Commissioners, the North Side Commercial Club, the South Side Commercial Club, the

St. Anthony Commercial Club, the Engineer’s Club, the Municipal Art Commission, the

Publicity Clubs the Retailer’s Association, the Six o’Clock Club, the Woman’s Club, and

the Trades and Labor Assembly.”3 The plan was part boosterism and part pragmatism; the Commission reasoned that because Minneapolis was growing so rapidly, a comprehensive plan that would set out a path of development and growth for the

1 Edward H. Bennett and Andrew Wright Crawford, Plan of Minneapolis: Prepared under the Direction of the Civic Commission (Minneapolis: The Civic Commission, 1917), xiii. 2 Bennett and Crawford, Plan of Minneapolis, xi. 3 Bennett and Crawford, Plan of Minneapolis, xi. 333 twentieth century was necessary to ensure that the city maintained its economic and aesthetic superiority and so that it might adopt the form of a truly great metropolis.4

That the Commission formed in 1909 with the mission of getting a comprehensive city plan done is no coincidence. That year Daniel H. Burnham and Edward H. Bennett debuted their Plan of Chicago.5 Their plan was supposed to elevate America’s Second

City to an elite level that might enable it to surpass all others in the country.6 It was among the first such plans in the country, and helped to launch the city planning profession. Clearly influenced by the Plan of Chicago and its authors’ intentions,

Minneapolis's newly-formed Civic Commission hired Bennett to make a similar plan for their city.7 In 1917, Bennett and Andrew Crawford debuted their Plan of Minneapolis.

Jules Guerin, who produced artwork for the Chicago Plan, was hired to illustrate the

Minneapolis document.8 This, of course, leant a familiar aesthetic to the plan’s presentation, but the similarities did not stop at renderings. Bennett’s signature design elements, broad boulevards linking public squares with neoclassical buildings throughout the city, had come to define the Plan of Chicago. These features effectively laid over

Minneapolis's grid, often without regard to existing form.9 Figure 7.1 shows Sixth

Avenue, the main proposed “artery.” It was to be a centerpiece of the city’s reconfiguration, but it would have resulted in a bifurcation of already-established

4 Bennett and Crawford, Plan of Minneapolis, xii-xiv. 5 Daniel H. Burnham and Edward H. Bennett, Plan of Chicago: Prepared under the Direction of the Commercial Club During the Years MCMVI, MCMVII, and MCMVIII (Chicago: The Commercial Club, 1909). 6 Carl Smith, The Plan of Chicago: Daniel Burnham and the Remaking of the American City (Chicago: The University of Chicago Press, 2006), 1-2. 7 David A. Lanegran and Carol L. Urness, Minnesota on the Map: A Historical Atlas (St. Paul: Minnesota Historical Society Press, 2008), 157. Burnham died in 1912, and the Minneapolis Civic Commission hired Bennett and Crawford in 1913. 8 Bennett and Crawford, Plan of Minneapolis, xv. 9 Lanegran and Urness, Minnesota on the Map, 157. 334 neighborhoods and networks.

Figure 7.1: The Sixth Avenue Artery. Source: Bennett and Crawford, Plan of Minneapolis, front matter.

335

The rigid organization and emphasis on ornamentation of Bennett and Crawford’s

plan were in direct contradiction to Horace Cleveland’s 1883 park system plan, his early

park designs, and his city natural ethos that had clearly left a lasting impression on the

Park Board’s leadership.10 The importance of planning, however, was a shared sentiment.

In the plan, Bennett and Crawford declared that “planning [is] vital to enable the city to

prepare for the utilitarian and economic uses and purposes of modern city life, to provide

easy communication and easy access, to arrange for the unobstructed flow of traffic and

all city activities, to provide for the health and convenience, the pleasure and recreation

of the people themselves; in short to plan all these things for a well-ordered civic life, a

‘city useful’ as well as a ‘city beautiful.’”11

When the Plan of Minneapolis debuted, 1,000 copies were printed and distributed in an effort to garner support for the proposal.12 The City Beautiful treatment overlaid onto Minneapolis's existing, functioning frame, and the emphasis on ornamentation that contradicted Cleveland’s efforts to protect the city’s natural features did not sit well with

Minneapolitans. Compounding the issues presented by this contradiction, the country was readying for war and labor troubles had once again hit the city’s flour mills and the Twin

Cities were recovering from a massive transit strike.13 Geographer David Lanegran

argued that the plan never gained traction among the upper and middle classes, stating

that elites saw the plan’s reconfigurations as especially costly and disruptive to their

10 Horace W.S. Cleveland, Suggestions for a System of Parks and Parkways, for the City of Minneapolis (Minneapolis: Johnson, Smith, & Harrison, 1883). 11 Crawford, Plan of Minneapolis, 193-4. 12 Bennett and Crawford, Plan of Minneapolis, epigraph. 13 Jean E. Spielman, The Stool-Pigeon and the Open Shop Movement (Minneapolis: American Publishing Company, 1923), 151. 336 established business networks and it did not “offer a great deal to the middle class.”14

Thus, with “no broad base of citizen support…the beautifully produced plans were shelved.”15

The rejection of the Plan of Minneapolis was not a denunciation of the virtues of planning but a reaffirmation of the city’s existing form. That Minneapolitans rejected this plan, despite its aesthetic appeal, well-researched documentation on the city’s past, and convincing rationalizations of its future, reflected an adherence to the early conception of planning and environmental interventions as expressed by Cleveland and carried out by the Park Board. Such a broad reconfiguration of the city’s form would betray the careful image crafted by early boosters and manifested in its parks and great streets such as

Nicollet and Hennepin Avenues. It also represented a level of stewardship and intervention that was too prescriptive in nature compared to the previous efforts to address housing, work space, schools, and parks. More practically, implementing the far- reaching plan was likely rejected in part because it would have been an expensive endeavor, particularly during a time of economic uncertainty. Although social reformers and civic leaders cultivated a network of stewardship that would reform and re-form public and private spaces, the Plan of Minneapolis was impractical, prescriptive, and perhaps too impersonal to coalesce with these efforts.

Just shy of a century later, Minneapolis still turns to reconfigurations to revitalize and give purpose to public spaces. Like many other American cities, the post-World War

II period marked a period of declension for Minneapolis. Between the 1930s and the

1960s, the flour milling industry slowly moved to Buffalo, New York where it was easier

14 Lanegran and Urness, Minnesota on the Map, 159. 15 Lanegran and Urness, Minnesota on the Map, 159. 337 to ship the final products to the global market. The area of the old Bridge Square (the

Gateway) was defined as a blight and, between the 1950s and early 1970s, city planners opted to raze the historic area in an effort to spur urban renewal.16 Minneapolis planners believed that urban renewal would solve the declining city’s economic issues, but the resulting destruction of historic buildings has instead been characterized as “inexcusable act[s] of civic vandalism” that took the city decades to recover from.17 As downtown was

being demolished, two interstates and a highway were spliced through the city, which

severed connectivity between neighborhoods.18 A series of revitalization plans were put in place in the 1980s and 1990s, many of which focused on the riverfront that Cleveland had emphasized in his plans.19

Currently, the City of Lakes is undergoing major transformations of three downtown spaces – Peavey Plaza, Downtown East Commons, and Nicollet Mall – in an

16 Nathanson, Minneapolis in the Twentieth Century, 139, 145. In the post-World War II period, urban renewal became common in many American cities. National policy such as the Housing Act of 1949 and the G.I. Bill altered the American residential landscape at great cost to the country’s once-proud downtowns. People left the inner city in favor of new residences being constructed in the suburbs, which raised vacancy rates and lowered tax bases. These issues were further compounded by the process of deindustrialization in the 1950s through 1970s. Large tracts of industrial land, which were often in the core of older American cities, were effectively left idle and the cost to remediate the earth on which they stood in order to use it for other purposes seemed insurmountable. Compounding these policy and environmental factors was a surge of informal racial segregation efforts that sought to undermine national policy changes that, at least in a legal sense, were supposed to end racial segregation and discrimination. For example, redlining zoning practices, whereby realtors and banks explicitly marked urban neighborhoods (almost always African American or Latino) for declension in favor of stoking (white) suburban development, effectively severed commercial and residential ties between these marked neighborhoods and the prosperity experienced in the new suburbs. See: Joseph Heathcott, “The City Quietly Remade: National Programs and Local Agendas in the Movement to Clear the Slums, 1942-1952,” Journal of Urban History 34:2 (January 2008): 221-242; Eric Avila and Mark H. Rose, “Race, Culture, Politics, and Urban Renewal,” Journal of Urban History 35:2 (March 2009): 335-347; Samuel Zipp, “The Roots and Routes of Urban Renewal,” Journal of Urban History 39:3 (May 2013): 366-391; Joseph Heathcott and Maire Agnes Murphy, “Corridors of Flight, Zones of Renewal: Industry, Planning, and Policy in the Making of Metropolitan St. Louis, 1940-1980,” Journal of Urban History 31:2 (January 2005): 151-189. 17 Larry Millett, Lost Twin Cities (St. Paul: Minnesota Historical Society Press), 225. 18 On Highway 55, see: Nathanson, Minneapolis in the Twentieth Century, 196-198; On Interstates 35W and 94, see: Patricia Kay Cavanaugh, “The Politics of Urban Interstates: A Contextual of Twin Cities Cases,” Dissertation submitted to the University of Minnesota, 2008. 131-138. 19 See: “Reimagining the Riverfront,” 135-160 in Nathanson, Minneapolis in the Twentieth Century. 338

effort to revitalize underused and blighted sites that detract from the city’s value. Peavey

Plaza, a sunken, stepped concrete plaza designed in 1968, was set for destruction, but

advocates were successful in getting it on the National Register of Historic Places, which

assured its preservation. A city-produced “FAQ” on the project to renovate Peavey Plaza queried “How do programming and design inter-act?” The answer was that it would be

“space flexible enough to accommodate active programming (i.e. events and performances) and passive use (allowing people to hang out and relax).”20 A similar

vision could be seen in Theodore Wirth’s plan for the reconfiguration of Logan Park from

a pleasure ground into an active park and playground. With half of the park dedicated to

prescribed use, the other half would be more flexible space that would allow users to

enjoy unstructured pursuits, the early twentieth century equivalent of hanging out and

relaxing.21 Peavey Plaza’s concrete steps and Logan Park’s divided lawns were prescriptive in the sense that activities in these spaces would be small in scale, but both had accommodations for allowing users to appropriate spaces within the designer’s framework and to use them as they saw fit.

A new project on the east side of the city has been described as “a once-in-a- generation opportunity to design and build a public open space in Downtown

Minneapolis.”22 The site was opened up after the Metrodome was demolished to make

20 City of Minneapolis, “Peavey Plaza Revitalization Project – FAQ,” http://www.ci.minneapolis.mn.us/www/groups/public/@cped/documents/webcontent/wcms1p-081836.pdf (accessed May 20, 2015). The new plans for Peavey Plaza somewhat incorporate the idea of tactical urbanism, which “makes use of open and iterative development processes, the efficient use of resources, and the creative potential unleashed by social interactions…[it] is a learned response to the slow and siloed conventional city building process.” Mike Lydon and Anthony Garcia, Tactical Urbanism: Short-term Action for Long-term Change (Washington: Island Press, 2015), 2-3. 21 Twenty-Sixth Annual Report of the Board of Park Commissioners of the City of Minneapolis (Minneapolis: Harrison & Smith, Printers, 1908). 22 Downtown East Commons project description, http://www.downtowneastcommonsmpls.com/ (accessed June 10, 2015). 339

way for a new Vikings football stadium, and the city targeted the Downtown East area for

redevelopment to remediate the blight that had affected it for nearly twenty years. The

plans provide a flexible space for future programming and feature a wide open green

space and an “artistic water feature.”23

The third renovation is of Nicollet Mall, and it most clearly reflects the early civic

leaders’ belief that environmental interventions could set Minneapolis apart and

encourage growth. In 1968, the city cut off all automobile traffic from Nicollet Avenue

between the Gateway and Twelfth Street, or roughly from Bridge Square to just south of

the Young Women’s Christian Association building discussed in Chapter Five, in an

effort to entice people to continue shopping downtown while suburban shopping malls

were gaining in popularity.24 The current renovations to Nicollet Mall are intended to

revitalize it and make it more usable by the city’s growing downtown population, as well

as to “keep Minnesota attractive and vibrant in an increasingly competitive marketplace

both nationally and globally.”25 Once again, the city’s leaders turned to design

interventions to set Minneapolis apart from other urban centers while making it an

aesthetically pleasing yet functional space for its citizens. Of course, such interventions

do not make Minneapolis a unique case but link it with other urban centers that have

turned to major renovations in an attempt to rescue or improve their downtowns.26 These

23 Kristen Leigh Painter, “Design Unveiled for Downtown East Commons Park; $22 Million Must be Raised,” Star Tribune, May 28, 2015. Hargreaves, the architectural firm responsible for the design, stated that in its research of what Minneapolitans wanted, it was clear that another “natural lake or pond” was “largely opposed.” 24 Iric Nathanson, Minneapolis in the Twentieth Century: The Growth of an American City (St. Paul: Minnesota Historical Society Press, 2010), 172-175. Edina, a Minneapolis suburb, was the site of the country’s first enclosed mall, designed by architect Victor Gruen and anchored by Dayton’s Department store. Nathanson, Minneapolis in the Twentieth Century, 163. 25 Nicollet Mall Renovation document, http://www.nicolletmallproject.com/ (accessed May 19, 2015). 26 A few examples include: Detroit’s new “The District Detroit,” which is anchored by a new hockey arena for the Red Wings, “The District Detroit,” http://www.districtdetroit.com/news, accessed July 28, 2015; 340 three current renovation projects demonstrate the continued importance of civic stewardship via environmental intervention to improve the physical and social health of

Minneapolis.

Conclusion

Minneapolis's founders were primarily white men from New England seeking to invest in a new location that was situated on the only waterfalls on the Mississippi River.

They did not adopt a company town-style plan, with every detail planned out, and instead

turned to landscape architecture supported by a combination of public money and private

building to develop Minneapolis. The city’s early success in lumber milling was quickly

surpassed by flour milling, which would come to rule the Minneapolis economy by the

turn of the twentieth century. Civic leaders wanted to ensure that their investment would

produce a lasting settlement that had the same level of civility of Eastern cities without

any of the congestion, disease, and crowding. When, in 1883, Charles Loring and the

Park Board hired Horace William Shaler Cleveland to establish a park system, the move

was as much an economic investment as an aesthetic one. Boosters would use the plan

Edmonton, Alberta is also using a hockey arena to spur downtown development and its “Ice District” will include new office buildings, a new museum, and shopping, Claire Theobald, “‘Ice District,’ formerly Edmonton Arena District, Getting Cool Reception,” Edmonton Sun, July 13, 2015. http://www.edmontonsun.com/2015/07/13/edmonton-arena-district-will-be-renamed-ice-district, accessed July 28, 2015; Calgary, Alberta has made civic form a priority as it continues to grow in population, two of the most city- and province-backed projects can be seen in the renovation of St. Patrick’s Island and the development of the East Village, Stephanie Froese, “‘Urban Oasis’ to be Unveiled at St. Patrick’s Island,” 660 News, July 30, 2015. http://www.660news.com/2015/07/30/urban-oasis-to-be-unveiled-at-st-patricks- island/ and The City of Calgary, “East Village Area Redevelopment Plan,” http://www.calgary.ca/PDA/pd/Pages/Current-studies-and-ongoing-activities/East-Village.aspx, accessed July 31, 2015. For more general information on cities throughout the United States using such interventions in revitalization efforts, see: James Brasuell, “Land Use Planning to Activate Downtown Nightlife,” Planetizen, July 28, 2015. http://www.planetizen.com/node/79849/land-use-planning-activate-downtown- nightlife, accessed July 31, 2015; James Brasuell, “Lessons in Waterfront Revitalization from Boston and Pittsburgh,” Planetizen, July 29, 2015. http://www.planetizen.com/node/79886/lessons-waterfront- revitalization-boston-and-pittsburgh, accessed July 31, 2015. 341 and the presence of parks to demonstrate that Minneapolis was a cultured city with unbridled potential that was worthy of investment.

Social reformers and civic leaders intervened in the social and physical development of Minneapolis between 1880 and 1920 in an effort to ensure that it would not be an imitation of eastern cities, nor would it be another boom town of the West.

Minneapolis would not be a company town, nor would it grow haphazardly. It would be a new type of urban center that had, through the work of civic leaders and social reformers, avoided the pitfalls of rapid urbanization such as overcrowding, labor strife, and slums.

Minneapolis would be more than a Mill City, and would rely on its environment to lure capital investments as well as settlers to help the city grow. Borrowing from national and international movements on everything from organizing capital and housing reform to programming play and park design, civic leaders and social reformers endeavored to make Minneapolis a new type of city that could only come to fruition through their stewardship and interventions. This dissertation has focused on six such interventions.

Civic leaders and social reformers also sought to guide the development of

Minneapolitans’ characters by positioning themselves as benevolent social stewards. In the early 1900s, flour mill owners worked to establish Minneapolis as an open shop city.

The cornerstone of Minneapolis’s upper class, mill owners aligned with the Citizens’

Alliance and the National Association of Manufacturers to quash the growth of labor unions in the mills and replace them with a company union that would best serve owners’ needs over those of the workers. With the mill owners’ 1903 victory over the

International Flour and Cereal Mill Employees, employers were able to position themselves as stewards who were guardians of working-class lives on the shop floor.

342

Social reformers worked to transform the city’s public school system in an effort to

diminish the high drop-out rate of children who left school to work. They argued that if a

more progressive curriculum was adopted that combined elements of vocational training

with classic liberal education, students would stay in school longer and the city would

ultimately benefit by raising generations with work skills and an appreciation for arts and culture. Employers saw school reform as an opportunity to train a skilled workforce that would be pliable and compliant in a union-free setting. Though only one vocational school would be established, the inclusion of sloyd, sewing, and commerce courses in the public school system partially fulfilled their hopes that schools could train better workers.

Besides curriculum changes, there was also a movement to use schools as social centers during non-instruction hours. Already placed throughout the city, they would serve as surveilled sites of stewardship that would help assimilate children and adults alike into

American and, more specifically, Minneapolitan culture. In their efforts to restructure work and school sites and programs, social reformers and civic leaders took space away from the working-class population and inserted themselves as guardians over the individuals who occupied these spaces.

Although there were times when social reformers and civic leaders diverged over types of interventions, they were working toward a shared goal of guiding Minneapolis’s development and ensuring it did not succumb to the pitfalls of urbanization. Social reformers saw the provision of adequate housing as a critical element of civic and social health. Advocates of housing reform subscribed to the notion of environmental determinism, which claimed that surroundings affected character development. Subpar housing conditions were marked by overcrowding, a lack of plumbing or proper garbage

343

disposal, little to no natural light, and poor ventilation, and presented an environment that

threatened the proper development of the city’s working class. Civic leaders saw the

spread of dilapidated housing conditions as threatening to Minneapolis's escape from the

trappings of older urban centers. Social reformers’ and civic leaders’ reasons for

engaging in housing reform were varied, but they worked toward the shared goal of

making Minneapolis an efficient and successful urban center. Members of both groups

saw themselves as stewards of proper social and physical city development, and their

interventions to improve the physical conditions of housing as well as their street-level aesthetics supported the broader effort to develop Minneapolis into a different kind of city.

Overcrowded housing also meant that people had to search out public spaces in which they could spend their leisure hours. With shorter work days established in many industries, people had more time to spend as they wished. The combination of these factors was met with new commercial entertainments like movie theaters and dance halls that were aimed at working-class consumers. For social reformers, movie theaters had a

dual identity: they could provide clean content shown in elaborately decorated spaces or

they could be vulgar and be shown in make-shift spaces. Despite the Better Movies

Movement, social reformers were able to effect only minimal changes in movie theaters, and would instead turn to creating their own redemptive places that would serve to uplift and educate. As commercial entertainment began to flourish, new spaces were created to accommodate growing consumerism. Department stores capitalized on the rise of consumerism and, by tailoring their spaces specifically to women, helped to change the landscape of downtown Minneapolis. They served as competitors to places like the

344

YWCA that sought to entice working women into their spaces and under their

supervision. Lunch rooms and dining rooms, in particular, helped to normalize women’s

public movements, but their new opportunities to walk the streets still put them at risk of

being read as street-walkers.

Efforts to rearrange work, school, domestic, and consumer spaces were small-

scale interventions compared to the transformations and reconfigurations of the public

park system. When Charles Loring hired Cleveland to create a park plan in 1883, the city

gained more than a design. Cleveland’s firm belief that natural elements should guide city

forms and that park spaces should be preserved as early as possible to ensure that, as

Minneapolis grew, parks would remain accessible to all residents were apparent in the

city’s formal growth. Unlike park planning in places like Worcester, the Minneapolis parks system was not controlled by elite citizens dictating that use of the lands they donated would be restricted to the upper classes. The three stages of formal park reconfigurations reflected the broadening stewardship efforts in the city. Early parks were pleasure grounds, natural spaces intended to be sites of passive repose. By the turn of the twentieth century, the Park Board began making formal accommodations for popular recreations such as lunch rooms and bicycling. These recreation parks served as competition to commercial entertainments and, like the new YWCA building just off

Nicollet Avenue, were intended to provide people occupying them a sense of moral uplift. Responding to children’s use of lost spaces as playgrounds and incorporating national playground trends into the existing parks, a third iteration of parks emerged that focused on organized play. Active parks, many of which had playgrounds, featured gymnasiums, tennis courts, or sport-specific fields that encouraged people to engage in

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organized activities that were often supervised by employees and social reformer

volunteers. The accommodations and reconfigurations of park space reflected the belief

of civic leaders and social reformers that to reform the people they would have to reform

the city.

Taken together, these six sites of stewardship and intervention – the shop floor,

schools, housing, consumer spaces, redemptive places, and parks – offer windows into

Minneapolis's civic development during a chaotic period. Civic leaders and social

reformers sought to make sense out of these changes and, like white middle- and upper- class people in cities throughout the United States, began studying and advocating for interventions to prevent or address urban problems. Many new cities emerged in the trans-Mississippi West in the late-nineteenth century, but Minneapolis civic leaders wanted to avoid becoming a one-industry town, a boomtown, or an overdeveloped settlement that succumbed to the pressures of rapid urbanization. In this effort, boosters crafted an image of an ideal city that lacked slums, had thousands of acres of verdant parkland, a booming economy, and a happy and contented population tacitly guided by social reformers and civic leaders intervening to try to and achieve this new kind of city.

Though their motives diverged at times, they still worked toward the common goal of making Minneapolis a model metropolis. They achieved some successes, particularly in instilling an ethos of social stewardship that sought structural change to address social issues. The place of space as a central factor in elevating the city and its population is also a legacy of social reformers’ and civic leaders’ actions during the period under consideration. Environmental interventions have been used throughout the twentieth century as a mechanism of reforming Minneapolis and Minneapolitans and – as seen in

346

the work being done on the Downtown East Commons, Nicollet Mall, and Peavey Plaza

– are still being done today. These high level successes, however, overlook the fact that

the work that civic leaders and social reformers did during the Progressive era to protect

the working class, their efforts were top-down and did not often incorporate the working

class in their decisions.

The city’s form – particularly its parks – are often cited as a unique factor that sets

Minneapolis apart from other cities (except, on occasion, St. Paul). In recent years,

Minneapolis has seen population and capital returning as City Hall makes concerted

efforts to re-build what was slowly being lost over the past few decades. Just shy of one

hundred years after Minneapolitans rejected overhaul of the city’s form prescribed in the

Plan of Minneapolis, some of the suggestions have been implemented in an effort to

revive the downtown. These initiatives, intended to spark investment in a derelict area of

the city, have included bringing in a light rail transit and supporting a new stadium that

comes with a park and office and residential towers.27 Whether City Hall was aware of it, the Plan of Minneapolis specifically included a downtown stadium (to be located on

Nicollet Island) and emphasized the importance of a “cheap but effective transportation system.”28 The ethos of environmental interventions remains strong in the city and,

indeed, is a crucial part of its recent resurgence.

27 Sophie Quinton, “Is the Twin Cities’ New Light-Rail Line an Urban Planner’s Dream,” National Journal, June 14, 2014 http://www.nationaljournal.com/next-economy/america-360/is-the-twin-cities-new- light-rail-line-an-urban-planner-s-dream-20140611; Aaron Rupar, “Mpls Unveils $400 Million Plan to Convert Star Tribune Land into Downtown’s Biggest Park,” City Pages, May 14, 2013; Rochelle Olson, “ Last of the Metrodome Rubble Gets Hauled away at 1pm Today,” Star Tribune, April 17, 2014 http://www.startribune.com/last-of-the-metrodome-rubble-gets-hauled-away-at-1-p-m/255645631/; Whet Moser, “How Minneapolis Is Growing as Chicago Sinks,” Chicago Magazine April 15, 2015. http://www.chicagomag.com/city-life/April-2015/How-Minneapolis-is-Growing-As-Chicago-Shrinks/ 28 Crawford and Bennett, Plan for Minneapolis, 162; 108. The plan called for a “cheap but effective transportation system.” 347 Despite early civic leaders’ hopes, there is no such thing as a model metropolis.

Their beloved Minneapolis experienced economic fallout, ethnic and racial tensions, crime waves, and saw sections succumb to slum conditions. However, the city’s resilience is due, in no small part, to the foundational belief that, with interventions and stewardship, Minneapolis could still be the best. The city’s earliest civic leaders set out to develop a city like no other. It was to be beautiful but with a form that was also functional, which would provide an environment to nurture a healthy, contented population and encourage ever-increasing capital investment and commercial success.

Throughout the city’s ups and downs, it has been exactly these elements – beauty, economic growth, and functional form – that have earned it accolades and continue to provide the foundation for visions of the future of the Mill City, the City of Homes, the

City of Flour and Flowers, and the City of Lakes: Minneapolis.

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