From flour to flower Once mill-centered, Minneapolis morphs into a

0 Comments | Oakland Tribune, Mar 16, 2008 | by Eric Noland

MINNEAPOLIS

WITH THE Mississippi River as a glimmering backdrop, the Wild Goose Chase Cloggers were kicking up their toes and heels to the accompaniment of the Yard Buzzard String Band -- entertainment that would be considered niche if you were anywhere but in the upper Midwest.

At farmers market booths nearby, the folks at Edna's Caramels were dispensing superb artisanal candies that had been "handmade in small batches," according to the label, while the guys from Town Hall Brewery were dispensing samples of Petunia's Pumpkin Ale from little brown jugs.

College students bound for a football game streamed across the river on a vintage stone bridge, and merged with patrons arriving for concurrent matinees of "Jane Eyre" and "The Home Place" at the stunning Guthrie Theater.

It was a vibrant scene on a Saturday in autumn -- and it would have been unimaginable in Minneapolis just a few years ago.

The banks of the Mississippi River had long been the city's industrial epicenter, where a modest 50-foot waterfall powered flour mills -- Pillsbury and General Mills notable among them -- that ground up the bounty of the nation's breadbasket. When the mill operations began to move elsewhere in the last 40 years (the need for river-water power no longer an imperative), this became the gritty domain of the city's down-and-outers.

"In 1965 when I arrived, I took a Pentax camera down to the riverfront," said Nina Archabal, director of the Minnesota Historical Society. "It was blue-gray and freezing cold, one of those mornings in Minnesota where nothing moves. I looked at all these abandoned buildings, and I wondered what this was all about. It looked terrible. The area wasn't safe."

It wasn't until the early 1990s that Minneapolis began to rediscover its riverfront, and the resuscitation of the region is an urban success story of profound proportions.

The two most significant prongs of the effort are the Mill City Museum, established in 2003 in the burned-out hulk of the Washburn A Mill (birthplace of General Mills), and the Guthrie Theater's relocation here in 2006. These impressive institutions have given residents and visitors a reason to return to this neighborhood, there to find a fair-weather farmers market, the 1.8-mile St. Anthony Falls Heritage Trail, the pedestrian-only Stone Arch Bridge (once used by trains hauling off the flour), and the postcard charm of Nicollet Island.

The Mill City Museum is an ideal place to begin any exploration of this neighborhood, because it provides an enthralling overview not only of Minneapolis' milling heritage, but of the city itself.

The 1880 building was gutted by a fire in 1991, but after the surviving walls were stabilized, an exhaustive restoration was undertaken. Today, visitors can stand in the courtyard of the mill and gaze up at stone walls that frame an open sky. In the mill's heyday, the river drove eight floors of machinery around the clock, grinding enough flour to make 12 million loaves of bread in a single day.

An elevator ride up the building pauses at each floor for archival films, oral histories from former workers and simulations of the noisy machinery, but it can't fully capture what the conditions once were like. Workers suffered from "miller's cough," which was a form of asthma brought on by breathing flour dust. They loaded 140-pound sacks onto box cars. And they worked in constant peril of explosions -- it's complicated, but flour dust can ignite - - and fire.

An open-air observation deck at the top provides a sweeping view of the river and the opposite bank -- where the rooftop sign of rival Pillsbury seems vaguely taunting.

The museum exhibits are housed in a room ofthick walls and a musty smell. Here, you learn of the products that prodded a generation of housewives to do more baking and dish up more flour products: Bisquick, Malt-O-Meal, Betty Crocker Cake Mix. A baking lab on the premises regularly dispenses platters of cookie and cake samples.

Right next door is the Guthrie, an eye-catching dark-blue edifice with towering, shadowy portraits of Chekov, O'Neill and other famed playwrights. For more than three decades, the theater operated adjacent to the Walker Art Center across town, and gained a stellar reputation for its productions of classic plays and edgy contemporary works.

It reopened here in June of 2006, and is trying to get the word out that you don't have to attend a play to enjoy the place. "In the original building, you needed a ticket to get in," said spokesman Lee Henderson. "Now it's a public building. If time doesn't allow you to come and see a show, you can come in and have a drink, have dinner, look into all the nooks and crannies architecturally, or enjoy the view."

The view is, indeed, spectacular from a unique feature of Jean Nouvel's design -- the "endless bridge," which cantilevers 178 feet toward the river and offers a 180-degree perspective from its open- air platform. Word has it this thing vibrates in strong winds; we'll take their word for it.