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September 1939. "Railroad yards and flour mills. Minneapolis, Minnesota." Medium format acetate negative by Arthur Rothstein for the Farm Security Administration. View full size.
At the right end of the downtown Minneapolis skyline in the distance is the City's martyr to future historic preservation - the Metropolitan Building, originally known as the Northwestern Guaranty Loan Building. Shown in this 1905 photo taken from a different angle (from the top of the Minneapolis City Hall and County Courthouse), it was lost to misguided postwar scorched-earth urban renewal. https://www.shorpy.com/node/6973
Here is an interesting link on the history of the Gold Medal Sign, and the Eventually
Sign you can see to its left.
https://blog.generalmills.com/2016/06/the-gold-medal-signs-that-salute-o...
To the right of the photographer is the Mississippi River. We can bring grain in from the prairie on the train and then load it (or Gold Medal flour) into barges to send downstream.
There is very little that could get to you if you live on top of those grain elevators.
The pointy building with the pole on top is Minneapolis City Hall. The building to its left (in the photo) is the CenturyLink Building, the building behind it is 105 S. 5th Street. The man on his cell phone is no longer there.
Stopping to send a text message to someone in the office? Or to get a fresh chaw from his tobacco pouch?
Probably neither; when I zoom in it looks like he is scribbling something in a notebook.
"Dude w/big camera standing on trax, lol. Next train will nail his butt IMHO."
The former view seems preferable to the style-starved 'architecture' of the Guthrie Theatre.
If you look closely, you might notice a few subtle changes that have taken place since the photo was taken.
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