East Bank

It's been another dismally cold weekend, with temperatures for most of the weekend in the mid-30s, and snow still on the ground from our latest snowfall last week. We were beginning to think that the 12 hours of sunshine we had last Saturday was our spring and summer, and we were somehow back into winter again. (Patience is not our best virtue) But the sun came out this afternoon, and we had not only blue skies, but temperatures in the mid-forties. Within an hour, the natives were out with motorcycles, bicycles, strollers, dogs, and kayaks. We decided to follow their lead.

I have another interview tomorrow, so we decided to go scout out where I needed to go, and see if that led us to anywhere interesting for the weekly photo expedition. It turned out that it was actually an area we'd been to already, directly across the Mississippi from the Mill Ruins Park and the Guthrie Theater. So we decided to keep walking around the area and see what we found.



This area (like the Mills Ruins Park area) is abounding with juxtapositions between the city's historic dependence on flour mills, and vibrant new developments. However, the east side of the river is adjacent to the University of Minnesota, whereas the west side is adjacent to the downtown commercial district, and those adjacencies leave the neighborhoods feeling very different from each other.

We started along the banks of the river. Like Tim said, it was really nice to be near water in liquid form again. From this vantage point, Tim and I could admire the views of the Guthrie across the river (again, one of my favorite contemporary buildings), and Hogan could admire her proximity to her arch-enemies, squirrels.



The new Guthrie Theater was designed by a French architect, Jean Nouvel. In 2008, he won the Pritzker Prize, partly for his design of the Guthrie. The original Guthrie, which opened in 1963, was designed by Ralph Rapson, a leading modern architect of the time, and an extremely influential leader of the Minneapolis architecture community. He passed away on March 29 of this year, and the entire community seems to be mourning his loss. The original Guthrie was torn down to make way for the new one. Although I truly admire the new Guthrie, it sounds like it was an unnecessary waste to tear down the old one.

We climbed back up the river bank and continued along the neighborhood adjacent to the river. The name of the neighborhood is Marcy-Holmes. It still seems dominated by the old mills, grain elevators, and train tracks that demonstrate the historic identity, but new developments are pushing in.



We passed by some older supporting structures that looked like they were in imminent danger of being replaced by shiny new condo buildings. For now, they had been taken over by a younger crowd for night clubs or workshops – it was hard to tell what in the brightness of the day. They had a texture and layering of time that was far more interesting than any of the new developments.



As we were heading back to the car, we passed by this construction. The more we looked at it, the more we liked it. We assume it must be a float, but we're not sure what for. In a place like Minnesota, it seems reasonable to think that the whole world is the refrigerator. This was Tim's favorite find from our walk, aside from the glorious sunshine.

If you'd like to see the rest of the photos from our expedition, go to the Flickr set. I have to say, this is the best so far – I haven't gotten the hang of taking good photos in the even light of an overcast day, so the direct sunshine of the afternoon, and the bright colors of the neighborhood really helped. Have a good week!