A City That Knows How to Rebuild From the Ashes, Or, Thank You, Minneapolis Firefighters
Most large cities remember devastating fires, as population growth and industrial innovation coincided and often caused accidents that lead to disasters. It took several attempts for the Mill City’s ambitious grain moguls to learn how to avoid explosive factory fires. We remember many of the structures lost and some may even remember the people taken with them, but we can also see how destruction can shape a community, and how our neighborhoods have been shaped by change made by nature’s demolition crew.
1. General Mills Plant III, 3127 Hiawatha Avenue, January 1948.
2. Tower Hotel, 229 Cedar Ave., November 1926.
3. Home at 1116 W. Minnehaha Parkway, March 1950. An airplane hit the house and destroyed it.
4. Gibbs Hotel at 12th St. and Hennepin Ave., February 1917.
5. Union Terminal Elevator, 9th Ave. S and 3rd St., December (Christmas Eve), 1946.
6. Washburn-Crosby “A” Mill, 400 2nd Street SE, 1928. It was the second of three fires that damaged or destroyed the mill, the first being in 1978 and the last in 1991. It was rebuilt each time and now houses the Mill City Museum.
This post was written by James K. Hosmer Special Collections intern Hannah Walsh. Hannah worked on metadata, photo cleaning, and scanning for the Historic Minneapolis Photograph Collection.