Before the Teardown

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More About

• Roy Swan
• Dwight Miller
• Transportation
• Photography

With all due respect to the crop of sleek, soaring skyscrapers clumped in downtown Minneapolis, there were some pretty cool buildings around downtown before the rise of glass and steel constructions. In 1960, the Star Tribune realized that the stone and brick buildings that had filled the cityscape for half a century were beginning to disappear and soon would fade into history. The paper dispatched photographers Dwight W. Miller and Roy Swan to capture the city as it was before wide-scale restructuring due to highway construction, demolitions, and rebuilding. The black-and-white images show a Minneapolis with rugged brick buildings, and new constructions creeping up in height to threaten the prominence of the historic Foshay Tower. They show the city's cultural past and architectural lineage of warehouses, residences, theaters, and offices. Minneapolis is a beautiful city today, and through these photos we see its elegant roots.
May 8-Aug. 31, 2008