The Upton Block

This beautiful yellow brick building is the oldest standing commercial building in the city of Minneapolis. It was designed by B. O. Cutter and built in 1855. It was originally built as a general store, but it's also been a hardware store, an iron foundry, a windmill factory, and now after its restoration it's a toni little cafe.

The original building was much smaller than the one you see here. The area beyond the smokestack was added when the building was an iron foundry.

It's an anchor to the community of buildings here in Saint Anthony Main, and it's also the base of the anchor that keeps our falls falling. The Government Dyke that was build by the Corps of Engineers in the 1870s after the Eastman Tunnel collapse has one of it's ends about 40' beneath the sidewalk in front of this building. This dyke runs the entire width of the river and is anchored on the other side roughly at the base of the Crown Roller Mill.