Estella Magwitch

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Angels of the Opera

photo: copyright ptpenquino

Angels of the Opera

I am tall and strong and swift
I sparkle even in moonless darkness
In dreams I am a raven, steel eyed
Flying on midnight wings
Moving through air with vigorous motion

My mind absorbs everything I encounter
I choose from all
What guides my necessary unconventional life
as I define it constantly

I move energetically outward
I attract
I have the power to summon, entertain and persuade
Yet I serve as I am served

An abandoned place discovered
Built before I was born into this life
I thought I could part with you but I can not
You have always been
And will always be
Mine

My angel guardians
Only I and intruders know your strength
No one can defeat you
Even
That which grows within me
It will take my body
then release me
To you

My son
I knew even before I held you first
and looked into your eyes
My eyes
That You
will always be with me and I with you
Your angel guardian, undefeated
Even after my body dissolves into
The earth

The Metropolitan Returns to Minneapolis

As a finale to CoolOldBuildingsMN’s tribute week to the poet laureate
of Cool Old Buildings in Minnesota — Larry Millett —

Is this image of stones from the building that so inspired him…

The Guaranty/Metropolitan Life building which once inhabitied Third Street and Second Ave S in Minneapolis.

The stones, which are from the main entrance of the Metropolitan,
were in a quarry in outstate Minnesota since the 1960s…

They now reside at 25th and Nicollet Ave S on a lot near an old industrial building being tranformed into “Vertical Endeavours”… an indoor rock climbing experience.

How appropriate. What goes around comes around.

The Many Moods of Millett

Larry Millett tribute week continues on Coololdbuildingsmn…he launched the glorious Once There Were Castles seven days ago…!

In 2007, Larry published the compendium, encyclopedic, wiki of wikis,
Baedeker of Baedeker guide…the progeny of Millett’s epic bicycle
journey of architectural discovery in many Twin Cities neighborhoods…

http://www.mspmag.com/features/features/larrymillett/default.asp

which some day as he acknowledges would be a great “App” for an iPhone tour replete with maps, photos, maybe even narration from himself…AND maybe even some users could contribute notes or add their own places…as you can on Placeography.org!

A living ever evolving history of all the fascinating structures he and we enounter every day!

Yes it is the circa 2007 AIA Guide to the Twin Cities….

http://www.amazon.com/AIA-Guide-Twin-Cities-Architecture/dp/0873515404

fondly dubbed “THE BRICK”

I’ve toted the brick round with me to many a familiar and unfamiliar neighborhood and have learned much…of all LM’s books, this one has the full spectrum of many if not all of his nibs moods dujour….

Dreamy…
p22 1778 James Ave So Mpls
“one of Lowry Hills’ best Period Revival Houses, with its gentle undulations, calm lines and ivied stucco…the way the roof swirls down over the front door is pure 1920s architectural theater…”

Outraged…
p. 322 24 Fifth Street Center STP
“…The multiblock parking ramp to the rear, along Sixth St., is…an architectural atrocity in raw concrete and Cor-Ten steel, it is the ugliest object in all of downtown. It’s especially depressing when you
consider that one of St. Pauls’ finest old skyscrapers was destroyed to make way for this dreck.”

Dramatic…
p. 335 12 Colonade (Palazzo Apartments)
“…by 1955 the Colonade(then known as the Willard) was limping along as a faded old apartment hotel when disaster struck. Fire raced through the upper floors, killing a maid who’d gone up in an elevator to warn residents. After the fire, the two upper floors were amputated none too gently, leaving the abridged four story building visible today.”

Humor ala Razor…
p.735 Phi Kappa Psi Fraternity 1609 University Ave SE
“Fraternity Row’s oldest chapter house, a dignified Georgian Revival design that looks more like the house of a banker than the sort of place you’d expect to encounter any Animal House hijinks.”

Bored yet dutiful…
p. 82 3 Maryland Apartments (Hotel) 1346 LaSalle Ave MPLS
“A pleasant apartment hotel organized around a center court.
At one time, four-story porches extended out from the two wings that face LaSalle.”

The Logician…
p. 337 18 Seventh Place Mall STP
“This mall, announced by an arch at St. Peter St. is a remnant of historic Seventh St. whose duties have now largely been taken over by what used to be Eighth St. but is now called Seventh St. Meanwhile
Seventh St. was renamed Seventh Place. Everyone clear?”

AND my personal fave…

Ecstatic…Poetic…Show-off Wordsmith…channeling the heart, mind, and soul of a departed architect… (whichever you choose)

p. 228-229 3 Lakewood Cemetery Memorial Chapel
“…step inside and you enter a shimmering world of tesserae…ten
million tiny pieces of marble colored stone and glass fused with metal to form mosaics that cover virtually every surface of the interior…”

These are just a few o-too-brief samples of the Many Moods of Millett!

Preservationist Rock Star

September 27, 2011 at the James J. Hill house in St. Paul for the book launch of Larry Millett’s Once There Were Castles, a chronicle of our grandest architectural aspirations and their loss.

All the front rooms of the house were filled with people. A long line
of people were on the porch, the front stairs, the driveway, some clutching the book, others eagerly waiting and hoping they could get
in to hear Larry’s lecture.
I thought, “He’s a preservationist ROCK STAR!”

Would Millett argue that the “castles” of Minnesota’s 19th century wealthy should have been preserved?

He acknowledges that their demise was inevitable given economic and social changes. He’s an architectural historian, a magician, who recreates these buildings in our mind with all their marvelous and eccentric details. He describes the personalities of the owners and architects of the buildings, and tells us all their triumphs and travails.

If you missed the book launch, there are other events upcoming,
including a November 7th event at the Fitz with Garrison Keillor.

Magers & Quinn event with Larry Millett Oct 04, 2011 from 07:30 PM to 09:00 PM — Magers & Quinn Booksellers, 3038 Hennepin Avenue S., Minneapolis, MN 55408,
Magers & Quinn Booksellers in Minneapolis will be hosting author Larry Millett for a talk, slide show, and book signing for Once There Were Castles: Lost Mansions and Estates of the Twin Cities on Tuesday, October 4, at 7:30 pm.

Mill City Museum event with Larry Millett Oct 06, 2011 from 07:00 PM to 09:00 PM — Mill City Museum, 704 South 2nd St., Minneapolis, MN 55401,
Author Larry Millett will be at the Mill City Museum in Minneapolis on Thursday, October 6 at 7:00 pm for a talk and book signing for his new book, Once There Were Castles: Lost Mansions and Estates of the Twin Cities.

Hopkins Public Library event with Larry Millett Oct 11, 2011 from 06:30 PM to 08:00 PM — Hopkins Public Library, 22 11th Ave. N., Hopkins, MN 55343,
Author Larry Millet will be at the Hopkins Public Library on Tuesday, October 11 at 6:30 pm for a talk and book signing for his two most recent books, The Magic Bullet, and Once There Were Castles: Lost Mansions and Estates of the Twin Cities.

Virginia Street Swedenborgian Church event with Larry Millett (hosted by Common Good Books) Oct 19, 2011 from 07:30 PM to 08:30 PM — Virginia Street Swedenborgian Church, 170 Virginia St., St. Paul, MN 55102,
Common Good Books in St. Paul is hosting an event at the Virginia Street Swedenborgian Church for Larry Millett, author of Once There Were Castles: Lost Mansions and Estates of the Twin Cities, on Wednesday, October 19 at 7:30 pm.

U of M’s College of Continuing Education classes with Larry Millett Oct 26, 2011 from 07:00 PM to 09:00 PM — Continuing Education and Conference Center, 1890 Buford Avenue, St. Paul campus, University of Minnesota,
Larry Millett, author of ONCE THERE WERE CASTLES, offers a class through the U of M’s College of Continuing Education on Wednesday evenings beginning Oct. 26th, 2011.

Minnesota Historical Society event with Larry Millett Jan 24, 2012 from 07:00 PM to 08:30 PM — Minnesota Historical Society, 345 Kellogg Blvd. W., St. Paul, MN 55102,
Author Larry Millett will be at the Minnesota Historical Society on Tuesday, January 24 at 7:00 pm for a talk and book signing for his new book, Once There Were Castles: Lost Mansions and Estates of the Twin Cities, as part of MHS’s “History Lounge” Series.

Larry Millett Week

A series to celebrate the publication of Larry’s new book
Once There Were Castles!

“Few of us, it seems read poetry any more but many of our memories whether for good or ill, remain deeply colored by buildings we knew as children…”

Once upon a time…a child born after World War II was baptised in St. Joseph’s Catholic Church in North Minneapolis, a building he would later describe as “a twin towered Romanesque Revival Church built in 1887… the most notable building demolished to make way for the North Side segment of Interstate 94.”

When the boy was a teenager, he attended DeLaSalle High
School on Nicollet Island…the island had been sacred to Native Americans. Captains of the 19th lumber industry, William Eastman, John Merriam and William S. King built millwork factories and grand mansions on the island.

Eastman, as Larry later wrote, between 1882 and 1887 built an
impressive double row of stone town houses named “Eastman Flats” which “set new standards for size and elegance.” By 1991, the millwork factories were gone, the grand mansions were dust and the only section of the elegant flats that survived were on Grove Street, which was involved in a preservation battle in the 2000s.

Italianate wood frame houses were built for white settlers before the Civil War and into the 1870s. In the 1960s several old houses of a similar age were moved to the island from downtown and North East
Minneapolis and sold to aspiring young homeowners for renovation for $1.

Nicollet Island was connected to downtown Minneapolis via the oldest suspension bridge over the Mississippi River and East Hennepin Avenue…

When the teenaged DeLaSalle student walked across the
bridge he arrived at the Gateway District of Minneapolis.

The Gateway district consisted of blocks of old industrial buildings which in the 1950s and 60s housed day laborers, railroad workers, and the unemployed.

It was a rough part of town, it’s lovely Gateway Park
and Pavillion Larry wrote, was “a stately restrained excercise in
Beaux-Arts classicism”… but then he added, with a sense of injustice, “it was bulldozed along with everything else as part of the Gateway Urban Renewal Project in the 1960s.”

The architectural environment of 1960s downtown Minneapolis
was an exciting and inspiring world for this young man and his
father who shared a sense of wonder, passion and intellectual curiosity about the 19th century buildings, ….one in particular… the Metropolitian Building, he and his father visited often.

In 1961…it’s demolition inspired the young Larry Millett with a mission…which he has followed with dedicated intensity ever since…

In 1992, Larry (who became a journalist) worked in the majestic
Pioneer building in Saint Paul, and completed a course
of study in architecture. He wrote of the glory and destruction of
the Metropolitan and many other unique historic buildings in his book,
Lost Twin Cities.

Lost Twin Cities revolutionized the modern historic preservationist movement in Minnesota and inspired similar books and preservation
activism throughout the United States…

Of the Death of the Metropolitan Larry wrote this evocative elegy…

“On December 18, 1961, wrecking trucks rumbled through the streets of downtown Minneapolis toward a rendezvous with the past. Their destination was the corner of Third Street and Second Avenue South, where for seventy-one years the Metropolitan Building…had towered above its neighbors like a “small red mountain.”

But with Minneapolis in the midst of the greatest urban renewal project in its history, the Metropolitan was about to come down, a victim of age, politics and ideology.”

Where Dreams Really Do Come True….

Batcher Opera House on
Placeography.org

The lady, the theater, the dream!

Irene Dunne sings After the Ball

Antiques Roadshow MINNEAPOLIS!!!!

Welcome Antiques Roadshow Appraisers, Host, Staff, and Crew!!!

Anything you need while you are here? Ask! Your wish is my command!

Leslie and Leigh…I’m an antique…will you appraise ME ????

Minneapolis Antiques Roadshow

TPT2 AR Twitter

AR Twitter

AR Facebook

Strib Article

Death to Norris Hall

Dr. Julia Anna Norris
Director of the Department of Physical Education for Women, 1912-41

Anna Norris worked many years to improve athletic facilities and activities for women. A medical doctor, she focused on offering specialized programs designed for individual students rather than forcing all freshmen to endure one boring exercise regimen. In an effort led by Norris, the University opened a gymnasium for women in 1914. After she retired, the gym was named Norris Hall as a tribute to her energy and dedication.

Norris Hall was built because of Dr. Norris’s belief in the relationship between physical fitness and academic achievement. The building is connected to Alice Shevlin Hall built in 1906 which was the first Women’s Student Union and dormitory on campus.

It is also surrounded by 100+ majestic oaks
which may not survive the brutality.

Norris Hall has been deemed obsolete and will
be destroyed to the tune of a six figure demolition.

click

And that’s not all…

Regents Agree Destroy Everything

OMFG GFDI

More to come…

Remember what they did to this building last July? The second oldest building in the
Oak Knoll Historic District at the University of Minnesota?
It was demolished on July 1, 2010.

Music Education Building

Well…it appears…the Regents of the University of Minnesota were just getting started.

To be DEMOLISHED:
Norris Gymnasium and Field House (1914)
Wesbrook Hall (1896)
Veterinary Anatomy Building (1901) St. Paul Campus
Newman Center (1952)
Klaeber Court (1967)
722 Fulton Ave SE (Mpls)
1304 Cleveland Ave (Berry House) Saint Paul
1316 Cleveland Ave (Weighley House) Saint Paul
527/529 Oak Street SE “incorporated into a new parking lot”

Building to be “Decommissioned and Mothballed for Future
Adaptive Re-use”

Eddy Hall (1881) the OLDEST building on the Twin Cities campus.
Although the press release says there are “No plans to demolish the
building” Mothballing is 3/4 down the road to demolition.

http://www.uservices.umn.edu/heritage/national_register/eddy_nr.htm

More details to follow…conveniently announced during
finals week…demolitions to occur during the summer.

Happy Preservation Month Courtesy of the Regents of the
University of Minnesota.