Nathanson, whose family finally moved from
North Minneapolis—and the home his grandfather
built—in 1947, notes that, although there wasn’t one
particular instance on which the pendulum swung irreversibly the way of destruction, there was a combination of factors that conspired against the sanctity of
North Minneapolis.
For one thing, Nathanson says, the 1950s saw
flight, mainly white, to the suburbs, which followed
closely on the heels of the oft lamented death of the
streetcars—prominent cogs in West Broadway’s early
economic machine.
And then came the 1960s and with them a tense
racial juggernaut. As with other highly diverse urban
regions, through the mid-’60s tensions mounted in
increasingly public ways and North Minneapolis’s
rapidly rising racial barometer finally burst into all out
chaos in 1967 in the form of the Plymouth Avenue
riots, which dealt an already teetering North Minneapolis its knockout blow.
The area’s annexation—both physical and ideological—followed suit, and by the 1970s Iric Nathanson’s
North Minneapolis was all but a distant memory.
“Turn the clock back to 1950.
You’re in a city that’s one third denser
than this one—there are 526,000 people.
West Broadway
at Christmas looks like Bedford Falls.”
Christenson, who has been a part of other corridor rebuilding efforts in Minneapolis—think Nicollet,
Franklin and Lake—believes that in the history lies
the magic, and that part of what failed in the past is an
abandonment of said history.
“We’ve asked [Catalyst] to hold the historic front
of West Broadway,” says Christenson of the direc-
tion Catalyst should take. “We need to get back to
1950—third story on both sides, a real corridor.”
And for good reason. For North Minneapolis the
first half of the 20th century was a time of unparalleled
diversity, commerce and civic pride. The North Min-
neapolis of yesteryear boasted a working class popu-
—MIKE CHRISTENSON, DIRECTOR OF ECONOMIC
DEVELOPMENT FOR THE CIT Y OF MINNEAPOLIS
lation that peacefully spanned ethnic communities. It
was the home to Minnesota’s largest Jewish community but also to vast populations of African Americans,
Scandinavians and Irish Catholics.
Destiny, of course, had other plans.
“I lived on the north side until I was 7,” says Minneapolis historian and author Iric Nathanson of his
North Minneapolis roots. “My parents were both
born on the north side and my grandparents settled in
the north side in the 1880s.”
DRIVE-BY GOODWILL
IN SuBSequeNT yeArS there was plenty of attempted goodwill as countless nonprofits came
and went, and outside “investment” occurred but
was rarely sustained.
“The isolation, the hopelessness, the running away
from the business corridors, the failing schools—Min-
neapolis is a tale of two cities,” says Sondra Samuels,
Catalyst board member and president of North Min-
neapolis nonprofit the Peace Foundation. “you’ve got
some blocks that rival edina, and then we all know the
blocks that none of us want to go down. And those
are the neighbors that are the most isolated, the most
left behind, and are not benefitting from anything this
region has to offer.”
Isolation begets isolation while failed charity, in
turn, begets animosity. As North Minneapolis’s sta-
tion worsened, the hollow handouts, charity and
misguided goodwill only further propelled the ar-
ea’s downward spiral and disenchantment. Instead
of empowering community members to unite and
rise-up, it has gently pushed the majority of them
deeper down, only surfacing for the occasional, for-
lorn charity-grab.
“Whether it’s guilt-driven or driven by ignorance
or fear, there has been literally millions of dollars
placed in this community without, in many cases, the
