Minnesota

One of the nation’s largest institutions of higher education, the University of Minnesota, Twin Cities comprises essentially three campuses: two in Minneapolis (an East Bank and a West Bank, each straddling the Mississippi River) and a predominantly agricultural campus approximately two miles away in St. Paul. The mostly urban land-grant university includes two historic districts on its East Bank, yet retains a general sense of openness—not only at the St.

This steel bridge links Stillwater, Minnesota, to Houlton, Wisconsin. The river is about 1,800 feet wide here, but an earthen causeway from the Wisconsin shore makes the bridge itself only 1,050 feet long. It is divided into eight riveted-steel sections, resting atop concrete abutments and piers. Seven sections are stationary Parker through-trusses, 140-foot mini-spans whose polygonal top chords arch over vertical panels with diagonal braces. A cantilevered sidewalk with an attractive railing bounds the south side of the roadway, but the original ornamental streetlights have disappeared.

In 1878 government surveyors created a city named for the philanthropist John Howard. Located forty-five miles west of the Twin Cities, Howard Lake was home to merchant establishments, hotels, livery stables, grain elevators, a bank, lumberyard, and mill in the late nineteenth century. It had three law firms, four doctors, and seven churches, along with an attractive city hall.

European-Americans first settled the land that became the City of Winona in 1851, shortly before the U.S. government and the Mdewakanton Dakota signed the Treaty of Mendota, which opened up the west bank of the Mississippi River for settlement. The river settlement quickly grew into a commercial center for the upper Midwest. Early growth was based on steamboats and grain trading, but ultimately timber processing and railroads were the most important factor in Winona’s commercial development.

In 1885, J. R. Watkins, a man who sold liniment as a remedy “good for man or beast,” moved to the Mississippi river town of Winona because its river and rail connections opened up the possibility of a wider market for his wares. Winona had been settled by European-Americans in 1851, shortly before the U.S. government and the Mdewakanton Dakota signed the Treaty of Mendota, which opened up the west bank of the Mississippi River for settlement.

From its completion in 1892 until 1921, the Grand Opera House in St. James served as the southwestern Minnesota city’s main source of entertainment. Traveling companies performed theatrical, musical, and comedy productions while local groups hosted events including plays, basketball games, organizational meetings, and concerts by local bands.

The two most significant innovations in suburban development in the twentieth century—the Garden City movement of the 1920s and 1930s and the New Urbanism movement beginning in the 1980s—have long seemed at odds, with the former advocating superblocks, single-use zoning, and cul-de-sacs, and the latter urban grids, mixed uses, and through streets. Jackson Meadow, a 145-acre development in Marine on St. Croix, Minnesota, brilliantly combines both to create something entirely new.

The University of Minnesota’s Morris campus grew out of the former West Central School of Agriculture (WCSA) and an even earlier campus for American Indian education dating to the late nineteenth century. As such, it tells a unique story of changing attitudes toward Native Americans, education, and agricultural extension.

The National Farmers’ Bank of Owatonna was the first of eight midwestern small town banks that Louis Sullivan designed between 1907 and 1919. Sullivan referred to this group of banks as his “jewel boxes.” The Owatonna bank is the most famous of the group.

In 1982, Mike and Penny Winton hired architect Frank Gehry to design a guest house for their grandchildren on the Lake Minnetonka property also occupied by a Philip Johnson house from the 1950s. Undeterred by proximity to an exemplar of Johnson’s mid-century modernism, Gehry positioned elemental forms in a variety of materials, showcasing his own unique brand of groundbreaking and playful architecture. Upon its 1987 completion, the Winton Guest House was recognized as one of his most notable projects to date, a composition in which architecture is intentionally conceptualized as art.