Neighborhoods of Minneapolis

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Map of Minneapolis neighborhoods and communities. Neighborhood boundaries are in black, community boundaries are in blue.
Map of Minneapolis neighborhoods and communities. Neighborhood boundaries are in black, community boundaries are in blue.

The city of Minneapolis, Minnesota is officially divided into eleven communities, each containing multiple official neighborhoods. It also contains numerous unofficial neighborhoods. Because of the way the city's streets are addressed, it is also informally divided into South, North, Southeast, and Northeast. Downtown and Southwest are also commonly thought of on the same level as these directional divisions.

Common conceptions of Minneapolis neighborhoods do not always align with official city maps, especially since much of the Minneapolis-St. Paul metropolitan area's population now lives outside of the two major cities. Generalized names such as "North Minneapolis" are actually a combination of the Near North and Camden communities with each of these communities made up of several neighborhoods.[1]

Contents

[edit] City areas

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The local community defines several general areas based on the directional suffixes added to streets in the city (conventionally, streets are referred to with the directional after the street name, as in "First Avenue North"). These city areas do not necessarily correlate with official community or neighborhood definitions.

Downtown Minneapolis more-or-less coincides with the street grid being turned to from the north-south-east-west orientation found elsewhere in the city. Northwest of Hennepin Avenue, streets and avenues (perpendicular and parallel to Hennepin respectively) are suffixed "North," and southeast of Hennepin, avenues and streets are all suffixed "South". Hennepin Avenue acts as the zero avenue for addressing. The downtown street grid is oriented about 30° off of true north south of Hennepin Avenue, and about 45° off north of Hennepin. One of the results of this twisting of the grid (it also occurs on the east bank) is that some of the city's major thoroughfares turn 90° over the course of their runs, including Washington Avenue, University Avenue, and Hennepin Avenue.

North of downtown, as the street grid turns to orient to true north and to parallel the Mississippi River, the area known as North Minneapolis begins. It unofficially comprises the entire area with "North" suffixes to its streets, running south to I-394 (historically, Wayzata Boulevard).

Similarly, as the downtown street orientation ends south of downtown and avenues turn to run north-south, streets are suffixed "East" and "West," defined by their relationship to Nicollet Avenue. This also forms an unofficial break point for the end of downtown and the beginning of South Minneapolis.

Southwest Minneapolis is often spoken of as distinct from South Minneapolis. The official community of Southwest, is bounded on the north by the line of 36th St W, extending west from where it ends at Lake Calhoun, and on the east by I-35W. Unofficially, its northern border is vaguer, sometimes including areas east and north of Lake Calhoun.

The part of Minneapolis on the east bank of the Mississippi River is divided into Northeast and Southeast street suffixes by East Hennepin Avenue. These suffixes more or less coincide with the communities of Northeast and University respectively, but especially around the Old St. Anthony business district near the Mississippi River, the line is hazy. Most consider the whole business district part of Northeast even though half of it carries a "SE" street address. The University of Minnesota-oriented University community and the traditionally working-class Northeast community have quite distinct identities.

[edit] Official communities and neighborhoods

Minneapolis consists of 11 communities, each of which are subdivided into anywhere between 4 to 13 neighborhoods.

The official neighborhoods have a variety of origins; some were formed out of the attendance areas for elementary schools, while others are the areas of coverage of neighborhood associations formed by activists between 1901 and the 1980's. The division of the city into official neighborhoods and communities occurred as part of the Neighborhood Revitalization Program (NRP) in the early 1990's. They remain associated with this community-based funding program, and are also used for statistical purposes.[2] For purposes of the NRP, some of the 81 official neighborhoods have combined forces, leading to a total of 67 NRP Neighborhood action plans.[3]

The City Council has authority to define neighborhood boundaries, but these are separate from city council ward boundaries, which are adjusted after each decennial census.[4]

The neighborhoods historically defined themselves around schools and commercial hubs, and many trace neighborhood identity back into community organizations formed in the early part of the 20th Century. The oldest, the Prospect Park East River Road Association formed in 1901 to oppose city plans to level Tower Hill.[5] In other neighborhoods, the current official neighborhood association was formed in the 1970's and 1980's; in Linden Hills, the organization was formed in 1972 in response to proposed changes in the park, although there were several social and commercial organizations in the neighborhood dating back to the neighborhood's development at the turn of the 20th Century.[6]

[edit] Calhoun-Isles

[edit] Camden

[edit] Central

[edit] Longfellow

[edit] Near North

[edit] Nokomis

[edit] Northeast

[edit] Phillips

[edit] Powderhorn

[edit] Southwest

[edit] University

[edit] Unofficial districts

Many of the major business districts of the city sit on major thoroughfares, and since these thoroughfares also form the boundaries of official neighborhoods, local identity may not correspond with these official neighborhoods. Lake Street, running the entire length of the city in south Minneapolis is a string of commercial districts which includes Uptown, Lyn-Lake and Midtown, while forming the border of 12 neighborhoods. Other streets with similar linking and bordering qualities include Nicollet Avenue, stringing together Nicollet Mall, Eat Street south of Franklin Avenue, and smaller districts south of Lake Street; Central Avenue, which links downtown to Old St Anthony Village via the Third Avenue Bridge and then continues on to form a core commercial district of Northeast around Lowry Avenue; and University Avenue, which joins Old St Anthony to Dinkytown, and then continues into Midway and the State Capitol in Saint Paul.

Uptown is probably the most well-known business district in Minneapolis besides downtown, centered at the intersection of East Lake Street and Hennepin Avenue South, but it is not officially recognized as it includes parts of four neighborhoods: CARAG, Cedar-Isles-Dean, East Isles, and Lowry Hill East. The Uptown Business Association is focused on the area within a few blocks of Lake and Hennepin[7], but the "Uptown" identity can stretch as far north as Franklin Avenue, and as far east as Lyndale Avenue, where it now merges into Lyn-Lake.

Eat Street is the newest of Minneapolis's commercial district, formed in the late 1990's to promote the international variety of restaurants along Nicollet Avenue South within three blocks of 26th Street. Nicollet was historically the "Main Street" of the Whittier neighborhood, but was cut off from Lake Street by construction of a K-Mart. The named district was an effort to give the neighborhood a fresh identity.

The Old St. Anthony district, commonly known as Northeast, straddles the neighborhoods of Marcy-Holmes, and Nicollet Island/East Bank, both of which are part of the University community, rather than Northeast. It was the downtown for the city of St. Anthony before it joined Minneapolis in 1872.

Dinkytown is the coined name for an area just north of the University of Minnesota within the official Marcy-Holmes neighborhood, heavily populated by students. A row of historic fraternity houses along University Avenue is referred to as "frat row." Similarly, Stadium Village on the east end of campus is named for the now-demolished Memorial Stadium and is officially part of Prospect Park neighborhood (the name will make more sense again when nearby TCF Bank Stadium is completed in 2009).

The Warehouse District was a 19th and early 20th-century rail and truck shipping center for the region. In the 1970's and 1980's it became an artists quarter, and then a nightlife and entertainment district, which the southern portion (between I-394 and Hennepin Ave) remains. The district is largely within the North Loop neighborhood, but the heart of the entertainment district lies in the Downtown West neighborhood.

As the Mississippi riverfront downtown has been redeveloped since the 1980's, there have been several attempts at "rebranding" it. The "Mississippi Mile" spanned both sides of the river, but never really caught on locally. Saint Anthony Main, the name of the commercial development, came to refer to the section of the East Bank around it. More recently, people have come to refer to the West Bank between 3rd Avenue and the University as "The Mills District, Minneapolis"[8], though the name more properly applies to both sides of the river

Some neighborhoods enjoy nicknames such as Lowry Hill East which known as "The Wedge" because of its shape. However the Wedge Co-op on Lyndale Avenue S is actually in the Whittier neighborhood. Local amenities are also taken on as nicknames. Minnehaha refers to the businesses by Minnehaha Falls rather than along Minnehaha Avenue, and Tower (Hill) which is located along University Avenue SE in Prospect Park refers to the Witch's Hat Tower.

[edit] Notes

  1. ^ Map of Minneapolis Neighborhoods
  2. ^ Minneapolis Neighborhood Profiles. City of Minneapolis (2007). Retrieved on 2007-10-19.
  3. ^ Minneapolis NRP: Neighborhoods. Minneapolis NRP (2007). Retrieved on 2007-10-19.
  4. ^ Roles and Responsibilities. City of Minneapolis (2007). Retrieved on 2007-10-18.
  5. ^ Prospect Park East River Road Improvement Association (2006). Retrieved on 2007-10-18.
  6. ^ Down at the Lake: A Historical Portrait of Linden Hills and the Lake Harriet District. Minneapolis: Linden Hills History Study Group, 2002. pp 57-60.
  7. ^ Uptown Association
  8. ^ Minneapolis Riverfront

[edit] External links