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July 2, 2004
Minneapolis: Mill City
View the photo gallery: "Mill City"
The biggest surprise of my trip to Minnesota this week has been the Mill City Museum in downtown Minneapolis (view my photo gallery: "Mill City"). Opened in 2003, the museum showcases the history of the flour industry in the city - a topic which I readily admit sounds pretty boring. Thankfully, the museum is incredibly well produced and is as much a history of the Twin Cities as it is of the industry.
As any good museum director knows, location is critical. Not just in driving visitors to a museum, but by making a connection between the history and the physical site. This museum benefits from a perfect location - the ruins of the Washburn "A" Mill. The mill sits on the banks of the Mississippi River which provided the water power to grind millions of tons of grain into flour and make the mill the largest in the world. At its peak production the mill ground enough flour to make 12 million loaves of bread per day. The Mill closed in 1965 and sat abandoned until 1991 when the rusting equipment inside was destroyed by a fire, the cause of which is still unknown. Only a brick shell remains. Today, the ground floor of the mill serves as the courtyard for the museum. Inside, exhibits explain how grain is turned into flour and how the city of Minneapolis expanded as it became the center of milling in the country.
Visitors who are still bored at this point will want to hop on the "Flour Tower", a multimedia exhibit which takes place on a freight elevator. Visitors enter the elevator at the ground floor and are seated on a raised platform. The elevator then moves up and down between eight floors and showcases a different part of the flour milling process at each level. The presentation makes good use of oral accounts from former mill workers, video, sound and light to immerse the audience in the daily workings of the mill. The elevator comes to a stop at the highest level of the museum where visitors emerge onto an outside observation platform which provides spectacular views of St. Anthony Falls, the stone arch bridge and other Minneapolis landmarks. It's a perfect way to cap off the experience and a perfect place to ponder how the Mississippi gave rise to an entire industry and a beautiful city.
View the photo gallery: "Mill City"
Posted on July 2, 2004 at 6:31 PM