WANTED: Moveable Chairs on a Saint Paul Jail

[The old Ramsey County jail as seen from the Wabasha Bridge.]

One of the more interesting spots you'll find in downtown Saint Paul is right at the top of the Wabasha Freedom Bridge, along the river bluff just across the street from City Hall.

The sidewalk opens up in odd ways right to form three red brick plazas along the riverfront. There's some odd infrastructure, like a loading dock, a doorway, and the top of an elevator. And most strikingly, there are lovely views of the river valley and Saint Paul's West Side.

But the strangest thing about the space is that you're standing on the rooftop of an old jail. Beneath your feet, abandoned jail cells are literally embedded into the face of the cliff. The building is the old Ramsey County jail, where inmates had amazing views of the Mississippi River. The other day, I was chatting with a long-time Saint Paul resident about the old jail, and he told me a story. Back in the 80s, inmates girlfriends would sometimes stand on the edge of the Wabasha Street bridge and flash their incarcerated boyfriends across the way. The whole jail would cheer, noses pressed against the glass.

Today, while the plaza provides amazing views of the river valley, it remains strangely lifeless. It's a shame made more poignant every week or so, when food trucks park here along Kellogg Boulevard. Somehow, despite having a plaza right next to a river, and despite having dozens of people with food in their hands, it doesn't seem to get much use. The main problem? There's nowhere to sit. There's no shade. There are no tables... There is little more than a solitary metal sculpture on a promontory surrounded by a few planters.

Oh, and flags. Lots of American flags.

[Part of the jailtop plaza.]

[One of the alienating plazas; very gulag-y.]

William Whyte to the Rescue

[A guy sitting and eating on a rusty staircase.]

William Whyte is the founder of placemaking. He was a famous urban writer and designer who became famous for thinking about plazas in downtown New York City. He devoted many years to describing how to make them useful and popular through the group that he started, the Project for Public Spaces.

(Sidenote: he also thought downtown Saint Paul sucked.)

The way that Whyte saw it, plazas are pretty simple. People enjoy watching other people. People like sitting down, sometimes in the shade. People like food and water. It's not rocket science.

But here's one lesson that seems to be lost on many folks today. People like to have some control over their street furniture. Whyte was particularly fond of moveable chairs. Here's the clip from his wonderful documentary, the Social Life of Small Urban Spaces, where he describes moveable chairs:






(You should watch the whole thing later sometime. There's even brief footage of the IDS center from the early 80s.)

The famous place for Whyte's moveable furniture experiment is Bryant Park in New York City. It's a medium sized grassy park right next to the main downtown library. The city added lovely green tables and chairs, all completely moveable, and it's become one the nicest place in Midtown. Today, moveable chairs are all over Manhattan, right in the middle of Broadway.

[Whyte's famous moveable chairs in Bryant Park.]

[Moveable tables and chairs in Times Square.]

Just Do It

[Three lonely and unmoveable tables.]

The concern that you always hear about anything moveable is that it might be stolen or vandalized. But that's a viscous cycle. The more you turn your downtown into "defensible space" immune to tampering, the more you make it cold, inflexible, and alienating.

(For example, one of the jailtop plazas has fixed tables that are most often empty.)

Similarly, to provide security is often more expensive than the initial cost of the chairs and tables in the first place. The total budget for some movable tables and chairs would be less than the annual maintenance of a single stoplight.

The other reaction I've gotten about improving Saint Paul's unused plazas is that the space is going to be redeveloped and greatly improved in the future. To that I say, how long from now? How many years will it sit comatose while we wait for a magic developer to improve our sidewalks?

At a certain point, it just makes sense to trust people to be decent citizens, to trust that you'll have enough "eyes on the street" to maintain a minimum of civic life. The gesture alone is worth making.

Have a seat, Saint Paul. You deserve it.

[Lots of people standing around with food truck food.]

[A guy eating off a ledge; two women perched somewhat awkwardly.]

[Some friends of mine brought chairs to the plaza the other day, and lo and behold, people sat in them.]

Notable Quotes #1: William H. Whyte describes Saint Paul's walls circa 1980

[A giant blank wall by Mickey's Diner.]

Blank walls are tough to fight because no one is for them. There are no civic debates whether to have them or not. There is often no recognition that they have become a problem at all. Their growth is too incremental. They are the by-product of other causes, many seemingly good – separation of vehicular and pedestrian traffic, off-street circulation, and such. Given current momentums, the blank walls will continue to spread, even in the most exemplary of cities.

Such as Saint Paul, Minnesota. It is the blank-wall capital of the United States. You would not expect it to be. It is a most habitable, attractive, and friendly city; it has one of the most resourceful and effective mayors in the country; its Lowertown redevelopment is of an eminently human scale and has a fine street presence. St. Paul also has one of the most complete skyway systems in the country, and it is probably the best designed of all of them.

It is paying a steep price. In a striking example of the Gresham effect, skyway level has led to the blanking-out of the street level. The result is as drastic as if shop fronts and windows had been decreed illegal. There are few to see. The experience is so dull that to walk at street level is to do penance for not using upper level. Block after block is a blank wall. Occasionally, there is a break to indicate what might have been—like the trompe l'oeil windows on the wall of a parking lot.

It is not entirely farfetched to prophesy that one day St. Paul might embark on a rediscovery project to uncover its buried street level. Atlanta made a tourist attraction of its old underground streets; so did Seattle of its Skid Row. But prime shopping streets are a much greater treasure, and the fact that they have been concealed should make their reappearance all the more dramatic. Disneyland merchandises a simulation of a street. But cities have something even better: actual streets. Right under their noses.

-William H. Whyte, from City: Rediscovering a Center.

Welcome to the Dinkydome

[A broken door, barred to the world. It sits on the sidewalk like an omen. 'Do Not Enter', it says. 'This Space is Lost.]

On the corner of University Avenue and 15th, it sits. Rather, it looms, rising above the Victorian chimneys of Folwell Hall, the shambled fraternities, the huddled streets of Dinkytown. It looms above it all, its dark iron dome silently waiting for your inevitable death.

You see, something is wrong in the Dinkydome. Businesses open and die like insects. The massive brick structure seems out of time, out of place. The stores inside it grit their teeth in desperation, clinging to solvency like kittens to a branch. The building eats its own, and nibbles at your soul. Nobody can sit inside the Dinkydome without feeling a cold clammy sensation on the back of the neck. It is anxiety, insecurity, a sense of overwhelming suspension...

For high overhead, the dome looms. It is haunted, spooked, cursed. Or it is a broken space, a hollow space, empty of life. It is dead. The building sits like a corpse, looming over the street far below...

But why? What happened here? What caused this building to go so terribly wrong? Was it always this way? Did someone leap from this high dome-side balcony, landing terribly onto the be-napkin'd floor?

[The sign overhead reads: "Jesus is the way of truth and life."]

When it was built, the building housed a Bible College, and a certain eschatoogical sprit still lingers inside its brick walls. Is it God? I think not. Rather, I can sense biblical wrath, hovering inside the public restrooms... You can still find religion today, somehow, as the third story office space is ridiculously inexpensive and houses the least among us, like church groups and Army recruiters.

I used to go to the DinkyDome quite often when I was younger, attending the U of MN as a high school senior. There was something exciting and chaotic about the space, its chaos and disorder. At the time, there was an excellent pizza place where you could get big slices of interesting pie, and the typical Chinese restaurant, the Taco John's, the world's most depressing Indian buffet. (As of a few weeks ago, they'd gone and been replaced by an Armenian joint, the Espresso coffee place run by the really nice man...)

But I was young back then. It turns out that the sub-dome foodcourt was always a terrible place. The way the space is arranged, with all the tables and chairs lumped together in one big blob, makes it impossible to feel comfortable. Almost everyone will immediately sit around the outside edge of the space, and when it fills up one has no choice but to sit somewhere in the chaotic middle, trapped and surrounded beneath the impending dome. Further off to the side, an alterior space with equally dismal chairs and tables waited for you, nothing well lit, nothing to comfort the soul. Eating at the Dinkydome was like attending a Bible College. You had to sit up straight and pay attention or you'd find yourself with a lot to confess.

[The only good space in the building was in the coffee shop, where the light poured in the large 2nd story windows.]

Back in the 1950s, famous urban design critic William H. Whyte did a study of modernist public plazas in New York city, looking at how people used the spaces in front of office buildings to sit, hang out, and talk. One of the most important things he found out was that plazas and spaces needed to be level with the street. Steps, either up or down, tended to greatly depress and diminish the amount of traffic entering a building or space.

William Whyte would have hated the Dinkydome. In order to get into the space, you have to climb what a terribly awkward set of stairs, leading up into the high second story food court and under-dome space.

[Every time I climbed these stairs, I cursed myself.]

Of course, it's all gone now. The building's been bought, and is being remodeled to fit into some sort of giant student housing complex.

Good luck to them. I can't help but believe that the new student building will be one of the worst things in Minneapolis. Too many accursed students have gone into and out of this building's domed balcony, too many hungover bodies have dragged themselves up these mammoth staircases, too many bad styrofoam plates of sesame chicken have been digested... No matter how thoroughly they gut it, there is no salvaging this place.

Dinkydome, Rest in Pieces.

[The Dinkydome always reminded me of the Hiroshima Dome, the only building to survive the US's Fat Boy atomic strike. Both buildings have a magical, doomed quality. Each building will outlast us all.]

Sidewalk of the Week: Iris Park

There's poetry in the fact that diversity means so many things to so many people. I suppose most often diversity refers to ethnic or cultural difference. Think of the shops that line Nicollet or University, wandering around the Midtown Market, or hearing a dozen languages whispering down Lake Street. There are less common forms of diversity, too. Things like diversity of age or gender or sexual expression.

There are all kinds of ways to think about the gaudy complexity of humanity. I try to savor these experiences.

But one of my absolute favorite kinds of diversity is one that's rapidly vanishing from our modern city spaces: diversity of land use. This might not seem important, but to me it's exciting. We've devoted the 20th century to zoning this kind of diversity out of existence, to planning quiet leafy streets of homes, surrounding retail with concrete moats, and helping factories and office buildings retreat to far corners of the region. We've filtered both dissonance and harmony out of sight and mind.

We've come to accept this. Nowadays, it's common sense. The idea that different land uses are better off left to their own devices seems correct to most people. We assume that life is better this way, free from the hassle and hustle of daily difference, of the beeping of a truck backing up, a waft of woodsmoke, or a backyard party. But now I'm not so sure.

[The Cinderella homes of Feronia Avenue.]

[A majestic building meets the railroad with mirrored glass.]

[The park fronts University, soon to have its own light rail platform.]

 

[A working alleyway connecting the backsides of buildings.]

[A wintertime Iris Park bench sits like a wayward eyelash.]

Somehow I found myself walking the sidewalks of Iris Park, a tiny St Paul neighborhood wedged between the freeway, the railroad, and University Avenue.

When it comes to land use, these sidewalks have more diversity than anywhere in the city. It's as if all the possible forms of urban experience are crammed up together, a small world of work and play and sleep rubbing shoulders, sharing a meal. You'll find large detailed homes lining leafy curving streets next to classic two-story mixed-use urbanism next to squat industrial alleyways and long concrete buildings willed with truck bays. You'll find a blacksmith shop beside a hand-built home along a three-story 30s apartment building.

The sidewalks of Iris Park tell a tale of togetherness, that maybe we can all just get along. Forget  misanthropy. Maybe we don't need to tense and shun a factory or apartment or the elderly. Iris Park is a world in miniature. It shows how the city can combine into a complex whole, that sidewalks can catalyze a current of imagination to form a surprise greater than the sum of its parts.

The history is probably messy. When they built Interstate 94 through the western half of St Paul, the concrete trench ran like a kebab stick through a string of small green parks. Today they barely survive, clinging to the sound walls for dear life: Desnoyer Park and Hampden Park and Merriam Park and Union Park and this one, tiny Iris Park just west of Fairview.

Discovering Iris Park feels to me like William H. Whyte walking into his beloved Paley Plaza, hopping into a light green nook with a pond in the middle, and a fountain in the middle of that. I imagine that the park was named for a woman or a flower, but to me it is the iris of an eye, the round center of a surrounding vision, a retina of life.

The park is the perfect size. It's just large enough to feel the sky open above you, but small enough so that you can see from side to side, feel the size of the place like a grand room. There's a fountain in the center with a bench and a railing. In the wintertime I dearly wish I could skate on it.

  [A perfectly sized park, technically possible to shout across.]

[A claptrap alleyway home.]

[Some sort of studio with muraled un-fenestrations.]

[Illustrations on an auto shop.]

Ringing the park runs Lyndhurst and Feronia, streets lined with large 20s homes with grand porches, the kind of curving street found in early railroad suburbs filled with chief clerks of industrial barons. This street could sit comfortably on Crocus Hill or Linden Hill or any of the posh pockets of the city, except that when you reach the end of it, you're met with a rapid change of heart.

A quiet industrial neighborhood appears with a start, a tall three-story ornate brick building abutting a railroad trestle and narrow wide lanes of truck traffic running through a small valley of elbow grease. You'll find single-story warehouses, chain-link fences surrounding a car repair shop decorated with false 20s cartoons, an actual blacksmith, and the truck bays of what looks to be a Coors beer distributor.

Cutting in between this bit of walkable industrialism are back alleys with layers of porches, small homes built by hand with windows walled with hoardings, and assorted strange spaces being made useful. Finally, wander long enough north through this thicket of practicality and you open onto University Avenue. You can stand next to a classic streetcar commerce, by a this mixed-use apartment housing a Somali corner store.

Many of the larger buildings in Iris Park have their own names, Lyndhurst or Feronia, their etched identities faded by a century of sunlight. Buildings with names are from another era, hiding forgotten stories. Our age of numbered anonymity seems empty beside it.

Walking through Iris Park is like finding a lost civilization of civility, a temple of toleration, a place proving the impossible. Wending along these sidewalks is the rare spirit of diversity of everyday life. It gives me hope for a future city, one where difference means more than identity and embraces the full spectrum of sight and sound.

[A building with an almost illegible name.]

[An doubly-flagged actual blacksmith edging the pocket neighborhood of Iris Park.]

TC Sidewalks Live! Downtown Minneapolis Skyway Tour

A week from Saturday, at 2pm on the 20th, I'll be hosting another Downtown Minneapolis skyway tour. Highlights will include the oldest skyway (i.e. the 2nd skyway in Minneapolis history), the longest skyway, the newest skyway (as close as we can get to it), the second newest skyway (formerly the "skyway to nowhere"), some "architecturally noteworthy" skyways, and of course the most soul-sucking skyway (location TBD, could be pictured at right, but I doubt it).
 
[See also Minneapolis Skyway Tour #1 and Minneapolis Skyway Tour #2.]

[2012 Minneapolis Skyway tour getting kicked out of the Crystal Court.]

Skyways are Minneapolis' most unique architectural feature, and are still a key point of contention between place-oriented urban planners, urban and suburban publics, and the business community. I pretty much hate them, but I think they prove a useful point about public and private space, and how those distinctions can be carefully constructed and rely on subtle social relationships.

Feel free to read up on skyways, as I've written a ton on this topic. Here are some highlights:

The Case Against Skyways in 10 Easy Steps
Happy 50th Birthday to the Minneapolis Skyway System
Four Suggested Skyway Improvements
Stuck With Skyways
Climate as Proxy for Capital in the Minneapolis Skyway System

We'll be starting in the IDS Center, right in the middle of the Crystal Court, which is not where the skyways began, but rather where they "peaked" as public space. Everything else is downhill.

[Facebook invite here.]

What: A guided tour of the downtown Minneapolis skyway system
When: Saturday afternoon, the 20th of February
Where: Meet at the IDS Center Crystal Court, and walk around from there
Why: Because the skyways are still there
Who: You can come! Feel free to buy your tour guide a drink afterward.

Here's some food for thought:

The Unwritten Rules of Skyway Etiquette, by Mark McGinty

1) Stay to the right.
2) Move quickly towards your destination in an orderly manner.
3) No zig-zagging.
4) No stopping to gawk at merchandise.
5) No stopping at all.
6) No looking at merchandise.
7) When traveling in groups, stay close together in tight little packs - do not walk side-by-side-by-side-by-side.
8) Keep the luggage to a minimum.
 9) No phone calls unless you're using an earpiece or headset in which case you kind of look like a D-Bag. 
10) By all means if you need to turn around, exit and enter somewhere else - do not just stop, turn around and start walking directly into the coming masses, people! 

Follow these rules and you will live longer!!!

[A William H. Whyte quote on the side of the IDS this winter.]

Please note that we'll be breaking all or most of these rules. (Sorry Mark!)

Did skyways "save downtown", as some people claim? Do skyways "ruin the city"? Should we tear them down or keep building more?

I look forward to seeing you.

I'm guessing the tour might be 90 minutes or so, though you're welcome to leave whenever you like. We'll be ending at one of the few skyway-connected downtown bars for after-walk mingling.

Some illustrative highlights follow:

[First renderings of the downtown Minneapolis skyway system, when they were open-air.]

[The Tri-Tech Office Building skyway under construction, and 32 years later.]

[R.T. Rybak reporting on skyway shade c. 1985.]

[Some friends and I picnicing in the Minneapolis skyway in 2015, which is something only white people can do.]

[Minneapolis bike cop taking his bike up a skyway escalator for some reason.]

[The newest skyways, going the new football stadium, under construction last fall.]

Al's Breakfast Has the Cure for What Ails Ya

[Al's Breakfast, a staple on 14th in ever-changing Dinkytown Minneapolis.]

“Come on in, there’s plenty of room,” piped the server as I entered the narrow confines of Al’s Breakfast.

Each of the 14 stools was full. Two people lingered in the far corner of the narrow room, perched awkwardly behind the people eating, forming the beginnings of a line.

If you haven’t been to Al’s, it’s a place best experienced in person. I’ll tell you about it, but you have to see it to believe. It’s tiny -- like Japan tiny -- which is so unusual in extra-large USA that it’s like being dropped into another world. 

I’ve written about it before here on this very blog, how Al’s Breakfast illustrates the potential for small spaces to be full of life. It’s a diner version of William H. Whyte’s argument about Paley Park in New York City.

Here’s part of what I said back in 2013: 

At only ten feet wide, Al's Breakfast consists of 14 stools crammed into a tiny alleyway with a roof and a tiny kitchens in the front and back. There are series of rules about how to eat there (more on that below), and while the food is good, the experience is the real treat.

It’s all still true, thank goodness. I also checked in with Al’s Breakfast during COVID, as it seemed anathema to every concern people had at the time (read: space, more space, social distance). But they survived. A new owner (Alison) had taken over the place, and judging by the vibe and branding and fundraisers, it's doing fine.

At least, that's what I thought. 

This spring, I had a classroom near Dinkytown and have been spending more time over there. One morning, I had Minneapolis BET official Eric Harris Bernstein as a guest speaker and, after his delightful talk, he took me to Al’s Breakfast. To my shock, when we got there on a random 11AM on a weekday it was almost entirely empty. That would not have happened ten or twenty or years ago, when you had to forget about Al’s during peak breakfast hours. Nobody went there any more, it was too crowded. 

My curiosity piqued, and I re-formed the habit of stopping at Al's. A few visits later, I can report that it’s not as busy. I hate to be an old crank, but my suspicion is that **kids today** have trouble with the landmark. I suspect that a good percentage of people just don’t have the chops when it comes to an Al’s Breakfast encounter. 

On another visit: The place was buzzing. All the seats were taken, but there was no line and I was enjoying my Spring Special. I watched pair of students trickle in the door. 

“Come on in, just wait a minute and a seat will open right up,” the server chimed.

The kids looked befuddled. They waited for a few moments in the line, and then walked out of the restaurant again. 

This happened again a few minutes later. Two bro-looking guys came in, were next in line, and had only a few moments to go before ether too would get a coveted seat at ehe bar. 

“Is it better if we wait outside,” one of the bros asked when confronted with the awkward situation.

“No, just stand there for a minute or two,” assure the server. 

After about 90 seconds, they walked out.

“It’s happened a bunch of times,” the veteran server said later. “People take off right before they get a seat.”

Al’s Breakfast has always represented a learning curve. Learning the social conventions and rules that I went over back in ’13 is half the fun of the place. This is true for most worthwhile independent businesses (and even a QR code automated McDonald’s if you think about it). But Al’s Breakfast is unique in the Twin Cities; the learning curve is not the usual fare.

If you travel just bit to big cities that have defied corporatization, you'll find idiosyncratic local joints are relatively common, especially in other countries. Ordering from an udon joint in Osaka involves putting money into a vending machine and getting a small ticket, which you then hand to the cook, before taking your bowl of soup to a corner of a nook somewhere. British pubs or Italian espresso bars or countless examples all from all over the world have similar opaque conventions. The American equivalent, I suppose, is the drive-thru Taco Bell… But what a come-down!

Over the last few years, though, some people have lost the ability to interact. So much of our social apparatus has eroded over the last decade or two, accelerated since the massive COVID pandemic disruptions. QR codes. Self-check-outs. Door dash. Grocery delivery. Parking lot pickups. Online ordering. Amazon. Noise-cancelling ear buds. Talking on the phone. 

I am a fan of kids today; I wouldn't be doing my job otherwise. But as a whole, our social habits have grown rusty. This is true for everyone, mind you, no matter your age, but perhaps younger generations have become accustomed to bubbles, don't remember a time when interaction was normal. 

Al’s has survived and thrived for many generations, students pre and post-Vietnam, internet, cell phones, you name it. Meanwhile, the latest generation of kids have been through it: COVID, Trump, gun violence, ubiquitous technological meditation, and a half-dozen other things. This might be a problem for a place like Al’s Breakfast, that depends on the youth. 

Well, if social interaction is what you need, Al’s Breakfast has the cure of what ails ya. 

It’s like asking to share a table at a coffee shop, only more so. Get over there, take your dose of awkward encounter, and eat beautiful, theatrical eggs. Soak in the idiosyncrasy. Savor the miracle that is this 75-year-old alleyway diner. There’s nothing like it in the Twin Cities, the opposite of everything else you’ll find trending these days.

[Behind the bar at Al's Breakfast.]

TCSidewalks Live!: Common Room Tour of the Skyways this Wednesday

Following up on last year's surprisingly popular Minneapolis sidewalk tour, I'm doubling down on the Common Room event series run by the ever-fabulous Soap Factory gallery in St Anthony Main.

[Highlights include this beige area.]

Co-organizers Sergio Vucci and Andy Sturdevant asked me to lead a tour of Minneapolis notoriously quasi-non-controversial skyway system. Provided we can actually find a working entrance, I'm excited to do it! I've love/hated the skyways for a long time, and now I'll get to share my love/hate with you. (Mostly hate, actually.)

The tour will feature:

• The skyway system's origin myth vs. its actual macculate conception
• The site of the first skyway in Minneapolis (no longer extant)
• The site of the second skyway in Minneapolis (extant)
• Willam H. Whyte's thoughts on the IDS Crystal Court
• The longest skyway
• The ugliest skyway
• The place in the skyways where homeless people can sit
• The skyway to nowhere
• Whatever's left of "Block E"
• The never-ending legacy of Victor Gruen

Expect the forlorn, because nothing is more forlorn that the Minneapolis skyway system in the evening on a Tuesday.

Meet up at the Soap Factory at 6:30! Look to arrive back by 9:00. The tour will be a walking tour! Don't forget to bring your social stratification.

Bonus:

In my opinion, the Minneapolis skyway system is the closest the USA has gotten to this Popular Science vision of the "city of the future" from 1925.

This is their description of the streets:

“Future city streets, says Mr. Corbett, will be in four levels: The top level for pedestrians; the next lower level for slow motor traffic; the next for fast motor traffic, and the lowest for electric trains. Great blocks of terraced skyscrapers half a mile high will house offices, schools, homes, and playgrounds in successive levels, while the roofs will be airplane landing fields, according to the architect’s plan.” (from here.)

Blank Walls of Saint Paul #1

Given current momentums, the blank walls will continue to spread, even in the most exemplary of cities. Such as Saint Paul, Minnesota. It is the blank-wall capital of the United States. You would not expect it to be. It is a most habitable, attractive, and friendly city; it has one of the most resourceful and effective mayors in the country; its Lowertown redevelopment is of an eminently human scale and has a fine street presence.

-William H. Whyte, c. 1980.

[Blank wall, 4th Street.]

 [Blank wall, 4th Street.]

 [Blank wall, 4th Street.]

[Blank wall, 5th Street.]

[Blank wall, 6th Street.]

[Blank wall, 7th Street.]

 [Blank Wall, Kellogg Boulevard.]

[Blank wall, Minnesota Street.]

[Blank wall, Minnesota Street.] 

 [Blank wall, Minnesota Street.]

[Blank wall, old 7th Street.]

[Blank wall, Saint Peter Street.] 

[Blank wall, 5th Street.]