Minneapolis () is the largest city in
Minnesota
Minnesota () is a state in the upper midwestern region of the United States. It is the 12th largest U.S. state in area and the 22nd most populous, with over 5.75 million residents. Minnesota is home to western prairies, now given over to ...
, United States, and the
county seat
A county seat is an administrative center, seat of government, or capital city of a county or civil parish. The term is in use in Canada, China, Hungary, Romania, Taiwan, and the United States. The equivalent term shire town is used in the US st ...
of
Hennepin County. The city is abundant in water, with
thirteen lakes, wetlands, the
Mississippi River
The Mississippi River is the second-longest river and chief river of the second-largest drainage system in North America, second only to the Hudson Bay drainage system. From its traditional source of Lake Itasca in northern Minnesota, it f ...
, creeks and waterfalls. Minneapolis has its origins in timber and as the
flour milling
A gristmill (also: grist mill, corn mill, flour mill, feed mill or feedmill) grinds cereal grain into flour and Wheat middlings, middlings. The term can refer to either the Mill (grinding), grinding mechanism or the building that holds it. Grist i ...
capital of the world. It occupies both banks of the
Mississippi River
The Mississippi River is the second-longest river and chief river of the second-largest drainage system in North America, second only to the Hudson Bay drainage system. From its traditional source of Lake Itasca in northern Minnesota, it f ...
and adjoins
Saint Paul
Paul; grc, Παῦλος, translit=Paulos; cop, ⲡⲁⲩⲗⲟⲥ; hbo, פאולוס השליח (previously called Saul of Tarsus;; ar, بولس الطرسوسي; grc, Σαῦλος Ταρσεύς, Saũlos Tarseús; tr, Tarsuslu Pavlus; ...
, the state capital of Minnesota.
Prior to European settlement, the site of Minneapolis was inhabited by
Dakota people
The Dakota (pronounced , Dakota language: ''Dakȟóta/Dakhóta'') are a Native American tribe and First Nations band government in North America. They compose two of the three main subcultures of the Sioux people, and are typically divided into ...
. The settlement was founded along
Saint Anthony Falls on a section of land north of
Fort Snelling
Fort Snelling is a former military fortification and National Historic Landmark in the U.S. state of Minnesota on the bluffs overlooking the confluence of the Minnesota and Mississippi Rivers. The military site was initially named Fort Saint Anth ...
; its growth is attributed to its proximity to the fort and the falls providing power for industrial activity. , the city has an estimated 425,336 inhabitants.
It is the most populous city in the state and the 46th-most-populous city in the United States. Minneapolis, Saint Paul and the surrounding area are collectively known as the
Twin Cities
Twin cities are a special case of two neighboring cities or urban centres that grow into a single conurbation – or narrowly separated urban areas – over time. There are no formal criteria, but twin cities are generally comparable in statu ...
.
Minneapolis has one of the most extensive public park systems in the US; many of these parks are connected by the
Grand Rounds National Scenic Byway
The Grand Rounds National Scenic Byway is a linked series of park areas in Minneapolis, Minnesota, United States, that takes a roughly circular path through the city. The Minneapolis Park and Recreation Board developed the system over many years. ...
. Biking and walking trails, some of which follow abandoned railroad lines, run through many parts of the city; such as the
Mill District in the
Saint Anthony Falls Historic District
Saint Anthony Falls, or the Falls of Saint Anthony ( dak, italics=no, Owámniyomni, ) located at the northeastern edge of downtown Minneapolis, Minnesota, is the only natural major waterfall on the Mississippi River. Throughout the mid-to-late 1 ...
, around the banks of
Lake of the Isles,
Bde Maka Ska, and
Lake Harriet, and by
Minnehaha Falls. Minneapolis has cold, snowy winters and hot, humid summers. Minneapolis is the birthplace of
General Mills
General Mills, Inc., is an American multinational manufacturer and marketer of branded processed consumer foods sold through retail stores. Founded on the banks of the Mississippi River at Saint Anthony Falls in Minneapolis, the company orig ...
,
Pillsbury Company, and the
Target Corporation
Target Corporation (doing business as Target and stylized in all lowercase since 2018) is an American big box department store chain headquartered in Minneapolis, Minnesota. It is the seventh largest retailer in the United States, and a compon ...
. The city's cultural offerings include the
Guthrie Theater
The Guthrie Theater, founded in 1963, is a center for theater performance, production, education, and professional training in Minneapolis, Minnesota. The concept of the theater was born in 1959 in a series of discussions between Sir Tyrone Gut ...
, the
First Avenue nightclub, and four professional sports teams.
Most of the
University of Minnesota
The University of Minnesota, formally the University of Minnesota, Twin Cities, (UMN Twin Cities, the U of M, or Minnesota) is a public university, public Land-grant university, land-grant research university in the Minneapolis–Saint Paul, Tw ...
's main campus, and several other post-secondary educational institutions are in Minneapolis. Part of the city is served by a
light rail system.
Minneapolis has a mayor-council government system. The
Minnesota Democratic-Farmer-Labor Party (DFL) has held a majority of council seats there for 50 years and
Jacob Frey (DFL) has been mayor since 2018. In May 2020,
Derek Chauvin
Derek Michael Chauvin ( ; born March 19, 1976) is an American former police officer who was convicted for the murder of George Floyd, a 46-year-old African-American man, in Minneapolis, Minnesota. Chauvin was a member of the Minneapolis Police ...
, a White officer of the
Minneapolis Police Department
The Minneapolis Police Department (MPD) is the primary law enforcement agency in Minneapolis, Minnesota, United States. It is also the largest police department in Minnesota. Formed in 1867, it is the second-oldest police department in Minnesot ...
,
murdered
Murder is the unlawful killing of another human without justification or valid excuse, especially the unlawful killing of another human with malice aforethought. ("The killing of another person without justification or excuse, especially the c ...
George Floyd
George Perry Floyd Jr. (October 14, 1973 – May 25, 2020) was an African-American man who was murdered by a police officer in Minneapolis, Minnesota, during an arrest made after a store clerk suspected Floyd may have used a counterfeit twe ...
, a Black man, and the resulting
global protests put Minneapolis and racism at the center of national and international attention.
History
Dakota natives, city founded
Prior to European settlement, the
Dakota Sioux
The Dakota (pronounced , Dakota language: ''Dakȟóta/Dakhóta'') are a Native American tribe and First Nations band government in North America. They compose two of the three main subcultures of the Sioux people, and are typically divided into ...
were the sole occupants of the site of modern-day Minneapolis. In the
Dakota language
Dakota (''Dakhótiyapi, Dakȟótiyapi''), also referred to as Dakhota, is a Siouan language spoken by the Dakota people of the Sioux tribes. Dakota is closely related to and mutually intelligible with the Lakota language. It is critically endan ...
, the city's name is ''Bde Óta Othúŋwe'' ('Many Lakes Town'). The French explored the region in 1680. Gradually, more European-American settlers arrived, competing with the Dakota for game and other natural resources. Following the
Revolutionary War, the 1783
Treaty of Paris Treaty of Paris may refer to one of many treaties signed in Paris, France:
Treaties
1200s and 1300s
* Treaty of Paris (1229), which ended the Albigensian Crusade
* Treaty of Paris (1259), between Henry III of England and Louis IX of France
* Trea ...
gave British-claimed territory east of the
Mississippi River
The Mississippi River is the second-longest river and chief river of the second-largest drainage system in North America, second only to the Hudson Bay drainage system. From its traditional source of Lake Itasca in northern Minnesota, it f ...
to the United States. In 1803, the U.S. acquired land to the west of the Mississippi from France in the
Louisiana Purchase
The Louisiana Purchase (french: Vente de la Louisiane, translation=Sale of Louisiana) was the acquisition of the territory of Louisiana by the United States from the French First Republic in 1803. In return for fifteen million dollars, or app ...
. In 1819,
US Army
The United States Army (USA) is the land service branch of the United States Armed Forces. It is one of the eight U.S. uniformed services, and is designated as the Army of the United States in the U.S. Constitution.Article II, section 2, cla ...
built
Fort Snelling
Fort Snelling is a former military fortification and National Historic Landmark in the U.S. state of Minnesota on the bluffs overlooking the confluence of the Minnesota and Mississippi Rivers. The military site was initially named Fort Saint Anth ...
at the southern edge of present-day Minneapolis to direct Native American trade away from British-Canadian traders, and to deter warring between the Dakota and
Ojibwe
The Ojibwe, Ojibwa, Chippewa, or Saulteaux are an Anishinaabe people in what is currently southern Canada, the northern Midwestern United States, and Northern Plains.
According to the U.S. census, in the United States Ojibwe people are one of ...
in northern Minnesota.
The fort attracted traders, settlers and merchants, spurring growth in the surrounding region. At the fort, agents of the St. Peters Indian Agency enforced the US policy of assimilating Native Americans into European-American society, encouraging them to give up subsistence hunting and to cultivate the land.
Missionaries encouraged Native Americans to convert from
their own religion to Christianity.
The U.S. government pressed the Dakota to sell their land, which they ceded in a series of treaties that were negotiated by corrupt officials. In the decades following the signings of these treaties, their terms were rarely honored. During the
American Civil War
The American Civil War (April 12, 1861 – May 26, 1865; also known by other names) was a civil war in the United States. It was fought between the Union ("the North") and the Confederacy ("the South"), the latter formed by states th ...
, officials plundered annuities promised to Native Americans, leading to famine among the Dakota. In 1862, a faction of the Dakota who were facing starvation declared
war and killed settlers. The Dakota were
interned
Internment is the imprisonment of people, commonly in large groups, without charges or intent to file charges. The term is especially used for the confinement "of enemy citizens in wartime or of terrorism suspects". Thus, while it can simply ...
and exiled from Minnesota. While the Dakota were being expelled,
Franklin Steele laid claim to the east bank of
Saint Anthony Falls,
and
John H. Stevens
John Harrington Stevens (June 13, 1820 – May 28, 1900) was the first authorized colonial resident on the west bank of the Mississippi River in what would become Minneapolis, Minnesota. He was granted permission to occupy the site, then part ...
built a home on the west bank. Residents had divergent ideas on names for their community. In 1852,
Charles Hoag proposed combining the Dakota word for 'water' (''mni'') with the Greek word for 'city' (), yielding ''Minneapolis''. In 1851 after a meeting of the
Minnesota Territorial Legislature, leaders of St. Anthony lost their bid to move the capital from Saint Paul.
In a close vote, St. Paul and
Stillwater agreed to divide federal funding
between them: St. Paul would be the capital, while Stillwater would build the prison. The St. Anthony contingent eventually won the state university.
[ Courtesy ''Star Tribune'' and the Minnesota Legislative Reference Library, in ] In 1856, the territorial legislature authorized Minneapolis as a town on the Mississippi's west bank. Minneapolis was incorporated as a city in 1867 and in 1872, it merged with the city of St. Anthony on the river's east bank.
[ and and , and and ]
Waterpower; lumber and flour milling
![Loaders-Pillsbury-Minneapolis](https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/8/85/Loaders-Pillsbury-Minneapolis.jpg)
Minneapolis developed around Saint Anthony Falls, the highest waterfall on the
Mississippi River
The Mississippi River is the second-longest river and chief river of the second-largest drainage system in North America, second only to the Hudson Bay drainage system. From its traditional source of Lake Itasca in northern Minnesota, it f ...
, which was used as a source of energy. A
lumber
Lumber is wood that has been processed into dimensional lumber, including beams and planks or boards, a stage in the process of wood production. Lumber is mainly used for construction framing, as well as finishing (floors, wall panels, wi ...
industry was built around forests in northern Minnesota, and 17 sawmills operated from energy provided by the waterfall. By 1871, the river's west bank had 23 businesses, including flour mills, woolen mills, iron works, a railroad machine shop, and mills for cotton, paper, sashes and wood-planing. Due to the occupational hazards of milling, by the 1890s, six companies manufactured artificial limbs. Grain grown in the
Great Plains
The Great Plains (french: Grandes Plaines), sometimes simply "the Plains", is a broad expanse of flatland in North America. It is located west of the Mississippi River and east of the Rocky Mountains, much of it covered in prairie, steppe, an ...
was shipped by rail to the city's 34
flour mills
A gristmill (also: grist mill, corn mill, flour mill, feed mill or feedmill) grinds cereal grain into flour and middlings. The term can refer to either the grinding mechanism or the building that holds it. Grist is grain that has been separat ...
. A 1989 Minnesota Archaeological Society analysis of the Minneapolis riverfront describes the use of
water power
Hydropower (from el, ὕδωρ, "water"), also known as water power, is the use of falling or fast-running water to produce electricity or to power machines. This is achieved by converting the gravitational potential or kinetic energy of a wa ...
in Minneapolis between 1880 and 1930 as "the greatest direct-drive waterpower center the world has ever seen".
Minneapolis was the nation's leading flour producer for nearly 50 years, and got the nickname "Mill City."
Cadwallader C. Washburn
Cadwallader Colden Washburn (April 22, 1818May 14, 1882) was an American businessman, politician, and soldier who founded a mill that later became General Mills. A member of the Washburn family of Maine, he was a U.S. Congressman and governor o ...
, a founder of modern milling and of what became
General Mills
General Mills, Inc., is an American multinational manufacturer and marketer of branded processed consumer foods sold through retail stores. Founded on the banks of the Mississippi River at Saint Anthony Falls in Minneapolis, the company orig ...
, converted his business from gristmills to "gradual reduction" by steel-and-porcelain
roller mills that were capable of quickly producing premium-quality, pure, white flour.
William Dixon Gray
William is a male given name of Germanic origin.Hanks, Hardcastle and Hodges, ''Oxford Dictionary of First Names'', Oxford University Press, 2nd edition, , p. 276. It became very popular in the English language after the Norman conquest of Engl ...
developed some ideas and
William de la Barre William de la Barre (April 15, 1849 in Vienna – March 24, 1936 in Minneapolis) was an Austrian-born civil engineer who developed a new process for milling wheat into flour, using energy-saving steel rollers at the Washburn-Crosby Mills (now ...
acquired others through
industrial espionage
Industrial espionage, economic espionage, corporate spying, or corporate espionage is a form of espionage conducted for commercial purposes instead of purely national security.
While political espionage is conducted or orchestrated by governmen ...
in
Hungary
Hungary ( hu, Magyarország ) is a landlocked country in Central Europe. Spanning of the Carpathian Basin, it is bordered by Slovakia to the north, Ukraine to the northeast, Romania to the east and southeast, Serbia to the south, Croatia a ...
.
Charles Alfred Pillsbury
Charles Alfred Pillsbury (December 3, 1842 – September 17, 1899) was an American businessman, flour industrialist, and politician. He was a co-founder of the Pillsbury Company.
Education and early business career
Pillsbury was born December ...
and the
C.A. Pillsbury Company across the river hired Washburn employees and immediately began using the new methods.
An 1867 court case allowed digging the
Eastman tunnel under the river at
Nicollet Island
Nicollet Island is an island in the Mississippi River just north of Saint Anthony Falls in central Minneapolis, Minnesota. According to the United States Census Bureau the island has a land area of and a 2000 census population of 144 persons. T ...
.
In 1869, a leak soon sucked the
tailrace
A water wheel is a machine for converting the energy of flowing or falling water into useful forms of power, often in a watermill. A water wheel consists of a wheel (usually constructed from wood or metal), with a number of blades or buckets ...
into a -wide chasm.
Community-led repairs failed and in 1870, several buildings and mills fell into the river.
For years, the
U.S. Army Corps of Engineers
, colors =
, anniversaries = 16 June (Organization Day)
, battles =
, battles_label = Wars
, website =
, commander1 = ...
struggled to close the gap with timber until their concrete dike held in 1876.
The hard, red,
spring wheat grown in Minnesota became valuable ($0.50 profit per barrel in 1871 increased to $4.50 in 1874),
and Minnesota "patent" flour was recognized as the best in the world.
Later consumers discovered value in the
bran that " ... Minneapolis flour millers routinely dumped" into the Mississippi. A
single mill at Washburn-Crosby could make enough flour for 12 million loaves of
bread
Bread is a staple food prepared from a dough of flour (usually wheat) and water, usually by baking. Throughout recorded history and around the world, it has been an important part of many cultures' diet. It is one of the oldest human-made f ...
each day and by 1900, 14 percent of America's grain was milled in Minneapolis.
By 1895, through the efforts of silent partner
William Hood Dunwoody
William Hood Dunwoody (March 14, 1841 – February 8, 1914) was an American banker, miller, art patron and philanthropist. He was a partner in what is today General Mills and for thirty years a leader of Northwestern National Bank, today's Wells Fa ...
, Washburn-Crosby exported four million barrels of flour a year to the United Kingdom.
When exports reached their peak in 1900, about one third of all flour milled in Minneapolis was shipped overseas.
Social tensions
In 1886, when
Martha Ripley
Martha George Rogers Ripley (November 30, 1843 – April 18, 1912) was an American physician, suffragist, and professor of medicine. Founder of the Maternity Hospital in Minneapolis, Minnesota, Ripley was one of the most outspoken activists for ...
founded
Maternity Hospital for both married and unmarried mothers, Minneapolis made changes to rectify discrimination against unmarried women. Known initially as a kindly physician, mayor Doc Ames made his brother police chief, ran the city into corruption, and tried to leave town in 1902.
Lincoln Steffens published Ames's story in "The Shame of Minneapolis" in 1903. Minneapolis has a long history of
structural racism and has large racial disparities in housing, income, health care, and education.
Some historians and commentators have said White Minneapolitans used discrimination based on race against the city's non-White residents. As White settlers displaced the indigenous population during the 19th century, they claimed the city's land, and Kirsten Delegard of Mapping Prejudice explains that today's disparities evolved from control of the land.
In 1910, Minneapolis "was not a particularly segregated place".
Discrimination increased when flour milling moved to the east coast and the economy declined.
During the early 20th century, bigotry presented in several ways. In 1910, a Minneapolis developer wrote restrictive covenants based on race and ethnicity into his deeds. Other developers copied the practice, preventing Asian and African Americans from owning or leasing certain properties. Though such language was prohibited by state law in 1953 and by the federal
Fair Housing Act of 1968
The Civil Rights Act of 1968 () is a landmark law in the United States signed into law by United States President Lyndon B. Johnson during the King assassination riots.
Titles II through VII comprise the Indian Civil Rights Act, which applie ...
, restrictive covenants against minorities remained in many Minneapolis deeds as recently as 2021, when the city gave residents a means to remove them. The
Ku Klux Klan
The Ku Klux Klan (), commonly shortened to the KKK or the Klan, is an American white supremacist, right-wing terrorist, and hate group whose primary targets are African Americans, Jews, Latinos, Asian Americans, Native Americans, and ...
entered family life but was only effectively a force in the city from 1921 until 1923.
[ and ] The gangster
Kid Cann
Isadore Blumenfeld (September 8, 1900 – June 21, 1981), commonly known as Kid Cann, was a Romanian Jewish-American organized crime enforcer based in Minneapolis, Minnesota, for over four decades. He remains the most notorious mobster in the ...
engaged in bribery and intimidation between the 1920s and the 1940s. After Minnesota passed a
eugenics
Eugenics ( ; ) is a fringe set of beliefs and practices that aim to improve the genetic quality of a human population. Historically, eugenicists have attempted to alter human gene pools by excluding people and groups judged to be inferior or ...
law in 1925, the proprietors of
Eitel Hospital sterilized about 1,000 people at
Faribault State Hospital.
From the end of
World War I
World War I (28 July 1914 11 November 1918), often abbreviated as WWI, was one of the deadliest global conflicts in history. Belligerents included much of Europe, the Russian Empire, the United States, and the Ottoman Empire, with fightin ...
in 1918 until 1950,
antisemitism
Antisemitism (also spelled anti-semitism or anti-Semitism) is hostility to, prejudice towards, or discrimination against Jews. A person who holds such positions is called an antisemite. Antisemitism is considered to be a form of racism.
Antis ...
was commonplace in Minneapolis—
Carey McWilliams called the city the anti-Semitic capital of the United States. A
hate group
A hate group is a social group that advocates and practices hatred, hostility, or violence towards members of a race (human classification), race, Ethnic group, ethnicity, nation, religion, gender, gender identity, sexual orientation, or any o ...
called the
Silver Legion of America held meetings in the city from 1936 to 1938.
In 1948,
Mount Sinai Hospital opened as the city's first hospital to employ members of minority races and religions.
During the financial downturn of the
Great Depression
The Great Depression (19291939) was an economic shock that impacted most countries across the world. It was a period of economic depression that became evident after a major fall in stock prices in the United States. The economic contagio ...
, the violent
Teamsters Strike of 1934 led to laws acknowledging workers' rights. Mayor
Hubert Humphrey
Hubert Horatio Humphrey Jr. (May 27, 1911 – January 13, 1978) was an American pharmacist and politician who served as the 38th vice president of the United States from 1965 to 1969. He twice served in the United States Senate, representing Mi ...
helped the city establish
fair employment practices and by 1946, a human-relations council that interceded on behalf of minorities was established. In 1966 and 1967, years of significant
turmoil across the US, suppressed anger among the Black population was released in two disturbances on Plymouth Avenue. A coalition reached a peaceful outcome but failed to solve Black poverty and unemployment;
Charles Stenvig
Charles A. Stenvig (January 16, 1928 – February 22, 2010) served as mayor of Minneapolis, Minnesota for two two-year terms from 1969 to 1973 and a third term from 1976 to 1978. He was a police officer with the Minneapolis Police Department befo ...
, a law-and-order candidate, became mayor. Minneapolis engaged with the
civil rights movement
The civil rights movement was a nonviolent social and political movement and campaign from 1954 to 1968 in the United States to abolish legalized institutional Racial segregation in the United States, racial segregation, Racial discrimination ...
; in 1968, the
American Indian Movement was founded in Minneapolis. Between 1958 and 1963, as part of
urban renewal
Urban renewal (also called urban regeneration in the United Kingdom and urban redevelopment in the United States) is a program of land redevelopment often used to address urban decay in cities. Urban renewal involves the clearing out of blighte ...
in America, Minneapolis demolished roughly 40 percent of downtown, including the
Gateway District Gateway District may refer to:
* Alaska Gateway School District, which coverers the eastern interior of Alaska
* Gateway Regional School District (Massachusetts)
* Gateway District (Minneapolis), Minnesota, United States
* The Gateway (Salt Lake Ci ...
and its significant architecture, such as the
Metropolitan Building. Efforts to save the building failed but encouraged interest in historic preservation.
On May 25, 2020, a citizen recorded the
murder
Murder is the unlawful killing of another human without justification (jurisprudence), justification or valid excuse (legal), excuse, especially the unlawful killing of another human with malice aforethought. ("The killing of another person wit ...
of
George Floyd
George Perry Floyd Jr. (October 14, 1973 – May 25, 2020) was an African-American man who was murdered by a police officer in Minneapolis, Minnesota, during an arrest made after a store clerk suspected Floyd may have used a counterfeit twe ...
, an African-American man who suffocated when
Derek Chauvin
Derek Michael Chauvin ( ; born March 19, 1976) is an American former police officer who was convicted for the murder of George Floyd, a 46-year-old African-American man, in Minneapolis, Minnesota. Chauvin was a member of the Minneapolis Police ...
, a White Minneapolis police officer, knelt on Floyd's neck and back for more than nine minutes. The incident sparked national unrest, riots and mass protests.
Local protests and riots resulted in extraordinary levels of property damage in Minneapolis;
the destruction including a police station that demonstrators overran and set on fire.
The Twin Cities experienced
prolonged unrest over racial injustice from 2020 to 2022.
Geography
![Lake Calhoun MN](https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/0/0a/Lake_Calhoun_MN.jpg)
The history and economic growth of Minneapolis are linked to water, the city's defining physical characteristic.
Long periods of glaciation and interglacial melt carved several riverbeds through what is now Minneapolis.
During the
last glacial period, around 10,000 years ago, ice buried in these ancient river channels melted, resulting in basins that filled with water to become the
lakes of Minneapolis
There are 13 lakes of at least within the borders of Minneapolis in the U.S. state of Minnesota. Of these, Bde Maka Ska is the largest and deepest, covering with a maximum depth of . Lake Hiawatha, through which Minnehaha Creek flows, has a wa ...
.
Meltwater from
Lake Agassiz
Lake Agassiz was a large glacial lake in central North America. Fed by glacial meltwater at the end of the last glacial period, its area was larger than all of the modern Great Lakes combined.
First postulated in 1823 by William H. Keating, it ...
fed the
glacial River Warren
Glacial River Warren, also known as River Warren, was a prehistoric river that drained Lake Agassiz in central North America between about 13,500 and 10,650 BP calibrated (11,700 and 9,400 14C uncalibrated) years ago. A part of the uppermost porti ...
, which created
a large waterfall that eroded upriver past the confluence of the Mississippi River, where it left a drop in the Mississippi. This site is located in what is now downtown Saint Paul.
The new waterfall, later called Saint Anthony Falls, in turn eroded up the Mississippi about to its present location, carving the
Mississippi River gorge as it moved upstream.
Minnehaha Falls also developed during this period via similar processes.
Minneapolis is sited above an
artesian aquifer and on flat terrain. Minneapolis has a total area of , six percent of which is covered by water. Water supply is managed by four
watershed
Watershed is a hydrological term, which has been adopted in other fields in a more or less figurative sense. It may refer to:
Hydrology
* Drainage divide, the line that separates neighbouring drainage basins
* Drainage basin, called a "watershe ...
districts that correspond with the Mississippi and the city's three
creeks.
The city has thirteen lakes, three large ponds, and five unnamed wetlands.
![Minneapolis Midtown Greenway](https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/1/10/Minneapolis_Midtown_Greenway.jpg)
A 1959 report by the U.S.
Soil Conservation Service listed Minneapolis's elevation above
mean sea level
There are several kinds of mean in mathematics
Mathematics is an area of knowledge that includes the topics of numbers, formulas and related structures, shapes and the spaces in which they are contained, and quantities and their changes. ...
as .
The city's lowest elevation of above sea level is near the confluence of Minnehaha Creek with the Mississippi River.
Sources disagree on the exact location and elevation of the city's highest point, which is cited as being between above sea level.
Neighborhoods
Minneapolis is divided into eleven communities, each containing several neighborhoods, of which there are 83. In some cases, two or more neighborhoods act together under one organization. Some areas are known by nicknames of business associations.
In 2018,
Minneapolis City Council
The Minneapolis City Council is the lawmaking body of Minneapolis. It consists of 13 members, elected from separate wards to four-year terms, via a ranked-choice method. The council structure has been in place since the 1950s. In recent elections ...
voted to approve the Minneapolis 2040 Comprehensive Plan, which resulted in a city-wide end to
single-family zoning. Minneapolis was the first major city in the United States to make this change. At the time, 70 percent of residential land was zoned for detached, single-family homes, however many of those areas had "nonconforming" buildings with more housing units. City leaders sought to increase the supply of housing so more neighborhoods would be affordable and to decrease the effects single-family zoning had caused on racial disparities and segregation. The
Brookings Institution
The Brookings Institution, often stylized as simply Brookings, is an American research group founded in 1916. Located on Think Tank Row in Washington, D.C., the organization conducts research and education in the social sciences, primarily in ec ...
called it "a relatively rare example of success for the
YIMBY agenda". A Hennepin County District Court judge blocked the city from enforcing the plan because it lacked an overall environmental review. Arguing it will evaluate projects on an individual basis, as of July 2022, the city is allowed to use the plan while an appeal is pending.
Climate
Minneapolis experiences a hot-summer
humid continental climate
A humid continental climate is a climatic region defined by Russo-German climatologist Wladimir Köppen in 1900, typified by four distinct seasons and large seasonal temperature differences, with warm to hot (and often humid) summers and freezing ...
(''Dfa'' in the
Köppen climate classification
The Köppen climate classification is one of the most widely used climate classification systems. It was first published by German-Russian climatologist Wladimir Köppen (1846–1940) in 1884, with several later modifications by Köppen, notabl ...
), that is typical of southern parts of the
Upper Midwest
The Upper Midwest is a region in the northern portion of the U.S. Census Bureau's Midwestern United States. It is largely a sub-region of the Midwest. Although the exact boundaries are not uniformly agreed-upon, the region is defined as referring ...
, and is situated in USDA
plant hardiness
Hardiness of plants describes their ability to survive adverse growing conditions. It is usually limited to discussions of climatic adversity. Thus a plant's ability to tolerate cold, heat, drought, flooding, or wind are typically considered measur ...
zone 4b; small enclaves of Minneapolis are classified as zone 5a. Minneapolis has cold, snowy winters and hot, humid summers, as is typical in a continental climate. The difference between average temperatures in the coldest winter month and the warmest summer month is .
According to the
NOAA
The National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (abbreviated as NOAA ) is an United States scientific and regulatory agency within the United States Department of Commerce that forecasts weather, monitors oceanic and atmospheric conditio ...
, the annual average for
sunshine duration
Sunshine duration or sunshine hours is a climatological indicator, measuring duration of sunshine in given period (usually, a day or a year) for a given location on Earth, typically expressed as an averaged value over several years. It is a gene ...
is 58%. Minneapolis experiences a full range of precipitation and related weather events, including snow, sleet, ice, rain, thunderstorms, and fog. The highest recorded temperature is in
July 1936 while the lowest is in January 1888. The snowiest winter on record was 1983–84, when of snow fell: the least-snowiest winter was 1890–91, when fell.
Demographics
Dakota tribes, mostly the
Mdewakanton, permanently occupied the present-day site of Minneapolis near their sacred site, St. Anthony Falls.
During the 1850s and 1860s, European and Euro-American settlers from
New England
New England is a region comprising six states in the Northeastern United States: Connecticut, Maine, Massachusetts, New Hampshire, Rhode Island, and Vermont. It is bordered by the state of New York to the west and by the Canadian provinces ...
,
New York
New York most commonly refers to:
* New York City, the most populous city in the United States, located in the state of New York
* New York (state), a state in the northeastern United States
New York may also refer to:
Film and television
* '' ...
,
Bohemia
Bohemia ( ; cs, Čechy ; ; hsb, Čěska; szl, Czechy) is the westernmost and largest historical region of the Czech Republic. Bohemia can also refer to a wider area consisting of the historical Lands of the Bohemian Crown ruled by the Bohem ...
and Canada, and, during the mid-1860s, immigrants from Finland, Sweden, Norway and Denmark moved to the Minneapolis area, as did migrant workers from Mexico and Latin America.
Other migrants came from Germany, Poland, Italy, and Greece. Central European migrants settled in the Northeast neighborhood, which is still known for its
Czech and Polish cultural heritage. Jews from Central and Eastern Europe, and Russia began arriving in the 1880s, and settled primarily on the north side before moving to western suburbs in the 1950s and 1960s.
For a short period of the 1940s, Japanese and Japanese Americans resided in Minneapolis due to US-government relocations, as did
Native Americans during the 1950s. In 2013, Asians were the state's fastest-growing population. Chinese, Japanese, Filipinos, Hmong, Lao, Cambodians and Vietnamese arrived in the 1970s and 1980s, and people from Tibet, Burma and Thailand came in the 1990s and 2000s. The population of people from India doubled by 2010. After the
Rust Belt
The Rust Belt is a region of the United States that experienced industrial decline starting in the 1950s. The U.S. manufacturing sector as a percentage of the U.S. GDP peaked in 1953 and has been in decline since, impacting certain regions and ...
economy declined during the early 1980s, Minnesota's Black population, a large fraction of whom arrived from cities such as Chicago and
Gary, Indiana
Gary is a city in Lake County, Indiana, United States. The city has been historically dominated by major industrial activity and is home to U.S. Steel's Gary Works, the largest steel mill complex in North America. Gary is located along the ...
, nearly tripled in less than twenty years. Black migrants were drawn to Minneapolis and the Greater Twin Cities by its abundance of jobs, good schools, and relatively safe neighborhoods. Beginning in the 1990s, a sizable Latin American population arrived, along with immigrants from the
Horn of Africa
The Horn of Africa (HoA), also known as the Somali Peninsula, is a large peninsula and geopolitical region in East Africa.Robert Stock, ''Africa South of the Sahara, Second Edition: A Geographical Interpretation'', (The Guilford Press; 2004), ...
,
especially Somalia;
however, immigration of 1,400 Somalis in 2016 slowed to 48 in 2018 under President Trump. As of 2019, more than 20,000 Somalis live in Minneapolis. In 2015, the Brookings Institution characterized Minneapolis as a re-emerging immigrant gateway where about 10 percent of residents were born outside the US. As of 2019, African Americans make up about one fifth of the city's population.
The population of Minneapolis grew until 1950, when the census peaked at 521,718—the only time it has exceeded a half million. The population then declined for decades; after World War II, people moved to the suburbs, and generally out of the Midwest.
In 2015,
Gallup
Gallup may refer to:
*Gallup, Inc., a firm founded by George Gallup, well known for its opinion poll
*Gallup (surname), a surname
*Gallup, New Mexico, a city in New Mexico, United States
**Gallup station, an Amtrak train in downtown Gallup, New Me ...
reported the Twin Cities had an estimated
LGBT+
' is an initialism that stands for lesbian, gay, bisexual, and transgender. In use since the 1990s, the initialism, as well as some of its common variants, functions as an umbrella term for sexuality and gender identity.
The LGBT term is an ...
adult population of 3.6%, roughly the same as the national average, and had the 38th-highest number of LGBT+ residents of the 50 largest metropolitan areas in the US.
Human Rights Campaign
The Human Rights Campaign (HRC) is an American LGBTQ advocacy group. It is the largest LGBTQ political lobbying organization within the United States. Based in Washington, D.C., the organization focuses on protecting and expanding rights for LGB ...
gave Minneapolis its highest-possible score in 2019.
A Black family in Minneapolis earns less than half as much per year as a White family. Black people own their homes at one-third the rate of White families. Specifically, the median income for a Black family was $36,000 in 2018, about $47,000 less than for a white family. Black Minneapolitans thus earn about 44 percent per year compared to White Minneapolitans, one of the country's largest income gaps. A 2020 study found little change in economic racial inequality, with Minnesota ranking above only the neighboring state Wisconsin, and equal to the states of Iowa, Louisiana, and New Mexico.
Religion
The indigenous Dakota people, the original inhabitants of the Minneapolis area, believed in the
Great Spirit.
More than 50 denominations and religions are present in Minneapolis; a majority of the city's population are Christian. Settlers who arrived from New England were for the most part
Protestant
Protestantism is a Christian denomination, branch of Christianity that follows the theological tenets of the Reformation, Protestant Reformation, a movement that began seeking to reform the Catholic Church from within in the 16th century agai ...
s,
Quakers
Quakers are people who belong to a historically Protestant Christian set of denominations known formally as the Religious Society of Friends. Members of these movements ("theFriends") are generally united by a belief in each human's abil ...
, and
Universalists.
The oldest continuously used church,
Our Lady of Lourdes Catholic Church, was built in 1856 by
Universalists and soon afterward was acquired by a French Catholic congregation. The first
Jewish congregation was formed in 1878 as Shaarai Tov, and built
Temple Israel in 1928.
St. Mary's Orthodox Cathedral was founded in 1887; it opened a missionary school and created the first
Russian Orthodox seminary in the US.
Edwin Hawley Hewitt designed
St. Mark's Episcopal Cathedral and
Hennepin Avenue United Methodist Church, both of which are located south of downtown. The
Basilica of Saint Mary, the first
basilica
In Ancient Roman architecture, a basilica is a large public building with multiple functions, typically built alongside the town's forum. The basilica was in the Latin West equivalent to a stoa in the Greek East. The building gave its name ...
in the US and
co-cathedral of the
Roman Catholic Archdiocese of Saint Paul and Minneapolis, was named by
Pope Pius XI
Pope Pius XI ( it, Pio XI), born Ambrogio Damiano Achille Ratti (; 31 May 1857 – 10 February 1939), was head of the Catholic Church from 6 February 1922 to his death in February 1939. He was the first sovereign of Vatican City fro ...
in 1926.
![Christ Church Lutheran Highsmith](https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/2/22/Christ_Church_Lutheran_Highsmith.jpg)
By 1959, Temple of Islam was located in north Minneapolis, and the Islamic Center of Minnesota was established in 1965.
The city's first
mosque
A mosque (; from ar, مَسْجِد, masjid, ; literally "place of ritual prostration"), also called masjid, is a place of prayer for Muslims. Mosques are usually covered buildings, but can be any place where prayers ( sujud) are performed, ...
was built in 1967. Somalis who live in Minneapolis are primarily
Sunni Muslim
Sunni Islam () is the largest branch of Islam, followed by 85–90% of the world's Muslims. Its name comes from the word ''Sunnah'', referring to the tradition of Muhammad. The differences between Sunni and Shia Muslims arose from a disagree ...
. In 1971, a reported 150 persons attended classes at a Hindu temple near the university.
In 1972, a relief agency resettled the first
Shi'a Muslim
Shīʿa Islam or Shīʿīsm is the second-largest branch of Islam. It holds that the Islamic prophet Muhammad designated ʿAlī ibn Abī Ṭālib as his successor (''khalīfa'') and the Imam (spiritual and political leader) after him, most n ...
family from Uganda in the Twin Cities. The city has about 20
Buddhist
Buddhism ( , ), also known as Buddha Dharma and Dharmavinaya (), is an Indian religion or philosophical tradition based on teachings attributed to the Buddha. It originated in northern India as a -movement in the 5th century BCE, and ...
centers and meditation centers. Minneapolis has a body of
Ordo Templi Orientis
Ordo Templi Orientis (O.T.O.; ) is an occult Initiation, initiatory organization founded at the beginning of the 20th century. The origins of the O.T.O. can be traced back to the German-speaking occultists Carl Kellner (mystic), Carl Kellner, He ...
.
The
Billy Graham Evangelistic Association was headquartered in Minneapolis from the late 1940s until the early 2000s.
Jim Bakker and
Tammy Faye met while attending Pentecostal
North Central University, and began a television ministry that by the 1980s reached 13.5 million households. As of 2012, Mount Olivet
Lutheran Church
Lutheranism is one of the largest branches of Protestantism, identifying primarily with the theology of Martin Luther, the 16th-century German monk and reformer whose efforts to reform the theology and practice of the Catholic Church launched th ...
in southwest Minneapolis was the nation's second-largest Lutheran congregation, with about 6,000 attendees.
Christ Church Lutheran in the
Longfellow
Henry Wadsworth Longfellow (February 27, 1807 – March 24, 1882) was an American poet and educator. His original works include "Paul Revere's Ride", ''The Song of Hiawatha'', and ''Evangeline''. He was the first American to completely transl ...
neighborhood, the final work in the career of
Eliel Saarinen, has an education building designed by his son
Eero Saarinen
Eero Saarinen (, ; August 20, 1910 – September 1, 1961) was a Finnish-American architect and industrial designer noted for his wide-ranging array of designs for buildings and monuments. Saarinen is best known for designing the General Motors ...
.
Economy
As of 2020, the
Minneapolis–St. Paul area is the second-largest economic center in the
American Midwest
The Midwestern United States, also referred to as the Midwest or the American Midwest, is one of four census regions of the United States Census Bureau (also known as "Region 2"). It occupies the northern central part of the United States. I ...
behind
Chicago
(''City in a Garden''); I Will
, image_map =
, map_caption = Interactive Map of Chicago
, coordinates =
, coordinates_footnotes =
, subdivision_type = Country
, subdivision_name ...
. Early the city's history, millers were required to pay for wheat with cash during the growing season, and then to store the wheat until it was needed for flour. This required large amounts of capital, which stimulated the local banking industry and made Minneapolis a major financial center. As of mid-2022, Minneapolis area employment is primarily in trade, transportation, utilities, education, health services, professional and business services. Smaller numbers are employed in manufacturing, leisure and hospitality; mining, logging, and construction.
The Twin Cities metropolitan area has the seventh-highest concentration of major corporate headquarters in the US as of 2021, and in 2020, four
Fortune 500 corporations were headquartered within the city limits of Minneapolis. American companies with US offices in Minneapolis include
Accenture
Accenture plc is an Irish-American professional services company based in Dublin, specializing in information technology (IT) services and consulting. A ''Fortune'' Global 500 company, it reported revenues of $61.6 billion in 2022. Accentur ...
,
Bellisio Foods,
Canadian Pacific,
Coloplast
Coloplast A/S is a Danish multinational company that develops, manufactures and markets medical devices and services related to ostomy, urology, continence, and wound care.
History
Coloplast was founded in 1957 by Aage Louis-Hansen. His son Ni ...
,
RBC
RBC may refer to:
Media and arts
* ''RBK Daily'', a general business newspaper published in Moscow, Russia.
* RBK Group, a large Russian media group
* RBC Ministries, now Our Daily Bread Ministries, a Christian media outlet in Grand Rapdis, Mich ...
and
Voya Financial
Voya Financial is an American financial, retirement, investment and insurance company based in New York City. Voya began as ING U.S., the United States operating subsidiary of ING Group, which was spun off in 2013 and established independent fina ...
. The
National Institute for Pharmaceutical Technology & Education has Minneapolis headquarters.
As of 2020, the Minneapolis metropolitan area contributes $273 billion or 74% to the
gross state product of Minnesota. Measured by gross metropolitan product per resident (62,054), as of 2015, Minneapolis is the fifteenth richest city in the US. In 2011, the area's $199.6 billion
gross metropolitan product
Gross metropolitan product (GMP) is a monetary measure of the value of all final goods and services produced within a metropolitan statistical area during a specified period (''e.g.'', a quarter, a year). GMP estimates are commonly used to compare ...
and its
per capita personal income ranked 13th in the US.
The
Minneapolis Grain Exchange
The Minneapolis Grain Exchange (MGEX) is a commodities and futures exchange of grain products. It was formed in 1881 in Minneapolis, Minnesota, United States as a regional cash marketplace to promote fair trade and to prevent trade abuses in whea ...
, which was founded in 1881, is located near the riverfront and is the only exchange for hard, red, spring wheat
futures
Futures may mean:
Finance
*Futures contract, a tradable financial derivatives contract
*Futures exchange, a financial market where futures contracts are traded
* ''Futures'' (magazine), an American finance magazine
Music
* ''Futures'' (album), a ...
and
options
Option or Options may refer to:
Computing
*Option key, a key on Apple computer keyboards
*Option type, a polymorphic data type in programming languages
* Command-line option, an optional parameter to a command
*OPTIONS, an HTTP request method
...
. The
Federal Reserve Bank of Minneapolis serves Minnesota,
Montana
Montana () is a state in the Mountain West division of the Western United States. It is bordered by Idaho to the west, North Dakota and South Dakota to the east, Wyoming to the south, and the Canadian provinces of Alberta, British Columbi ...
,
North
North is one of the four compass points or cardinal directions. It is the opposite of south and is perpendicular to east and west. ''North'' is a noun, adjective, or adverb indicating Direction (geometry), direction or geography.
Etymology
T ...
and
South Dakota
South Dakota (; Sioux language, Sioux: , ) is a U.S. state in the West North Central states, North Central region of the United States. It is also part of the Great Plains. South Dakota is named after the Lakota people, Lakota and Dakota peo ...
, and parts of
Wisconsin
Wisconsin () is a state in the upper Midwestern United States. Wisconsin is the 25th-largest state by total area and the 20th-most populous. It is bordered by Minnesota to the west, Iowa to the southwest, Illinois to the south, Lake M ...
and
Michigan
Michigan () is a state in the Great Lakes region of the upper Midwestern United States. With a population of nearly 10.12 million and an area of nearly , Michigan is the 10th-largest state by population, the 11th-largest by area, and the ...
; it has the smallest population of the 12 regional banks in the
Federal Reserve System
The Federal Reserve System (often shortened to the Federal Reserve, or simply the Fed) is the central banking system of the United States of America. It was created on December 23, 1913, with the enactment of the Federal Reserve Act, after a ...
. Along with supporting consumers and the community, the bank executes monetary policy, regulates banks in its territory, and provides cash and oversees electronic deposits.
Arts and culture
Visual arts
Walker Art Center
The Walker Art Center is a multidisciplinary contemporary art center in the Lowry Hill neighborhood of Minneapolis, Minnesota, United States. The Walker is one of the most-visited modern and contemporary art museums in the United States and, t ...
is located at the summit of
Lowry Hill
Lowry Hill is a neighborhood within the Calhoun-Isles community in Minneapolis, Minnesota. The neighborhood is regarded as being one of the city’s most upscale and wealthy neighborhoods. It was historically the home of Minneapolis’s most p ...
near downtown. The center's size doubled in 2005 with an addition by
Herzog & de Meuron, and expanded with a park that was designed by Michel Desvigne and is located across the street from the
Minneapolis Sculpture Garden
The Minneapolis Sculpture Garden is an park in Minneapolis, Minnesota, in the United States.
It is located near the Walker Art Center, which operates it in coordination with the Minneapolis Park and Recreation Board. It reopened June 10, 2017 af ...
.
Minneapolis Institute of Art, which is known as since its 100th anniversary and is located in south-central Minneapolis, was designed by
McKim, Mead & White
McKim, Mead & White was an American architectural firm that came to define architectural practice, urbanism, and the ideals of the American Renaissance in fin de siècle New York. The firm's founding partners Charles Follen McKim (1847–1909), Wil ...
in 1915; is the largest art museum in the city and has 100,000 pieces in its permanent collection. New wings, which were designed by
Kenzo Tange and
Michael Graves, opened in 1974 and 2006, respectively; the new wings house contemporary and modern works, and provide additional gallery space.
Frank Gehry
Frank Owen Gehry, , FAIA (; ; born ) is a Canadian-born American architect and designer. A number of his buildings, including his private residence in Santa Monica, California, have become world-renowned attractions.
His works are considered ...
designed
Weisman Art Museum
The Frederick R. Weisman Art Museum is an art museum at the University of Minnesota in Minneapolis, Minnesota. Founded in 1934 as University Gallery, the museum was originally housed in an upper floor of the university's Northrop Auditorium. In 19 ...
, which opened in 1993, for the
University of Minnesota
The University of Minnesota, formally the University of Minnesota, Twin Cities, (UMN Twin Cities, the U of M, or Minnesota) is a public university, public Land-grant university, land-grant research university in the Minneapolis–Saint Paul, Tw ...
. A 2011 addition by Gehry doubled the size of the galleries.
The Museum of Russian Art
The Museum of Russian Art (TMORA), a nonprofit museum in Minneapolis, Minnesota, United States, is the only major institution in North America devoted entirely to Russian art and culture from the entire scope of Russia's history. The Museum was fo ...
opened in a restored church in 2005, and hosts a collection of 20th-century Russian art and special events.
Northeast Minneapolis Arts District hosts 400 independent artists, a center at the
Northrup-King Building, and recurring annual events.
Theater and performing arts
Minneapolis has hosted theatrical performances since the end of the American Civil War.
Early theaters included
Pence Opera House,
the Academy of Music, Grand Opera House, Lyceum, and later Metropolitan Opera House, which opened in 1894.
, Minneapolis has numerous theater companies.
Guthrie Theater
The Guthrie Theater, founded in 1963, is a center for theater performance, production, education, and professional training in Minneapolis, Minnesota. The concept of the theater was born in 1959 in a series of discussions between Sir Tyrone Gut ...
, the area's largest theater company, occupies a three-stage complex that was designed by French architect
Jean Nouvel and overlooks the Mississippi River.
The company was founded in 1963 by
Sir Tyrone Guthrie as a prototype alternative to
Broadway, and it produces a wide variety of shows throughout the year. Minneapolis purchased and renovated the
Orpheum,
State, and
Pantages Theatres,
vaudeville
Vaudeville (; ) is a theatrical genre of variety entertainment born in France at the end of the 19th century. A vaudeville was originally a comedy without psychological or moral intentions, based on a comical situation: a dramatic composition ...
and film houses on
Hennepin Avenue
Hennepin Avenue is a major street in Minneapolis, Minnesota, United States. It runs from Lakewood Cemetery (at West 36th Street), north through the Uptown District of Southwest Minneapolis, through the Virginia Triangle, the former "Bottleneck" a ...
that are now used for concerts and plays. Another renovated theater, the Shubert, joined with the
Hennepin Center for the Arts to become the
Cowles Center for Dance and the Performing Arts, which houses more than 12 performing arts groups.
Music
Minnesota Orchestra
The Minnesota Orchestra is an American orchestra based in Minneapolis, Minnesota. Founded originally as the Minneapolis Symphony Orchestra in 1903, the Minnesota Orchestra plays most of its concerts at Minneapolis's Orchestra Hall.
History
Em ...
plays classical and popular music at
Orchestra Hall under
Thomas Søndergård
Thomas Søndergård (born 4 October 1969 in Holstebro, Denmark) is a Danish conductor and percussionist.
Biography EUYO
Søndergård studied percussion at the Royal Danish Academy of Music from 1989 to 1992, where his teachers included Gert Mor ...
, the music director effective with the 2023–2024 season; ''
The New Yorker
''The New Yorker'' is an American weekly magazine featuring journalism, commentary, criticism, essays, fiction, satire, cartoons, and poetry. Founded as a weekly in 1925, the magazine is published 47 times annually, with five of these issues ...
'' critic Alex Ross said of one 2010 special performance at
Carnegie Hall
Carnegie Hall ( ) is a concert venue in Midtown Manhattan in New York City. It is at 881 Seventh Avenue (Manhattan), Seventh Avenue, occupying the east side of Seventh Avenue between West 56th Street (Manhattan), 56th and 57th Street (Manhatta ...
, "... the Minnesota Orchestra sounded, to my ears, like the greatest orchestra in the world". The orchestra recorded ''
Casa Guidi
Casa Guidi is a writer's house museum in the 15th-century patrician house in Piazza San Felice, 8, near the south end of the Pitti Palace in Florence, Italy. The '' piano nobile'' apartment was inhabited by Robert and Elizabeth Barrett Browning ...
'', winning a
Grammy Award
The Grammy Awards (stylized as GRAMMY), or simply known as the Grammys, are awards presented by the Recording Academy of the United States to recognize "outstanding" achievements in the music industry. They are regarded by many as the most pres ...
in 2004 for composer
Dominick Argento
Dominick Argento (October 27, 1927 – February 20, 2019) was an American composer known for his lyric operatic and choral music. Among his best known pieces are the operas '' Postcard from Morocco'', '' Miss Havisham's Fire'', ''The Masque of An ...
.
Singer and multi-instrumentalist
Prince
A prince is a male ruler (ranked below a king, grand prince, and grand duke) or a male member of a monarch's or former monarch's family. ''Prince'' is also a title of nobility (often highest), often hereditary, in some European states. Th ...
was born in Minneapolis, and lived in the area most of his life. After
Jimmy Jam
Jimmy may refer to:
Arts and entertainment Film and television
* ''Jimmy'' (2008 film), a 2008 Hindi thriller directed by Raj N. Sippy
* ''Jimmy'' (1979 film), a 1979 Indian Malayalam film directed by Melattoor Ravi Varma
* ''Jimmy'' (2013 f ...
and the 11-piece Mind & Matter broke through discrimination and racial barriers, Prince reached a global, multiracial audience with his combination of rock and funk. Prince, an authentic musical prodigy who was enriched by a music program at The Way Community Center, learned to operate a
Polymoog
The Polymoog is a hybrid polyphony (instrument), polyphonic analog synthesizer that was manufactured by Moog Music from 1975 to 1980. The Polymoog was based on Frequency divider, divide-down oscillator technology similar to electronic organs an ...
synthesizer at
Sound 80
Sound 80 is a recording studio in Minneapolis, Minnesota, United States founded by engineer Tom Jung and composer/musician Herb Pilhofer in 1969. Largely involved with local artists, the studio is best known for recording portions of Bob Dylan' ...
for his first album that became an element of the
Minneapolis sound.
With fellow local musicians, many of whom recorded at
Twin/Tone Records, Prince helped change
First Avenue and the 7th Street Entry into prominent venues for artists and audiences.
The city hosts a number of other concert venues, including Icehouse, the
Cedar, the
Dakota and the Cabooze.
Live Nation
Live Nation Entertainment, Inc. is an American global entertainment company and monopoly that was founded in 2010 following the merger of Live Nation and Ticketmaster. The company promotes, operates, and manages ticket sales for live entertainme ...
books
The Armory, the
Fillmore Fillmore may refer to:
Places Canada
* Fillmore, Saskatchewan
* Rural Municipality of Fillmore No. 96, Saskatchewan
United States
* Fillmore, California
* Fillmore District, San Francisco, California
* Fillmore, Louisiana
* Fillmore, Illino ...
and the Varsity Theater.
Hüsker Dü and
The Replacements were pivotal in the US
alternative rock
Alternative rock, or alt-rock, is a category of rock music that emerged from the independent music underground of the 1970s and became widely popular in the 1990s. "Alternative" refers to the genre's distinction from Popular culture, mainstre ...
boom during the 1980s. Their respective
frontmen Bob Mould and
Paul Westerberg developed successful solo careers. MN Spoken Word Association and independent
hip hop label
Rhymesayers Entertainment have garnered attention for their rap, hip hop, and
spoken word
Spoken word refers to an oral poetic performance art that is based mainly on the poem as well as the performer's aesthetic qualities. It is a late 20th century continuation of an ancient oral artistic tradition that focuses on the aesthetics of ...
performances and recordings. Underground Minnesota hip hop acts such as
Atmosphere
An atmosphere () is a layer of gas or layers of gases that envelop a planet, and is held in place by the gravity of the planetary body. A planet retains an atmosphere when the gravity is great and the temperature of the atmosphere is low. A s ...
and
Manny Phesto
Manuel Levins Holden (born September 22, 1989) better known by his stage name Manny Phesto, is an Underground hip hop musician based in Minneapolis, Minnesota. Manny is also an entrepreneur and business owner in the cannabis and CBD space. Pitch ...
prominently feature the city and Minnesota in their song lyrics. Minneapolis
Electronic dance music artists include Woody McBride,
Freddy Fresh, and
DVS1
Zak Khutoretsky, also known as DVS1 is an American DJ and techno producer based out of Minneapolis. He has toured extensively, headlined international music festivals such as Decibel and Dekmantel, and played along the likes of techno pioneers ...
.
Tom Waits
Thomas Alan Waits (born December 7, 1949) is an American musician, composer, songwriter, and actor. His lyrics often focus on the underbelly of society and are delivered in his trademark deep, gravelly voice. He worked primarily in jazz during ...
released two songs about the city; "
" (''
Blue Valentine,'' 1978) and "9th & Hennepin" (''
Rain Dogs
''Rain Dogs'' is the ninth studio album by American singer-songwriter Tom Waits, released in September 1985 on Island Records. A loose concept album about "the urban dispossessed" of New York City, ''Rain Dogs'' is generally considered the middle ...
,'' 1985).
Lucinda Williams recorded "Minneapolis" (''
World Without Tears
''World Without Tears'' is the seventh studio album by American singer-songwriter Lucinda Williams, released on April 8, 2003, by Lost Highway Records. The album debuted at No. 18 on the ''Billboard'' 200, selling 54,000 copies in its first week. ...
,'' 2003). Minneapolis grunge band
Babes in Toyland recorded ''
Minneapolism
Babes in Toyland was an American punk rock band formed in Minneapolis, Minnesota in 1987. The band was formed by Oregon native Kat Bjelland (lead vocals and guitar), with Lori Barbero (drums) and Michelle Leon ( bass), who was later replaced by M ...
'' (2001). In 2008, the century-old
MacPhail Center for Music
The MacPhail Center for Music is one of the nation's oldest and largest community-based music education centers. Located in the Mills District, Minneapolis, Mills District of Downtown East, Minneapolis, Downtown East, Minneapolis, Minnesota, the sc ...
opened a new facility that was designed by James Dayton. In 2012, the
anechoic chamber at
Orfield Labs measured −13decibels, and the company has applied to
Guinness World Records
''Guinness World Records'', known from its inception in 1955 until 1999 as ''The Guinness Book of Records'' and in previous United States editions as ''The Guinness Book of World Records'', is a reference book published annually, listing world ...
with a −24.9decibel measurement as of 2022. Minneapolis's opera companies are
Minnesota Opera
Minnesota Opera is a performance organization based in Minneapolis, Minnesota. It was founded as the Center Opera Company in 1963 by the Walker Art Center, and is known for premiering such diverse works as ''Where the Wild Things Are'' by Oliver ...
,
Mill City Summer Opera, the Gilbert & Sullivan Very Light Opera Company, and
Really Spicy Opera.
Museums
Exhibits at
Mill City Museum
Mill City Museum is a Minnesota Historical Society museum in Minneapolis. It opened in 2003 built in the ruins of the Washburn "A" Mill next to Mill Ruins Park on the banks of the Mississippi River. The museum focuses on the founding and growth o ...
feature the city's history of flour milling, and
Minnehaha Depot
The Minnesota Transportation Museum (MTM, reporting mark MNTX) is a transportation museum in Saint Paul, Minnesota, United States.
MTM operates several heritage transportation sites in Minnesota and one in Wisconsin. The museum is actively invol ...
was built in 1875. The
American Swedish Institute
The American Swedish Institute (ASI) is a museum and cultural center in the Phillips West neighborhood of Minneapolis, Minnesota, United States. The organization is dedicated to the preservation and study of the historic role Sweden and Swedish A ...
occupies a former mansion on Park Avenue. The American Indian Cultural Corridor, about eight blocks on Franklin Avenue, houses All My Relatives Gallery. On Penn Avenue North is the
Minnesota African American Heritage Museum and Gallery which was founded in 2018. In a former mansion one block from Mia is
Hennepin History Museum
Hennepin History Museum is a museum dedicated to the history, people, and communities of Hennepin County, Minnesota, United States. The museum provides in-house exhibits, history-themed programming, and social events throughout the year.
Locatio ...
. On East Lake Street is the world's only Somali history museum, the tiny
Somali Museum of Minnesota.
The Bakken
The Bakken is a science museum located in Minneapolis, Minnesota, United States, founded in 1975 by Earl Bakken, the co-founder of Medtronic. The exhibits present a history and explanation of electricity and electromagnetism.
Exhibits
Approximat ...
, which was formerly known as Museum of Electricity in Life, shifted focus in 2016 from electricity and magnetism to invention and innovation, and in 2020 opened a new entrance on
Bde Maka Ska.
Charity
Philanthropy and charitable giving have been part of the Minneapolis community since the 1800s. ,
Alight helps 2.5 million refugees and displaced persons each year in developing countries in Africa and Asia.
Catholic Charities
The Catholic Church operates numerous charitable organizations.
Catholic spiritual teaching includes spreading the Gospel, while Catholic social teaching emphasises support for the sick, the poor and the afflicted through the corporal and spir ...
of Minneapolis and Saint Paul is one of the largest non-profit organizations in the state, and a provider of several social services.
The Minneapolis Foundation invests and administers over 1,000 charitable funds. According to
AmeriCorps
AmeriCorps (officially the Corporation for National and Community Service or CNCS) is an independent agency of the United States government that engages more than five million Americans in service through a variety of stipended volunteer work prog ...
, in 2017, Minneapolis–Saint Paul, with 46.3% of the population volunteering, had the highest proportion of volunteers among US cities.
Literary arts
The nonprofit literary presses
Coffee House Press
Coffee House Press is a nonprofit independent press based in Minneapolis, Minnesota. The press’s goal is to "produce books that celebrate imagination, innovation in the craft of writing, and the many authentic voices of the American experience ...
,
Milkweed Editions
Milkweed Editions is an independent nonprofit literary publisher that originated from the ''Milkweed Chronicle'' literary and arts journal established in Minneapolis in 1979. The journal ceased and the business transitioned to publishing. It relea ...
, and
Graywolf Press
Graywolf Press is an Independent publisher, independent, non-profit publishing, publisher located in Minneapolis, Minnesota. Graywolf Press publishes fiction, non-fiction, and poetry.
Graywolf Press collaborates with organizations such as the Co ...
are based in Minneapolis. The
University of Minnesota Press publishes books, journals, and the
Minnesota Multiphasic Personality Inventory
The Minnesota Multiphasic Personality Inventory (MMPI) is a standardized psychometric test of adult personality and psychopathology. Psychologists and other mental health professionals use various versions of the MMPI to help develop treatment ...
. Open Book,
Minnesota Center for Book Arts Minnesota Center for Book Arts (MCBA) is the largest and most comprehensive independent nonprofit book arts center in the United States. Located in Minneapolis, Minnesota, MCBA is a nationally recognized leader in the celebration and preservation of ...
, and
The Loft Literary Center are located in Minneapolis.
Cuisine
![5·8ClubMPLS](https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/c/c7/5%C2%B78ClubMPLS.jpg)
West Broadway Avenue was a cultural center during the early 20th century but by the 1950s, flight to the suburbs began and
streetcar service ended citywide.
One of the largest urban
food desert
Food is any substance consumed by an organism for nutritional support. Food is usually of plant, animal, or fungal origin, and contains essential nutrients, such as carbohydrates, fats, proteins, vitamins, or minerals. The substance is ing ...
s in the US was on the north side of Minneapolis, where as of mid-2017, 70,000 people had access to only two grocery stores. Wirth Co-op opened in 2017 but closed within a year. North Market opened in 2017. The nonprofit Appetite for Change sought to improve the diet of local residents, competing against an influx of fast-food stores, and by 2017 it administered 10 gardens, sold produce in the mid-year months at West Broadway Farmers Market, supplied its restaurants, and gave away boxes of fresh produce.
Many Minneapolis-based individuals have won
James Beard Foundation Awards; these include chef
Sean Sherman—whose restaurant
Owamni received James Beard's 2022 national award for the best new restaurant—writer
Dara Moskowitz Grumdahl Dara Moskowitz Grumdahl is a food and wine writer, based in Minneapolis, Minnesota.
Personal life
Dara Moskowitz was born and raised in New York City and graduated from Stuyvesant High School in 1988. She got her start in the world of food as a d ...
and television personality
Andrew Zimmern.
Both credible originators of the
Jucy Lucy
A Jucy Lucy or Juicy Lucy is a stuffed burger with cheese inside the meat instead of on top, resulting in a melted core of cheese. Two bars in Minneapolis claim to be the inventor of the burger, while other bars and restaurants have created t ...
burger the
5-8 Club
The 5-8 Club Tavern & Grill is a restaurant in Minneapolis, Minnesota. Founded in 1928 as a speakeasy, the eatery is one of two Minneapolis establishments that claim to have invented the Juicy Lucy cheeseburger in the 1950s, the other being Mat ...
and
Matt's Bar
Matt's Bar is a restaurant in south Minneapolis, Minnesota. It is known as one of two businesses that created the Jucy Lucy.
History
The bar was originally named Nibs prior to 1954 and was owned by Nibs Martin, who later purchased the Magic Bar ...
have served it since the 1950s. The United States' first vegan butcher shop The Herbivorous Butcher opened in 2016.
East African cuisine arrived in Minneapolis with the wave of migrants from Somalia that started in the 1990s.
Gavin Kaysen
Gavin Kaysen (born 1979 in Thousand Oaks, California) is executive chef and owner of Spoon and Stable, Bellecour Bakery, Demi, Socca, and Mara all in Minneapolis. He received the James Beard Award for Best Chef: Midwest in 2018. Previous to his mo ...
and others on Team USA won a silver medal in the 2015
Bocuse d'Or
The Bocuse d'Or (the ''Concours mondial de la cuisine'', World Cooking Contest) is a biennial world chef championship. Named for the chef Paul Bocuse, the event takes place during two days near the end of January in Lyon, France, at the SIRHA Inter ...
.
Annual events
Each January and February, a series of events called The Great Northern is held in Minneapolis. The series includes the
U.S. Pond Hockey Championships; the
City of Lakes Loppet
A city is a human settlement of notable size.Goodall, B. (1987) ''The Penguin Dictionary of Human Geography''. London: Penguin.Kuper, A. and Kuper, J., eds (1996) ''The Social Science Encyclopedia''. 2nd edition. London: Routledge. It can be def ...
, a cross-country ski race; and the
Saint Paul Winter Carnival. The annual
MayDay Parade
Mayday Parade is an American Rock music, rock band from Tallahassee, Florida. Their debut EP ''Tales Told by Dead Friends'' was released in 2006, and sold over 50,000 copies without any label support. In July 2007, Mayday Parade released their de ...
returned in 2021 following the
COVID-19 pandemic
The COVID-19 pandemic, also known as the coronavirus pandemic, is an ongoing global pandemic of coronavirus disease 2019 (COVID-19) caused by severe acute respiratory syndrome coronavirus 2 (SARS-CoV-2). The novel virus was first identif ...
; other events include Art-A-Whirl; Pride Festival & Parade, Stone Arch Bridge Festival, and Twin Cities Juneteenth Celebration in June;
Minneapolis Aquatennial
The Minneapolis Aquatennial is an annual outdoor event held in the U.S. city of Minneapolis, Minnesota, during the third full week of July. Originating in 1940, the Minneapolis Aquatennial celebrates the city's famous lakes, rivers, and streams. ...
in July;
Minnesota Fringe Festival
The Minnesota Fringe Festival is a performing arts festival held in Minneapolis, Minnesota, United States, every summer, usually during the first two weeks in August. The eleven-day event, which features performing artists of many genres and dis ...
, Loring Park Art Festival, Metris Uptown Art Fair, Powderhorn Festival of Arts and the Lake Hiawatha Neighborhood Festival in August; Minneapolis Monarch Festival in September that celebrates the
Monarch butterfly
The monarch butterfly or simply monarch (''Danaus plexippus'') is a milkweed butterfly (subfamily Danainae) in the family Nymphalidae. Other common names, depending on region, include milkweed, common tiger, wanderer, and black-veined brown. It ...
's
migration; and the Twin Cities Marathon in October.
Libraries
The
Minneapolis Public Library
The Minneapolis Public Library (MPL) was a library system that served the residents of Minneapolis, Minnesota in the United States. It was founded in 1885 with the establishment of the Minneapolis Library Board by an amendment to the Minneapolis ...
, founded by
T. B. Walker
Thomas Barlow Walker (February 1, 1840 – July 28, 1928) was an American business magnate who acquired lumber in Minnesota and California and became an art collector. Walker founded the Minneapolis Public Library. He was among the ten wealthiest ...
in 1885, merged with the
Hennepin County Library
Hennepin County Library is a public library system serving Hennepin County, Minnesota, US. The current iteration of Hennepin County Library was formed by the merger of urban Minneapolis Public Library and suburban Hennepin County Library on Ja ...
system in 2008. Fifteen
branches of the Hennepin County Library serve Minneapolis.
The downtown
Central Library, designed by
César Pelli
César Pelli (October 12, 1926 – July 19, 2019) was an Argentine-American architect who designed some of the world's tallest buildings and other major urban landmarks. Two of his most notable buildings are the Petronas Towers in Kuala Lumpur a ...
, opened in 2006. Ten special collections hold over 25,000 books and resources for researchers, including the Minneapolis Collection and the Minneapolis Photo Collection.
Sports
Minneapolis has four professional sports teams. The American football team
Minnesota Vikings
The Minnesota Vikings are a professional American football team based in Minneapolis. They compete in the National Football League (NFL) as a member club of the National Football Conference (NFC) North division. Founded in 1960 as an expansion ...
and the baseball team
Minnesota Twins
The Minnesota Twins are an American professional baseball team based in Minneapolis. The Twins compete in Major League Baseball (MLB) as a member club of the American League (AL) Central Division. The team is named after the Twin Cities area w ...
have played in the state since 1961. The Vikings were an
National Football League
The National Football League (NFL) is a professional American football league that consists of 32 teams, divided equally between the American Football Conference (AFC) and the National Football Conference (NFC). The NFL is one of the ...
(NFL)
expansion team
An expansion team is a new team in a sports league, usually from a city that has not hosted a team in that league before, formed with the intention of satisfying the demand for a local team from a population in a new area. Sporting leagues also ...
and the Twins were formed when the
Washington Senators relocated to Minnesota. The Twins won the
World Series
The World Series is the annual championship series of Major League Baseball (MLB) in the United States and Canada, contested since 1903 between the champion teams of the American League (AL) and the National League (NL). The winner of the World ...
in 1987 and 1991, and have played at
Target Field
Target Field is a baseball stadium in the historic warehouse district of downtown Minneapolis. Since its opening in 2010, the stadium has been the home ballpark of Major League Baseball's Minnesota Twins. The stadium hosted the 2014 Major Leag ...
since 2010. The Vikings played in the
Super Bowl
The Super Bowl is the annual final playoff game of the National Football League (NFL) to determine the league champion. It has served as the final game of every NFL season since 1966, replacing the NFL Championship Game. Since 2022, the game ...
following the 1969, 1973, 1974, and 1976 seasons, losing all four games. The basketball team
Minnesota Timberwolves returned
National Basketball Association
The National Basketball Association (NBA) is a professional basketball league in North America. The league is composed of 30 teams (29 in the United States and 1 in Canada) and is one of the major professional sports leagues in the United S ...
(NBA) basketball to Minneapolis in 1989, and were followed by
Minnesota Lynx
The Minnesota Lynx are an American professional basketball team based in Minneapolis, playing in the Western Conference in the Women's National Basketball Association (WNBA). The team won the WNBA title in 2011, 2013, 2015, and 2017.
Founded pr ...
in 1999. Both basketball teams play in the
Target Center.
In the 2010s, the Lynx were the most-successful sports team in the city and a dominant force in the
Women's National Basketball Association
The Women's National Basketball Association (WNBA) is an American professional basketball league. It is composed of twelve teams, all based in the United States. The league was founded on April 22, 1996, as the women's counterpart to the Natio ...
(WNBA), reaching the WNBA finals in 2011, 2012, 2013, 2015, 2016, and 2017, and winning in 2011, 2013, 2015, and 2017. In 2016, following the killings of
Philando Castile
On July 6, 2016, Philando Castile, a 32-year-old African-American man, was fatally shot during a traffic stop by police officer Jeronimo Yanez of the St. Anthony police department in the Minneapolis–Saint Paul metropolitan area.
Castile was ...
and
Alton Sterling
On July 5, 2016, Alton Sterling, a 37-year-old black man, was shot and killed by two Baton Rouge Police Department officers in Baton Rouge, Louisiana. The officers, who were attempting to control Sterling's arms, shot Sterling while Sterling al ...
, Lynx captains wore black shirts as a protest by Black athletes for social change.
In addition to professional sports teams, Minneapolis also hosts a majority of the
Minnesota Golden Gopher college sports
College athletics encompasses non-professional, collegiate and university-level competitive sports and games.
World University Games
The first World University Games were held in 1923. There were originally called the ''Union Nationale des É ...
teams of the
University of Minnesota
The University of Minnesota, formally the University of Minnesota, Twin Cities, (UMN Twin Cities, the U of M, or Minnesota) is a public university, public Land-grant university, land-grant research university in the Minneapolis–Saint Paul, Tw ...
. The
Gophers football team plays at
Huntington Bank Stadium and have won
national championships
A national championship(s) is the top achievement for any sport or contest within a league of a particular nation or nation state. The title is usually awarded by contests, ranking systems, stature, ability, etc. This determines the best team, indi ...
in 1904, 1934, 1935, 1936, 1940, 1941, and 1960. The
Gophers women's ice hockey team plays at
Ridder Arena Ridder may refer to:
Places
*DeRidder, Louisiana, city in US state of Louisiana
*Ridder, Kazakhstan, settlement in Kazakhstan (named for Philip Ridder)
Things
*Ridder (title), Dutch and Belgian title equivalent to knight
*Knight Ridder, newspaper ...
and is a six-time
NCAA champion
The National Collegiate Athletic Association (NCAA) is a nonprofit organization that regulates student athletics among about 1,100 schools in the United States, Canada, and Puerto Rico. It also organizes the athletic programs of colleges an ...
, and were the national champion in 2000, 2004, 2005, 2012, 2013, 2015, and 2016. The
Gophers men's ice hockey team plays at
3M Arena at Mariucci
3M Arena at Mariucci is the home arena for the Minnesota Golden Gophers men's ice hockey team of the University of Minnesota. The arena is located on the Minneapolis campus and seats approximately 10,000 fans (9,600 in the main bowl plus club room ...
, and won NCAA
national championships
A national championship(s) is the top achievement for any sport or contest within a league of a particular nation or nation state. The title is usually awarded by contests, ranking systems, stature, ability, etc. This determines the best team, indi ...
in 1974, 1976, 1979,
2002
File:2002 Events Collage.png, From left, clockwise: The 2002 Winter Olympics are held in Salt Lake City; Queen Elizabeth The Queen Mother and her daughter Princess Margaret, Countess of Snowdon die; East Timor gains East Timor independence, indepe ...
, and
2003
File:2003 Events Collage.png, From top left, clockwise: The crew of STS-107 perished when the Space Shuttle Columbia disintegrated during reentry into Earth's atmosphere; SARS became an epidemic in China, and was a precursor to SARS-CoV-2; A des ...
. Both the Golden Gophers
men's basketball and
women's basketball
Women's basketball is the team sport of basketball played by women. It began being played in 1892, one year after men's basketball, at Smith College in Massachusetts. It spread across the United States, in large part via women's college compet ...
teams play at
Williams Arena
Williams Arena is an indoor arena located in Minneapolis, Minnesota. It is the home arena for the University of Minnesota's men's and women's basketball teams. It also housed the men's hockey team until 1993, when it moved into its own building ...
.
The
U.S. Bank Stadium
U.S. Bank Stadium is an enclosed stadium located in downtown Minneapolis, Minnesota. Built on the former site of the Hubert H. Humphrey Metrodome, the indoor stadium opened in 2016 and is the home of the Minnesota Vikings of the National Footbal ...
was built for the Vikings at a cost of $1.122 billion, $348 million of which was provided by the state of Minnesota and $150 million came from the city of Minneapolis. The stadium, which was called "Minnesota's biggest-ever public works project", opened in 2016 with 66,000 seats, which was expanded to 70,000 for the
2018 Super Bowl
Super Bowl LII was an American football game played to determine the champion of the National Football League (NFL) for the 2017 season. The National Football Conference (NFC) champion Philadelphia Eagles defeated the American Football Conferen ...
.
U.S. Bank Stadium also hosts indoor running and rollerblading nights, concerts, and other events.
The city hosts some major sporting events, including baseball All-Star Games, World Series, Super Bowls,
NCAA Division 1
NCAA Division I (D-I) is the highest level of intercollegiate athletics sanctioned by the National Collegiate Athletic Association (NCAA) in the United States, which accepts players globally. D-I schools include the major collegiate athletic ...
men's and women's basketball Final Four, the
AMA Motocross Championship, the
X Games
The X Games are an annual extreme sports event organized, produced and broadcast by ESPN. Coverage is also shown on ESPN's sister network, ABC. The inaugural X Games were held during the summer of 1995 in Providence and Newport, Rhode Island, ...
, and the
WNBA All-Star Game
The Women's National Basketball Association All-Star Game, commonly referred to as the WNBA All-Star Game, is an annual exhibition basketball game played in the United States between the best players of the Western and Eastern Conference of ...
.
Minnesota Wild
The Minnesota Wild are a professional ice hockey team based in Saint Paul, Minnesota. The Wild competes in the National Hockey League (NHL) as a member of the Central Division in the Western Conference and play their home games at the Xcel Ener ...
, an
National Hockey League
The National Hockey League (NHL; french: Ligue nationale de hockey—LNH, ) is a professional ice hockey league in North America comprising 32 teams—25 in the United States and 7 in Canada. It is considered to be the top ranked professional ...
team, play at the
Xcel Energy Center
Xcel Energy Center (also known as "The X") is a multipurpose arena in Saint Paul, Minnesota, United States. Completed in 2000, it is named for its locally based corporate sponsor Xcel Energy. With an official capacity of 17,954, the arena has four ...
; and the
Major League Soccer
Major League Soccer (MLS) is a men's professional soccer league sanctioned by the United States Soccer Federation, which represents the sport's highest level in the United States. The league comprises 29 teams—26 in the U.S. and 3 in Canada ...
soccer team
Minnesota United FC
Minnesota United FC is an American professional soccer club based in Saint Paul, Minnesota that plays in the Western Conference of Major League Soccer. The club began play in 2017 as the league's 22nd club, and replaced the North American Socc ...
play at
Allianz Field, both of which are located in Saint Paul. Six
golf course
A golf course is the grounds on which the sport of golf is played. It consists of a series of holes, each consisting of a tee box, a fairway, the rough and other hazards, and a green with a cylindrical hole in the ground, known as a "cup". Th ...
s are located within Minneapolis' city limits. While living in Minneapolis, Scott and Brennan Olson founded and later sold
Rollerblade, the company that popularized the sport of
inline skating.
The
Twin Cities Marathon
The Twin Cities Marathon (TCM) is an annual Marathon (sport), marathon in the Minneapolis–Saint Paul area which normally takes place the first weekend in October. The race is often called "The Most Beautiful Urban Marathon in America" due to ...
is a
Boston Marathon
The Boston Marathon is an annual marathon race hosted by several cities and towns in greater Boston in eastern Massachusetts, United States. It is traditionally held on Patriots' Day, the third Monday of April. Begun in 1897, the event was i ...
qualifier.
Parks and recreation
![Minnehaha Falls, Minneapolis](https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/2/29/Minnehaha_Falls%2C_Minneapolis.jpg)
In his book ''The American City: What Works, What Doesn't'',
Alexander Garvin
Alexander Garvin (March 8, 1941 – December 17, 2021) was an American urban planner, educator, and author. At the time of his death, he was in private practice at AGA Public Realm Strategists in New York City and was also an adjunct professor at ...
wrote Minneapolis built "the best-located, best-financed, best-designed, and best-maintained public open space in America".
The city's parks are governed and operated by the
Minneapolis Park and Recreation Board, an independent
park district with broader powers than any other parks agency in the US. Foresight, donations, and effort by community leaders enabled
Horace Cleveland
Horace William Shaler Cleveland (December 16, 1814 – December 5, 1900) was an American landscape architect. His approach to natural landscape design can be seen in projects such as the Grand Rounds in Minneapolis; Sleepy Hollow Cemetery in Con ...
to create his finest
landscape architecture
Landscape architecture is the design of outdoor areas, landmarks, and structures to achieve environmental, social-behavioural, or aesthetic outcomes. It involves the systematic design and general engineering of various structures for constructio ...
, preserving geographical landmarks and linking them with boulevards and parkways. The city's
Chain of Lakes, consisting of seven lakes and Minnehaha Creek, is connected by bicycle paths, and running and walking paths, and are used for swimming, fishing, picnics, boating, and ice skating. A parkway for cars, a
bikeway for riders, and a walkway for pedestrians run parallel along the route of the
Grand Rounds National Scenic Byway
The Grand Rounds National Scenic Byway is a linked series of park areas in Minneapolis, Minnesota, United States, that takes a roughly circular path through the city. The Minneapolis Park and Recreation Board developed the system over many years. ...
.
Theodore Wirth
Theodore Wirth (1863–1949) was instrumental in designing the Minneapolis system of parks. Swiss-born, he was widely regarded as the dean of the local parks movement in America. The various titles he was given included administrator of pa ...
is credited with developing the parks system. Approximately 15 percent of land in Minneapolis is parks, in accordance with the 2020 national median, and 98 percent of residents live within of a park.
[and ]
![09 MN pond hockey](https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/6/68/09_MN_pond_hockey.jpg)
Parks are interlinked in many places, and the
Mississippi National River and Recreation Area connects regional parks and visitor centers. The country's oldest public wildflower garden, the Eloise Butler Wildflower Garden and Bird Sanctuary, is located within
Theodore Wirth Park
Theodore Wirth Park is the regional park managed by the Minneapolis Park and Recreation Board. The park land is shared by Minneapolis and the neighboring suburb of Golden Valley. Formally named Theodore Wirth Regional Park, it includes two golf ...
, which is shared with
Golden Valley and is about 90 percent of the area of
Central Park, New York City.
Minnehaha Park
Minnehaha Park is a city park in Minneapolis, Minnesota, United States, and home to Minnehaha Falls and the lower reaches of Minnehaha Creek. Officially named Minnehaha Regional Park, it is part of the Minneapolis Park and Recreation Board syst ...
contains the 53-foot (16 m) waterfall
Minnehaha Falls, and is one of the city's oldest and most popular parks.
The regional park received over 2,050,000 visitors in 2017. In the bestselling and often-parodied 19th-century epic poem ''
The Song of Hiawatha
''The Song of Hiawatha'' is an 1855 epic poem in trochaic tetrameter by Henry Wadsworth Longfellow which features Native American characters. The epic relates the fictional adventures of an Ojibwe warrior named Hiawatha and the tragedy of his l ...
'',
Henry Wadsworth Longfellow
Henry Wadsworth Longfellow (February 27, 1807 – March 24, 1882) was an American poet and educator. His original works include "Paul Revere's Ride", ''The Song of Hiawatha'', and ''Evangeline''. He was the first American to completely transl ...
named Hiawatha's wife Minnehaha for the Minneapolis waterfall. The , hiking-only Winchell Trail runs along the Mississippi River, and offers views of and access to the Mississippi Gorge Regional Park, Mississippi Gorge and a rustic hiking experience.
Minneapolis's climate provides opportunities for winter activities such as ice fishing, snowshoeing, ice skating, cross-country skiing, and sledding at many parks and lakes between December and March.
When there is sufficient snowfall or in the presence of snowmaking, a partnership between the park board and Loppet Foundation provides for the grooming of of cross-country ski trails between Wirth Park, the Chain of Lakes, and two of the city's golf courses.
The City of Lakes Loppet cross-country ski race is part of the American ski marathon series. The park board maintains 20 outdoor ice rinks in winter and the city's Lake Nokomis is host to the annual
U.S. Pond Hockey Championships.
Government
![Minneapolis City Hall 2013](https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/0/0d/Minneapolis_City_Hall_2013.jpg)
Minneapolis is currently a majority holding for the Minnesota Democratic–Farmer–Labor Party (DFL), an affiliate of the Democratic Party (United States), Democratic Party, and had its last Minnesota Republican Party, Republican mayor in 1973. DFL council member
Jacob Frey was elected List of mayors of Minneapolis, mayor of Minneapolis in 2017, and was re-elected in 2021. In 2021, a 2021 Minneapolis municipal election#Question 1, ballot question shifted more power from the city council to the mayor,
a change that proponents had tried to achieve since the early 20th century.
Parks, taxation, and public housing are semi-independent boards that levy their own taxes and fees, which are subject to Board of Estimate and Taxation limits.
The
Minneapolis City Council
The Minneapolis City Council is the lawmaking body of Minneapolis. It consists of 13 members, elected from separate wards to four-year terms, via a ranked-choice method. The council structure has been in place since the 1950s. In recent elections ...
represents the city's 13 wards of the United States, wards. The city adopted instant-runoff voting in 2006, first using it in the 2009 elections.
The council is progressive; it has 12 DFL council members and one from the Democratic Socialists of America. Andrea Jenkins was unanimously chosen as president of the City Council in 2022.
In 2022, the 13-member council has seven political newcomers and for the first time has a majority of non-White council members.
At the federal level, Minneapolis is within Minnesota's 5th congressional district, which since 2018 has been represented by Democrat Ilhan Omar, one of the first two practicing Muslim women and the first Somali-American in Congress. Minnesota's US Senators, Amy Klobuchar and Tina Smith, were elected or appointed while living in Minneapolis, and are also Democrats.
In 2015, the City Council passed a resolution making fossil fuel divestment city policy, joining 17 cities worldwide in the Carbon Neutral Cities Alliance. Minneapolis' climate change, climate plan calls for an 80 percent reduction in greenhouse gas emissions by 2050. Minneapolis has a separation ordinance that directs local law-enforcement officers not to "take any law enforcement action" for the sole purpose of finding undocumented immigrants, nor to ask an individual about his or her immigration status.
![Minneapolis Police guarding 3rd Precinct May 2020](https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/5/59/Minneapolis_Police_guarding_3rd_Precinct_May_2020.jpg)
The city council unanimously approved Frey's budget of $1.66 billion for 2023, after the council made amendments that moved a few civilian police jobs to oversight and to immigration.
The source of funding is a 6.5 percent property tax increase in 2023.
[ and ] The United States Department of Justice, US Justice Department and the Minnesota Department of Human Rights. have been investigating policing practices in Minneapolis. The budget plans for one negotiated consent decree and the statutory minimum of 731 officers in 2023, in the police department which is about 260 officers short.
After the murder of George Floyd in May 2020, about 166 police officers left of their own accord either to retirement or to temporary leave—many with Post-traumatic stress disorder, PTSD—and a crime wave resulted in more than 500 shootings. A Reuters investigation found that killings surged when a "hands-off" attitude resulted in fewer officer-initiated encounters. As of July 2022, violent crime rose about 3% across Minneapolis compared with 2021, and in 2020, it rose 21%.
A 2021 Minneapolis Question 2, 2021 ballot question to abolish the police department failed. The restructured mayor's role created a new Minneapolis Office of Community Safety, with its commissioner overseeing the police and fire departments, 911 dispatch, emergency management, and violence prevention.
The city in 2021 proposed a new cooperation with the police department and a mental health services company, Canopy Mental Health & Consulting, to respond to some 911 calls that do not require police. The organization had responded to more than three thousand 911 calls as of September 2022 and was proposed to continue through the 2023-2024 budget year.
Education
Primary and secondary education
Minneapolis Public Schools enroll over 35,000 students in public primary education, primary and secondary education, secondary schools. The district administers about 100 public schools, including 45 elementary schools, seven middle schools, seven high schools, eight special education schools, eight alternative schools, nineteen contract alternative schools, and five charter schools. With authority granted by the state legislature, the school board makes policy, selects the superintendent, and oversees the district's budget, curriculum, personnel, and facilities. In 2017, the graduation rate was 66 percent. Students speak over 100 languages at home and most school communications are printed in English, Hmong language, Hmong, Spanish, and Somali language, Somali. Some students attend public schools in other school districts chosen by their families under Minnesota's open enrollment statute. Besides public schools, the city has more than 20 private schools and academies, and about 20 additional charter schools.
Colleges and universities
Minneapolis's collegiate scene is dominated by the main campus of the
University of Minnesota
The University of Minnesota, formally the University of Minnesota, Twin Cities, (UMN Twin Cities, the U of M, or Minnesota) is a public university, public Land-grant university, land-grant research university in the Minneapolis–Saint Paul, Tw ...
, where more than 50,000 undergraduate, graduate, and professional students attend 20 colleges, schools, and institutes. The university offers free tuition to students from Minnesota families earning less than $50,000 per year. The graduate school programs with exceptional, top-five national rankings in 2020 were health care management, nursing, midwifery, pharmacy, and clinical psychology. The university has unusual constitutional autonomy that has existed in three US states since 1851, when the provision was included in Minnesota's constitution.
Augsburg University, Minneapolis College of Art and Design, and
North Central University are private four-year colleges. Minneapolis Community and Technical College and the private Dunwoody College of Technology provide career training. St. Mary's University of Minnesota has a Twin Cities campus for its graduate and professional programs. The large, principally distance education, online universities Capella University and Walden University (Minnesota), Walden University are both headquartered in the city. The public four-year Metropolitan State University and the private four-year University of St. Thomas (Minnesota), University of St. Thomas are among post-secondary institutions based elsewhere that have campuses in Minneapolis.
Media
Several newspapers are published in Minneapolis; ''Star Tribune'', ''Finance & Commerce'', ''Minnesota Spokesman-Recorder'', the university's ''Minnesota Daily, The Minnesota Daily'', and ''MinnPost.com''. TMC Publications publishes ''Midway-Como-North End Monitor, The Monitor'', ''Longfellow Nokomis Messenger'' and the ''Southwest Connector''.
MSP Communications publishes ''Mpls.St.Paul'' and ''Twin Cities Business'' magazines. Other publications include ''Minnesota Women's Press'', ''North News'', ''Northeaster'', ''Insight News'', ''The Circle'', ''Southwest Voices'',
[ and ] ''Dispatch'' and ''Racket (Minnesota), Racket.''
Nineteen FM and AM radio stations are licensed to Minneapolis, including one from the University of Minnesota and one from the public schools. Up to 79 FM and AM signals can be received in one or more areas of the city. There are 10 full-power television stations in the metro area, and one non-profit public-access cable network. WCCO-TV is based in Minneapolis proper. A majority of these signals can be Streaming media, streamed.
Krista Tippett, winner of a List of Peabody Award winners (2000–2009), Peabody Award and the National Humanities Medal, produces the ''On Being'' project from her studio across Hennepin from the basilica. In 2022, she changed her show from weekly radio to seasonal podcasts.
Movies filmed in Minneapolis include ''Airport (1970 film), Airport'' (1970), ''The Heartbreak Kid (1972 film), The Heartbreak Kid'' (1972), ''Slaughterhouse-Five (film), Slaughterhouse-Five'' (1972), ''Ice Castles'' (1978), ''Foolin' Around'' (1980), ''Take This Job and Shove It (film), Take This Job and Shove It'' (1981), ''Purple Rain (film), Purple Rain'' (1984), ''That Was Then, This Is Now (film), That Was Then, This Is Now'' (1985), ''The Mighty Ducks (film), The Mighty Ducks'' (1992), ''Untamed Heart'' (1993), ''Little Big League'' (1994), ''Beautiful Girls (film), Beautiful Girls'' (1996), ''Jingle All the Way'' (1996), ''Fargo (1996 film), Fargo'' (1996), and ''Young Adult (film), Young Adult'' (2011). In 1960s television, List of Route 66 episodes#Season 4 (1963–64), two episodes of ''Route 66 (TV series), Route 66'' were made in Minneapolis. The 1970s CBS situation comedy set in Minneapolis, ''The Mary Tyler Moore Show'', won three Golden Globe Award, Golden Globes and 29 Emmy Awards. The show's opening sequences were filmed in the city.
Infrastructure
Transportation
![Hiawatha Line-Government Plaza](https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/2/22/Hiawatha_Line-Government_Plaza.jpg)
Minneapolis has two
light rail lines, one commuter rail line, five bus rapid transit (BRT) lines, and about 90 transit bus, bus lines with over 8,000 stops. Among bus lines, local Minneapolis routes are numbered 1 to 49, and higher numbers are for limited-stop, commuter, express, and routes in directional parts of the city. Riders of Metro Transit system-wide are 44 percent persons of color.
The Metro Blue Line (Minnesota), Metro Blue Line light rail line connects the Mall of America and Minneapolis–Saint Paul International Airport in Bloomington, Minnesota, Bloomington to downtown, and the Green Line (Minnesota), Metro Green Line travels east from downtown through the University of Minnesota campus to downtown
Saint Paul
Paul; grc, Παῦλος, translit=Paulos; cop, ⲡⲁⲩⲗⲟⲥ; hbo, פאולוס השליח (previously called Saul of Tarsus;; ar, بولس الطرسوسي; grc, Σαῦλος Ταρσεύς, Saũlos Tarseús; tr, Tarsuslu Pavlus; ...
. Hundreds of homeless people nightly sought shelter on Green Line trains until overnight service was cut back in 2019. In 2020, a rise in crime on the light rail system led to discussion in the Minnesota state legislature, state legislature on how to best address the problem. A Green Line Southwest LRT, extension called the Southwest LRT will connect downtown Minneapolis with the southwestern suburbs St. Louis Park, Hopkins, Minnetonka and Eden Prairie. About a decade late, the Southwest line is expected to open in 2027, and has cost $1.8 billion as of 2022. An Bottineau LRT, extension of the Blue Line to the northwest suburbs re-entered the planning stages for a new route alignment in 2020. The Northstar Line, Northstar Commuter rail runs from Big Lake, Minnesota, Big Lake through the northern suburbs and terminates at the multi-modal transit station at Target Field Station, Target Field using existing railroad tracks.
BRT lines are 25 percent faster than regular bus lines because riders pay before boarding, stops are limited, and sometimes they employ signal prioritization.
Due to staffing shortages, BRT lines started just as Metro Transit reduced or cut service on the local bus lines they largely replaced.
The newest BRT line, the D Line, runs along one of Minnesota's most used bus lines, the route 5, where a quarter of households don’t have access to a car.
Public transit ridership in the Twin Cities was 91.6 million in 2019, a three-percent decline over the previous year, which is part of a national trend in falling local bus ridership. Ridership on the Metro (Minnesota), Metro system remained steady or grew slightly.
About 4 percent of commuters cycle to work as of 2019. Minneapolis has of on-street protected bikeways, of bike lanes and of off-street bikeways and trails. Off-street facilities include the Grand Rounds Scenic Byway, Midtown Greenway, Little Earth Trail, Hiawatha LRT Trail, Kenilworth Trail, and Cedar Lake Trail. Seeking funding for 2023, bicycle-sharing provider Nice Ride Minnesota served 70,000 riders in 2021.
In 2007, the I-35W Mississippi River bridge, Interstate 35W bridge over the Mississippi, which was overloaded with of repair materials, collapsed, killing 13 people and injuring 145. The I-35W Saint Anthony Falls Bridge, bridge was rebuilt in 14 months. Only one quarter of the US's structurally deficient bridges had been repaired ten years later.
![Bicycling-Minneapolis-2007-03-02](https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/1/10/Bicycling-Minneapolis-2007-03-02.jpg)
The Minneapolis Skyway System, of enclosed pedestrian bridges called skyways, links 80 city blocks downtown with second-floor restaurants and retailers that are open on weekdays.
Minneapolis–Saint Paul International Airport (MSP) is served by 18 international, domestic, charter, and regional carriers, and is the headquarters of Sun Country Airlines. As of 2019, MSP is also the second-largest hub for Delta Air Lines, which operates more flights out of MSP than any other airline.
Health care
![Abbott northwestern hospital](https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/b/b2/Abbott_northwestern_hospital.jpg)
Abbott Northwestern Hospital, M Health Fairview University of Minnesota Medical Center, University of Minnesota Medical Center, Hennepin County Medical Center, Hennepin Healthcare, Minneapolis Veterans Affairs Health Care System, Minneapolis VA Medical Center, Shriners Hospitals for Children, Children's Hospitals and Clinics of Minnesota, Children's Hospitals and Clinics, M Health Fairview University of Minnesota Masonic Children's Hospital, University of Minnesota Masonic Children's Hospital, and Phillips Eye Institute serve the city. The Mayo Clinic in Rochester, Minnesota, is from Minneapolis.
Cardiac surgery was developed at the university's Variety Club Hospital, where by 1957, more than 200 patients—many of whom were children—had survived open-heart operations. Working with surgeon C. Walton Lillehei, Medtronic began to build portable and implantable cardiac pacemakers about this time.
Hennepin Healthcare, a public teaching hospital and Level I trauma center, opened in 1887 as City Hospital, and has also been known as Minneapolis General Hospital, Hennepin County General Hospital, and HCMC. The Hennepin Healthcare safety net counted 643,739 clinic visits, and 111,307 emergency and urgent care visits in 2019.
The Mashkiki Waakaa'igan Pharmacy on Bloomington Avenue dispenses free prescription drugs and culturally sensitive care to members of any federally recognized tribes living in Hennepin and Ramsey counties, regardless of insurance status.
The pharmacy has 3,500 active patients and is funded by the Fond du Lac Band of Lake Superior Chippewa.
Utilities
"Ambassadors", who are identified by their blue-and-green-yellow fluorescent jackets, daily patrol a 120-block area of downtown to greet and assist visitors, remove trash, monitor property, and call police when they are needed. The ambassador program is a public-private partnership with a $6.6 million annual budget that is paid for by a special downtown tax district.
Xcel Energy supplies electricity, CenterPoint Energy supplies gas, CenturyLink provides landline telephone service, and Comcast provides cable service. The city treats and distributes water, and charges a monthly fee for trash removal.
After each significant snowfall, called a snow emergency, the Minneapolis Public Works Street Division plows over of streets as wide as possible—in "lane miles," enough to plow a lane between Minneapolis and Anchorage, Alaska. Ordinances govern parking on plowing routes during these emergencies, as well as snow shoveling.
Notable people
Sister cities
Minneapolis's Sister city, sister cities are:
*Bosaso, Somalia (2014)
*Cuernavaca, Mexico (2008)
*Eldoret, Kenya (2000)
*Harbin, China (1992)
*Ibaraki, Osaka, Ibaraki, Japan (1980)
*Kuopio, Finland (1972)
*Najaf, Iraq (2009)
*Novosibirsk, Russia (1988)
*Santiago, Chile (1961)
*Tours, France (1991)
*Uppsala Municipality, Uppsala, Sweden (2000)
*Winnipeg, Canada (1973)
See also
* List of events and attractions in Minneapolis
* List of tallest buildings in Minneapolis
* National Register of Historic Places listings in Hennepin County, Minnesota
Notes
References
Works cited
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Further reading
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External links
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"Minneapolis Past"— ''documentary produced by Twin Cities Public Television''.
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