West Saint Paul Antiques

Minneapolis hasn't always been so great about protecting its past, but the Internet & social media is bringing back memories for thousands now that a Facebook page or a web site featuring old images of places and items from the city's past is posting little pieces of 'Old Minneapolis.'

In the 1960s, roughly 200 buildings were destroyed within the city's borders -- 60 percent of them in the old business district.

What survived has since become very precious, especially for those who are old enough to remember what has been lost and young enough to fight to keep it from happening again.

Nostalgia is a funny thing because it can make you homesick even when you're already home, longing for the sights, sounds, tastes and smells of the distantly familiar.

For the Class of '66, the memories date back to the 50's when we was 10, 11 & 12 and the time we would take a bus from north Minneapolis to the big city of Dowm Town Minneapolis at the age of 13 or 14.

"Oh, it was just fantastic," I can  recall at the age of 14"Old Block-E was still there."

That was the beginning of my long love affair with Old Minneapolis. I found an outlet for my obsession by starting up this web site and looking for "Old Minneapolis photos"  for the web site where people could share pictures and memories of all things the city has seen come and go -- the lost diners and forgotten bars, buildings gutted by fire or razed by ignorance.

The old Metropolitan Building was torn down in 1961 -- along with much of the Gateway District, which was Minneapolis' own Skid Row.

Surfers who scroll through  pages on this web site can find photos of Minneapolis and some times Saint Paul back when it was straight a small down town. 

There's a little bit of everything on this web site.

"There were places on the old Block-E that weren't in the suburbs. "Then, when they rebuilt it -- movie theaters, everywhere; Borders books, everywhere -- but there was no Moby Dick's anywhere. No Brady's, or Rife Sports."

Yet, the pictures also convey a longing for a time that never really was. Back then, Hennepin Avenue was dirty, congested -- and yes, there was crime. Still, many can also see the future of the city in the pictures of years gone by.

"Nobody's a bigger fan of nostalgia than I am. "I really wallow in it."

I think my web site pages is more than a trip down memory lane. To me, it's also a cautionary tale.

"Why, why isn't the gas station on the corner?" I asked. "Why isn't there a street car intersection with all the lively businesses there?

Nowhere are those concerns more evident than in north Minneapolis, where small mom-and-pop stores have simply vanished.

"They were like a neighborhood downtown, A lot of those fabulous little business districts were on the intersection of trolly lines -- and when the street cars went away, the economy folded."

In just five to six years, the web site has garnered to more than 5,000 pages -- and some die-hard  friends. Among them the class of '66 who now lives all over the US from Los Angeles to New York but is still homesick for a city that's gone.

"It's interesting to look at it in the 30s, 40s, 50s & 60's -- when it hit its peak and it almost felt like New York or LA.

This site has the capacity to make the old suddenly new again, and there is talk of bringing back those street cars, getting people out of the skyways and back on the street.

Perhaps one day, a younger generation will feel sentimental about a Starbucks or wistful for a McDonalds -- who knows? See you all at the class reunion in August of 2016...