Mall At The University Of Minnesota

Cass Gilbert had an idea when he submitted an idea for the layout of the main mall at the University of Minnesota. He wanted the mall to face the river. The buildings that made up the libraries, classrooms and administrative spaces would face each other and Northrup Auditorium would cap it in grand style at the top. The view from the steps of Northrup Auditorium would be unobstructed straight down to the mighty Mississippi river. The river was largely responsible for putting both metropolises of St. Paul and Minneapolis on the map and he felt that the University should pay it tribute. It was a nice plan, but it was almost immediately changed and updated.

The picture below is a picture of the mall from about 1940. This is a guess, but I think that's about the time. Things sure have changed around the U. Starting at the center top of the picture, the Gasworks no longer has any brick buildings and now is just a storage and pumping station. The big, white bridge at the top of the photo is still there, but it's been re-routed to avoid the old 7 corners area at the top left of the picture. The middle bridge in the picture has not been used by trains since the early '80s, but it has recently been opened up as a pedestrian walkway. There are at least 7 more buildings on the East Bank now than in the picture and there is a whole, new campus on the West Bank of the river. Finally, there is now a pedestrian walkway over the bridge on the left, and the barge terminal is no longer there.

Of course, Gilbert's vision hardly outlasted his lifetime. Due to a massive post-war influx of people, the grand vista to the Mississippi was truncated by Coffman Memorial Union. CMU is the great mound of a building on the south side of Washington Avenue--the building in the lower-center-left of the picture to the left of the roadway. After CMU was built, then came a parking ramp on the far side of the Union. Most folks that went to the University of Minnesota have no idea that a person used to be able to see the river from Northrup's steps. Nor do they have any idea that the same architecht that designed our state capitol building also designed the layout of the U's campus. Presently, the Mall is quite a nice place with towering trees and walkways and annoying, nearly tame squirrels and traveling Evangelists, and various nut-jobs, and cult recruiters, Amway salespeople, skateboarders, psycho bicyclists and roller-bladers... Hmmm... Come to think of it, if you're looking for peace and quiet at the U, don't come to the mall.