Description
Book SynopsisThe story of one of Minnesota’s most famous and most mourned buildings, set against the history of downtown Minneapolis
When it opened in 1890, the twelve-story Northwestern Guaranty Loan Building was the tallest, largest, and most splendid commercial structure in Minneapolis—a mighty stone skyscraper built for the ages. How this grand Richardsonian Romanesque edifice, which later came to be called the Metropolitan Building, rose with the growth of Minneapolis only to fall in the throes of the city’s postwar renewal, is revealed in Metropolitan Dreams in all its scandalous intrigue. It is a tale of urban growing pains and architectural ghosts and of colorful, sometimes criminal characters amid the grandeur and squalor of building and rebuilding a city’s skyline.
Against the thrumming backdrop of turn-of-the-century Minneapolis, architectural critic and historian Larry Millett recreates the impressive rise of the massive office building, its walls of green New Hampshire granite and red Lake Superior sandstone surrounding its true architectural wonder, a dazzling twelve-story iron and glass light court. The drama, however, was far from confined to the building itself. A consummate storyteller, Millett summons the frenetic atmosphere in Gilded Age Minneapolis that encouraged the likes of Northwestern Guaranty’s founder, real estate speculator Louis Menage, whose shady deals financed this Minneapolis masterpiece—and then forced him to flee both prosecution and the country a mere three years later.
Dubious as its financial beginnings might have been, the economic circumstances of the Metropolitan’s demise were at least as questionable. Anchoring Minneapolis’s historic Gateway District in its heyday, the building’s fortunes shifted with the city’s demographics and finally it fell victim to the fervor of one of the largest downtown urban renewal projects ever undertaken in the United States. Though the long and furious battle to save the Metropolitan ultimately failed in 1962, its ghost persists in the passion for historic preservation stirred by its demise—and in Metropolitan Dreams, whose photographs, architectural drawings, and absorbing narrative bring the building and its story to vibrant, enduring life.
Trade Review"Minneapolis was booming and bursting, and the new wonder in green New Hampshire granite and red Lake Superior sandstone housed a magnificent twelve-story iron and glass light court, with six elevator cages, thousands of feet of detailed ironwork, and a rooftop observation tower 222 feet above the street. And there was drama: finagling, nefarious deals and vanished money through founder and speculator Louis Menage."—Lavendar
"Larry Millett does a thorough job of conveying the beauty and uniqueness of this lost landmark, and its role in helping ignite our country’s preservation movement."—Minnesota Alumni
"In Metropolitan Dreams, Millett dives deeply into the building's design and realization, the Midwest city's decisions to develop and demolish, and even how parts of the building live on elsewhere in the city: a great read for Minnesotans but also preservationists in any state."—A Daily Dose of Architecture Books
Table of ContentsContents
Introduction: “They Will Damn Us, They Will”
1. “Risen Like an Exhalation”
2. “A Man of Peculiar Genius and Business Methods”
3. “One of the Great Architects of the Day”
4. “The Best Office Building in the World”
The Northwestern Guaranty Loan Building, 1890–1900
5. “One of the Most Colossal Swindles of the Decade”
6. “The Lower Loop is Sunk”
7. “How Sick Is This Heart of Minneapolis?”
8. “A Monstrosity in the Eyes of Most Observers”
Epilogue: “The Most Unfortunate Thing”
Acknowledgments
Notes
Illustration Credits
Index
