2006-11-25

The Strangest Spot in Mpls

This old building is on the 500 block of Marquette Avenue, right in the heart of the central business district. It's a nice pre-war industrial building, with street-level storefront space, and a entranceway bordered with engraved heiroglyphs. At some point, though, the building was gutted and filled in with a parking ramp, so that now when you walk down Marquette you stroll past this Egyptian doorway leading to a concrete carpark.

It's hard to imagine a worse use for a historic building, except to have it razed and replaced with a surface parking lot. In fact, maybe this is a nice way for the car cult and historic preservation crowds to peacefully coexist?

3 comments:

Stacia said...

A similar thing happened to the Coliseum in D.C., which is the location of the first Beatles concert on American soil. Very sad, indeed.

http://www.dcpreservation.org/endangered/2003/uline.html

Bill Lindeke said...

Interesting... They also tore down Met Stadium, home of the only place the Beatles didn't sell out on American soil

Unknown said...

This shows the building as it was years ago. The Egyptian facade was saved because of its historic status, and the parking garage was built around it.