Hiawatha is a neighborhood within the larger Longfellow community in

Minneapolis Minneapolis () is the largest city in Minnesota, United States, and the county seat of Hennepin County. The city is abundant in water, with thirteen lakes, wetlands, the Mississippi River, creeks and waterfalls. Minneapolis has its origin ...

. It is bordered by Howe to the north, the

Mississippi River The Mississippi River is the List of longest rivers of the United States (by main stem), second-longest river and chief river of the second-largest Drainage system (geomorphology), drainage system in North America, second only to the Hudson B ...

to the east,

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 ...

and

Minnehaha Minnehaha is a Native American woman documented in Henry Wadsworth Longfellow's 1855 epic poem ''The Song of Hiawatha''. She is the lover of the titular protagonist Hiawatha and comes to a tragic end. The name, often said to mean "laughing wat ...

neighborhood to the south, and

Ericsson (lit. "Telephone Stock Company of LM Ericsson"), commonly known as Ericsson, is a Swedish multinational networking and telecommunications company headquartered in Stockholm. The company sells infrastructure, software, and services in inform ...

and Standish to the west. The Hiawatha neighborhood is bordered by 40th Street to the north, the Mississippi River to the east, 54th Street East to the south, and Hiawatha Avenue to the west.

Hiawatha Avenue Mural

The Hiawatha Avenue Mural is

public art Public art is art in any media whose form, function and meaning are created for the general public through a public process. It is a specific art genre with its own professional and critical discourse. Public art is visually and physically acce ...

in the Hiawatha neighborhood of

. Dedicated on June 7, 1992, the

mural A mural is any piece of graphic artwork that is painted or applied directly to a wall, ceiling or other permanent substrate. Mural techniques include fresco, mosaic, graffiti and marouflage. Word mural in art The word ''mural'' is a Spanis ...

was sponsored in 1990 by the Minneapolis Arts Commission through the city's Art in Public Places Program. Sara Rotholz Weiner created the mural to cover 29,000 feet of the Harvest State grain elevator next to Hiawatha Avenue on the city's south side. The work was painted by Dale Hanson and John Keltgen, who worked for the Naegele Outdoor Advertising Company as billboard artists. The Hiawatha Avenue Mural sits at the corner of

Hiawatha Avenue Minnesota State Highway 55 (MN 55) is a highway in west-central, central, and east-central Minnesota, which runs from the North Dakota state line near Tenney and continues east and southeast to its eastern terminus at its intersection with U.S. Hi ...

to its west and East 41st Street to its north. It is next to a rail line that serves mills along Hiawatha Avenue, and a

McDonald's McDonald's Corporation is an American multinational fast food chain, founded in 1940 as a restaurant operated by Richard and Maurice McDonald, in San Bernardino, California, United States. They rechristened their business as a hambur ...

franchise and car wash now exist next to the mural. The mural's subject matter includes images from

space Space is the boundless three-dimensional extent in which objects and events have relative position and direction. In classical physics, physical space is often conceived in three linear dimensions, although modern physicists usually consi ...

and early 20th century life. Eight images in a vertical set along one elevator highlight a

grain elevator A grain elevator is a facility designed to stockpile or store grain. In the grain trade, the term "grain elevator" also describes a tower containing a bucket elevator or a pneumatic conveyor, which scoops up grain from a lower level and deposi ...

, the

Earth Earth is the third planet from the Sun and the only astronomical object known to harbor life. While large volumes of water can be found throughout the Solar System, only Earth sustains liquid surface water. About 71% of Earth's sur ...

from its

Moon The Moon is Earth's only natural satellite. It is the fifth largest satellite in the Solar System and the largest and most massive relative to its parent planet, with a diameter about one-quarter that of Earth (comparable to the width of ...

, a tree-lined road, three images of

planet A planet is a large, rounded astronomical body that is neither a star nor its remnant. The best available theory of planet formation is the nebular hypothesis, which posits that an interstellar cloud collapses out of a nebula to create a you ...

s, a paddleboat and its passengers, and an

automobile A car or automobile is a motor vehicle with wheels. Most definitions of ''cars'' say that they run primarily on roads, seat one to eight people, have four wheels, and mainly transport people instead of goods. The year 1886 is regarded ...

and

streetcar A tram (called a streetcar or trolley in North America) is a rail vehicle that travels on tramway tracks on public urban streets; some include segments on segregated right-of-way. The tramlines or networks operated as public transport a ...

from the 1940s. Weiner designed lines leading from the eight images to the edges of the grain elevator; they represent power lines and building shadows. The artist said she envisioned the mural to be "a perpetual time piece, registering moments and change throughout the year." From Weiner's design, Keltgen and Hanson created a line drawing and projected it onto paper which was perforated along those lines. Held against the grain elevator, the painters drew a line of charcoal through the perforations as a base tracing. On top of the charcoal, they draw full lines with a lumber crayon and finally oil paint. An article in the local newspaper further notes that the painters "used a flat rendering of the design to allow for an exact imitation of the original brush strokes created by the design artist."Longfellow/Nokomis Messenger. June 1992. http://www.longfellownokomismessenger.com/

References

Neighborhoods in Minneapolis Minnesota populated places on the Mississippi River Public art in the United States {{HennepinCountyMN-geo-stub