When Chase was up at personal trainers school in Minneapolis, I went with Jim and Sue and Chessie to see him one weekend, not just to cheer him up and on but also to show them parts of what JaVee and I had seen when we went to court reporting school there. Of course, the city has changed greatly since the early 1970s. One of the iconic images for Minneapolis is this sculpture in the Walker Art Center sculpture garden, looking south toward the Walker. To the south and slightly west is the Chain of Lakes with impressive homes around them the Rohrers enjoyed seeing, down to Lake Harriet, our favorite, the most human-sized for walking, with an outdoor amphitheater for free summer concerts and movies.
When I taught at Minot State in North Dakota in the early Sixties, in the background, joined to the Walker, would have been the Guthrie Theatre in its early years under Sir Tyrone Guthrie with superb productions we went down to, when Hume Cronyn and Jessica Tandy and Zoe Caldwell starred in Richard III, The Oresteia, The Cherry Orchard, to name three of the more famous. Today the old theater is razed, the Walker has enlarged its contemporary art center at the site, and the Guthrie has re-located to the south bank of the Mississippi River near Saint Anthony Falls, where the original settlement began and the grain mills located. The new Guthrie is stunning and free in daytime when productions weren't on, for visitors to go up the very long escalators to the cantilevered deck on the river and the windows overlooking the downtown and the Humphrey Metrodome, now demolished since the baseball season for the new Target Field stadium on the west edge of downtown. The area on the north bank of the river is undergoing gentrification (we went there afterwards). I had told Chase about it, he had loved his visit, and that was one of our must-sees. The Guthrie is the tall blue building with yellow in the center of this photo from the north bank.
Approaching it looks like this, the Mississippi a little more than a block north of the stop sign, those distant buildings on the north bank. This new building has had raves about its many theaters and contemporary architecture. That is Sir Tyrone [Guthrie] on the corner behind the street light, by the pole.
Some later views will be through those yellow windows at the top. To the right is a tall, matching parking garage reached by the skywalk.
This is the famous cantilevered deck overlooking the river. Then I have two views from it, one northwest toward Saint Anthony's Falls and the trendy new area on the north bank, the other of the bridge that collapsed disastrously being rebuilt, with the University of Minnesota in the distance beyond it.
This view looks back down at George Bernard Shaw, one of the famous playwrights on the building. The plays performed in the theater's history are etched with their dates and casts along the building corridors. And the view east is of the area gentrification.
About two-thirds of the way up, still in the blue zone, is this spectacular view of downtown.
And from the top yellow zone, the same view and one of the former Metrodome directly south.
This is the present St. Anthony's Falls, long tamed, with a canal along the southern bank for river traffic. I have a splendid photo of an egret, too, for another entry.
We tried to visit Como Park with its Botanical Garden and old Zoo, but it was packed with people for some festival. So we went over to St. Paul to see the Cathedral, the Capitol, in that very changed sister city. The Rohrers had never seen such a large church, very like the ones in Europe I saw. This one has the added attraction of an ambulatory behind the altar area with small ethnic chapels. Mine is the Irish chapel with St. Patrick. My interior shots didn't come out too well, but here are some.
Chessie and Chase in front:
Looking north from the front plaza, one sees the magnificent state capitol. Looking east, the much rejuvenated downtown.
Leave a comment