Milwaukee Avenue

Location Coordinates:

44°57'39" N, 93°14'24" W

Milwaukee Avenue, Minneapolis, Minnesota

When Chrys and I were preparing to move to Minneapolis we received a very good resource produced by the publishers of Mpls St. Paul magazine titled You Are Here: Minneapolis Saint Paul. This is one of those "insider guides" for new residents with lots of information and photographs covering the entire metro area. Being the historic preservation proponent that I am, one of the articles in the residential segment of the magazine caught my attention as it described a section of the Seward neighborhood of Minneapolis. Within this neighborhood is a pedestrian-only street known as Milwaukee Avenue that is listed on the National Register for Historic Places. After reading about it, I put this street on my must-explore list, and last week I hit the bike trail and rode over to this part of town.

According to wikipedia.com, Milwaukee Avenue, which is situated between 22nd and 23rd Avenues South, was formerly known as 22 1/2 Avenue until the early 1900s when the Milwaukee Avenue name was designated. This two-block street came to be when a real estate speculator saw a need for low-cost housing options for a population boom that occurred during the late 19th century. If you are interested in the neighborhood's history, Wikipedia offers great information at http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Milwaukee_Avenue_Historic_District.

What piqued my curiosity about Milwaukee Avenue was my idealized notion of the old-fashioned days of yore, where everyone knows each other and are tightly woven into their own little community. When I arrived, I parked my bike and gazed down the length of the two-blocks. In my mind I imagined a scene from 1900. I could see a worker coming home from a long day, stepping onto the front porch where his family greets him before they all go inside for the evening meal. Afterwards, the family comes outside to sit on the porch where the adults swap stories with their neighbors (sitting just a few feet away on their own front porch) while the children play together out front. It's a peaceful scene conjured up from my mind's vision of what used to be. Ah, yes -- but that was then. What about today? Well, while I didn't find the locale to be as trimmed and polished as some of the magazine photos portrayed, I did sense some of the charm that my imagination played out. A playground sits at the intersection of the two blocks where children can play within sight of their homes. There are no yards to speak of, but there are common areas filled with flower beds alive with spring blooms (those pictured) and a tree-lined grassy strip running down the center of the street. All in all, Milwaukee Avenue appears to be a pleasant place to live if you don't mind being exceedingly close to your neighbors and dealing with sightseers like me curious about a part of town representing days gone by. I'm not sure it completely lives up to that imaginary setting I laid out above, but my overall impression was that Milwaukee Avenue is a great example of how preservation of unique settings and architecture can find function and form in today's world.