Washburn Park Water Tower

 

Washburn Park Water Tower located at 325 Prospect Avenue, Minneapolis, MN. (1951) In the neighborhood where I grew up, Tangletown. 

Photo from the Minnesota Historical Society. 

The Boulevard Theater Part 3

During my time growing up in the Tangletown (formerly Fuller) neighborhood in Minneapolis the Boulevard Theater was was a second-run theater known for it's cheap seats. Because it only charged 99 cents to see film that had already been in wide release, many neighborhood folks called it the "99 cent-er". I remember seeing a lot of movies there including A Christmas Story, Star Wars, Reds, The Verdict, The Breakfast Club, Peggy Sue Got Married, Moonstruck, and more.

Dad took me to see Paul Newman in The Verdict in 1982. I remember it was the first movie that just the two of us went to alone since a re-release of Disney's The Jungle Book in the early 1970's. I remember a couple of women sitting behind us going nuts over Paul Newman's blue eyes during a close-up of him.

Sam, Pete and I went to see Star Wars when it was re-released in the late 1970's and Sam and I hiked over to see A Christmas Story during Christmas break of 1982/83.

I have early memories of seeing Saturday matinees for kids in the early 1970's. The Pippi Longstocking films from Scandanavia were my favorites although I also had a good time seeing those Disney nature movies as well.

The above photo is my own that I took on July 17, 2011. Although the theater is no longer there, the marquee remains.

Boulevard Theater Part 2

I found the above photo, dated 1974, online. I remember the theater from this time but have no recollection of the structure on top of the theater. I'm guessing it was taken down when the theater was remodeled and divided into two theaters from one in the late 1970's. The Boulevard Theater closed sometime in the 1990's. The building now holds a restaurant named Prima, a Caribou Coffee shop, Anytime Fitness, Nokomis Chiropractic and a Subway sandwich shop. The Red Owl grocery store just to the left of the theater is now a grocery store named Kowalski's.

Boulevard Theater

The local neighborhood theater that we frequented when growing up in the Tangletown neighborhood (formerly named the Fuller neighborhood) of Minneapolis was the Boulevard Theater. I just did a web search for it and a website named cinematreasures.org came up. This is what they had to say about it:

"Designed by Perry E. Crosier in 1933 in Art Deco style and seating about 1,000, this theater opened as the Boulevard Twins, not beause it had two screens (though it was later twinned in the late-1970's), but because it was partly a movie house and part restaurant, a format it retained into the 1960's."

"Today, the former Boulevard Theater houses a video and DVD rental store, in a touch of irony. However, its beautiful Art Deco style marquee is still intact and still used by the store."

Actually, in a case of reverse irony, the video rental store has closed since that posting on cinematreasures.org. As far as I can tell the space is vacant.

I took the above photo on July 17, 2011.

Washburn Park Water Tower Part 3

The other day I drove around the perimeter of the Tangletown neighborhood and saw for myself how really difficult it is to see the tower from street level. The tower is on the National Register of Historic Places.

(The photo is from my own collection and was taken on August 18, 2009.)

Washburn Park Water Tower

The tower really can be hard to see for the reasons the following article from Wikipedia gives:

"The Washburn Park Water Tower is one of 3 stone water towers built in Minneapolis during the early 20th-Century. The others are Kenwood Park Water Tower, just west of downtown, and Prospect Park Water Tower, in southeast Minneapolis. The ... [t]ower poses as a landmark of early 20th-Century architectural achievement within the Tangletown neighborhood on south Minneapolis, Minnesota, and has been doing so for nearly 75 years. Perched on top of one of the highest points in south Minneapolis, the tower is given the privilege to boast its unique location and role as an unofficial 'beacon' for incoming planes landing at Minneapolis-Saint Paul International Airport, yet remains hidden from much of the residents and visitors that pass by the base of the hill each day. This is mainly because large homes and tall oak trees scatter the hillside where the tower resides, and even more so, because of the clustered mess of streets and dead ends that compromise the towers' occupancy. Hence the name, 'Tangletown'."

(The above photo is from my own collection and was taken August 24th, 2009.)

Tangletown Neighborhood

My brothers and I grew up in the Tangletown neighborhood of south Minneapolis. The boundaries of this neighborhood neighborhhod are between Lyndale Avenue South on the west and Interstate 35W to the east, and between 46th Street on the north and 54th (Diamond Lake Road) Street on the south. The Tangletown neighborhood was formerly known as the Fuller neighborhood until 1996 when it was changed to its present name, which reflects the winding streets of the neighborhood. The Washburn Water Tower is located at the highest point in the neighborhood.

Washburn High School Part 1

I atten-

ded Wash-

burn High School from 1980-1984. The following is from Wikipedia:

"Washburn High School was built in 1925 to meet the demands of the growing south Minneapolis neighborhood. Construction for the new three-story building began in 1924 after the Minneapolis Board of Education purchased unused land in Washburn Park. Land next to the school was occupied by the Washburn Memorial Orphan Asylum, now torn down and replaced with what is now Ramsey International Fine Arts Center. Washburn is located in the Tangletown neighborhood of southern Minneapolis at 201 west 49th Street."