The Minnesota History Center is a museum and library that serves as the headquarters of the Minnesota Historical Society. It is near downtown

Saint Paul, Minnesota Saint Paul (abbreviated St. Paul) is the capital of the U.S. state of Minnesota and the county seat of Ramsey County. Situated on high bluffs overlooking a bend in the Mississippi River, Saint Paul is a regional business hub and the center ...

, and is considered one of Minnesota's finest public buildings. The History Center is on Kellogg Boulevard, between 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 fl ...

and the

Minnesota State Capitol The Minnesota State Capitol is the seat of government for the U.S. state of Minnesota, in its capital city of Saint Paul. It houses the Minnesota Senate, Minnesota House of Representatives, the office of the Attorney General and the office ...

. Before this building was built in 1992, the Minnesota Historical Society (MNHS) occupied what is now the

Minnesota Judicial Center The Minnesota Judicial Center, adjacent to the State Capitol, houses the state's Supreme Court and Court of Appeals, as well as the Workers' Compensation Court of Appeals and the state law library. Its address is 25 Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King, J ...

, originally built for the Society in 1917. Before that, MNHS was housed in the basement of the State Capitol. The center hosts concerts, dance performances, lectures, conferences, meetings, dinners, political campaign events, memorial services, receptions, parties, and weddings; as many as 75,000 schoolchildren visit the History Center every year.

Architecture

The Minneapolis architectural firm of Hammel Green and Abrahamson (HGA) designed the History Center's floor plan and exterior. HGA looked to Fort Snelling, the St. Paul's Cathedral and the

for inspiration. One member of the History Center Planning Committee said, "We have envisioned a place that draws the public in, fires the imagination, and responds to its hunger for an understanding of the past. We have envisioned a building alive with people from morning until far into the evening...a vital cultural and educational center." After ten years of planning and nearly three years of construction, The History Center opened in October 1992. The building features a central dome with two bordering wings, creating an L-shaped design. The north facade faces the Capitol, and the southeast facade overlooks a large lawn and terrace area. Bronze doors admit visitors into the center's main entrance, on the west wall. The construction budget for the History Center included funds from a ''Percent for Art'' program that included three integrated artworks: ''Charm Bracelet'' lies on the floor of the first-story rotunda. This project, sculpted by

James Casebere James Casebere (born 1953) is an American contemporary artist and photographer living in New York and Canaan, New York. Biography Casebere, born in Lansing, Michigan, grew up outside of Detroit. He attended Michigan State University and gradua ...

, depicts a broken piece of jewelry in which each of ten "charms" represents an important aspect of Minnesota: a tractor (agriculture); a printer's ink roller (civic society and free speech); a tepee (the Dakota tribe); a mill building (lumbering and flour-milling); a house (family); a power plant (technology and industry); a turtle, bear and fish (nature, outdoor recreation, and Ojibwe totems of healing, defense and learning); and a whooping crane (lost wilderness and a metaphor for history). The entrance of the History Center includes glass etchings by Brit Bunkley above the John Ireland and Kellogg Boulevard entrances and the courtyard doors. He created a "system of icons" of sandblasted panels with multidimensional iconic imagery deeply etched onto the thick glass surfaces. Andrew Leicester created ''Minnesota Profiles,'' terra cotta columns "marking the edge of where Summit Avenue once crossed what is today’s History Center courtyard". Each column represents a native tree that also include sculpted profiles of 140 volunteers. The Minnesota History Center is one of the 26 Minnesota Historical Society sites and is home to the Minnesota Historical Society headquarters, the Society's collections, an expansive library, and of museum gallery space. The museum showcases interactive in-house-developed and traveling exhibits, as well as historical programming and lectures. The center also contains conference rooms, the 3M Auditorium, Café Minnesota, two museum gift shops and of classroom space. More than half of the building is underground, much of which is used for storage. The Minnesota History Center possesses over 1 million artifacts, including archaeological objects, books, photographs, maps, paintings, prints, drawings, manuscripts, government records, newspapers and periodicals. Such artifacts are stored in the of storage space available in the center. In this storage space, the shelves reach heights over 25 feet. The center also has a conservation laboratory, where conservators repair, stabilize, and maintain the Society's thousands of valuable objects.

Gale Family Library

The Gale Family Library on the second floor of the History Center offers resources for MNHS members and guests. Two rooms, the Weyerhaeuser Reference Room and the Ronald M. Hubbs Microfilm Reading Room, make up the library area. The library often hosts classes on historical and genealogical research.

References

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External links

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"Hubert Humphrey, Presidential Contender"
from C-SPAN's '' The Contenders'', broadcast from the Minnesota History Center {{Authority control History centers History museums in Minnesota Minnesota Historical Society Museums established in 1993 Museums in Saint Paul, Minnesota