Hennepin Avenue

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Hennepin at night
Hennepin at night
Hennepin Avenue, looking north on 10th into the downtown Theatre District
Hennepin Avenue, looking north on 10th into the downtown Theatre District

Hennepin Avenue is a major street in Minneapolis, Minnesota, United States. It runs from Lakewood Cemetery (at 36th Street South), through the Uptown District of Southwest Minneapolis, through the former "Bottleneck" area west of Loring Park, through the Warehouse District in the city center, to Northeast Minneapolis and the city's eastern boundary.

In Downtown Minneapolis, Hennepin Avenue serves as a major entertainment thoroughfare, dubbed the Hennepin Theatre District. It also serves as the dividing line between "North" and "South" street addresses. Across the river, it divides "Northeast" and "Southeast" street addresses. To the east of the Minneapolis city limits, it becomes Larpenteur Avenue at Highway 280.

For sections south of the Mississippi River, Hennepin Avenue follows stretches of an old Indian trail from Saint Anthony Falls to Lake Calhoun. It was named after Father Louis Hennepin, a Roman Catholic priest and explorer of the interior of North America. It is one of the oldest streets in the city and was the first street to cross the Mississippi River, when the first Hennepin Avenue suspension bridge was completed in 1855.

Many important institutions and structures have been built on Hennepin, including Calhoun Square, the Suburban World Theater, the Uptown Theater, the Walker Art Center, the Basilica of St. Mary, Minneapolis Community and Technical College, the Hennepin Center for the Arts, and the Lumber Exchange Building.

The 2002 GLBT Pride Parade on Hennepin Avenue, photographed from the skyway. The intersection shown is 9th and Hennepin, the subject of a song by the same name by Tom Waits.
The 2002 GLBT Pride Parade on Hennepin Avenue, photographed from the skyway. The intersection shown is 9th and Hennepin, the subject of a song by the same name by Tom Waits.

The street has achieved iconic status in Minneapolis culture, featuring prominently in the Prince movie Purple Rain and memorialized in songs by Tom Waits and Lucinda Williams, among others. It is also a popular parade route, used by the annual Aquatennial celebration held in July, and since the 1990s has been the traditional route of the city's GLBT Pride parade.

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