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Saint Paul, Minnesota
While the world waits for an explosion, that moment in time when we'll be set free
Minneapolis and St Paul still likes to refer to itself as the twin cities, although its pretty damn obvious which of the twins is the good one. Still I made a pilgrimage to St Paul to see this building, a well sited church I clearly remembered seeing from I-94 as I first sped past it over ten years ago. The building is the Cathedral of St Paul (which makes obvious sense) and sits on a clear symmetrical axis with the state capitol building. Inside it is damn nice but completely expected with all of the standard stained glass, stone and ornamentation you could ever possibly want to see.
I am not sure what I should write about the Mall of America, so I'll just start with a short story. On the third floor by the Bloomingdales is a storefront wedding chapel, nothing special (like the rest of the mall) but it was still nice enough to be holding an actual wedding inside as I walked past. Inside were two incredibly young looking kids, flanked by a well dressed wedding party including about four bridesmaids. Up to that point I was walking the mall wondering why it was so busy, afterwards I realized that the question really should be how anyone anywhere could possibly think that it was a good enough place for something like a wedding. Once again I just don't get it.
The mall itself is big but indistinctive, most of the stores are the same as you would see anywhere- nothing to see here, move along, move along. The shell was equally indistinctive, three levels of stores surrounding a surprisingly isolated and small indoor amusement park. This first fuzzy picture shows one of the few places where the rides and mall overlap, where an escalator in one direction takes you deep into the mall and a small, log themed boat in the other direction takes you even deeper.
Overall probably a good thing, multiple versions of these subtle signs were at every entrance door. Luckily for me they didn't mention knives or explosives.
Herzog and de Meuron aren't the only big name architects in town. The Guthrie Theatre is building a new home on the banks of the Mississippi River designed by slideshow favorite Jean Nouvel. The most interesting piece (so far) isn't all of those midnight blue panels or a form that fits surprisingly well with a nearby abandoned grain elevator, but rather that obvious, death defying unsupported flying lobby piece- something which better have damn good views to justify that all too heroic gesture.
Sure its not as much fun as Rem Koolhaas' library in Seattle or Will Alsop's in Peckham (or alternately as brooding as Will Bruder's moody Phoenix Library), still Cesar Pelli's New Public Library proves that Pelli can do more than just speculative office towers in New York. The translucent glass panels are actually a series of etched birch trees, while that heroic center piece (a trendy thing in new Minneapolis buildings I guess) breaks wide open on the less finished opposite side. It looks to be more interesting than I first suspected.
The architecture pictures continue with Gunnar Birkerts' very own Federal Reserve Bank. The building is distinctive for that big thing out front that looks like a suspension bridge and actually acts like one too (it's a question on the ARE General Structures exam so it must be true). Behind Birkerts' tower is Minoru Yamasaki's Reliastar Building. If parts of that one look fairly familiar, just imagine another one standing right next to it, with about 105 stories of offices or so atop both of them- Yamasaki's most well known work were those (recently) lamented towers that used to stand atop the PATH Station in Lower Manhattan.
Frank Gehry owes Minneapolis. Not only did the Walker Art Center help make him famous (and it really did), but one of his first, metal curvy buildings was the Weisman Art Museum at the University of Minnesota. A true decorated shed (the back side is a red brick box with a utilitarian garage below) that predates Vitra, Bilbao and the Disney Concert Hall model, not to mention virtually every other project his firm has completed in the past ten years.
The museum itself was small but free, featuring a Frank Gehry exhibit (go figure) and a few pieces of completely unrelated, seemingly unimportant art.
Under the bridge downtown on the shores of the mighty Mississippi River, the Mill Ruins park stretches somewhat expectedly from the riverbank all the way up to the mill ruins. Just beyond the abandoned grain elevator is the Guthrie Theatre construction site- see above if you have short term memory issues; while on the other side of the abandoned grain elevator is the burned out ruins of the old Gold Medal Mill and home to the Mill City Museum- see below to learn more about flour (yes, flour).
The bridge itself is the aptly named Stone Arch Bridge, a one time right of way owned by the Great Northern Railroad but now abandoned and reused as a bike path with a great view of the river, the falls, the Guthrie and all of those ruined mills.
The Mill City Museum is a great museum about a boring subject. Minneapolis was once the flour mill capital of the world, and the ruins of a mill that burned in the early 1990s have been converted into apartments with gallery spaces on the lower floors and an observation deck up top. Between the two is a giant freight elevator with bleacher seating- visitors board the elevator to see an well presented but still boring multimedia presentation all about flour on multiple floors. Better than it should be.
One interesting fact that I learned about the milling process is that the dust created by flour is more volatile and explosive than gasoline or gunpowder. One of the earlier mills blew up (and blew up real good) in the 1870s, shattering windows all the way to St Paul eight miles away. The next generation of the mills included the first industrial dust collector systems to save all from that evil, evil flour everywhere.
In these last pictures are (mostly) original surviving pieces of the Gold Flour mill, including most of a stone wall and some steel beams that prove just what steel does when caught in a fire.
