Exhibition Reviews

Mill City Museum, 704 South Second St., Minneapolis, MN 55401.       Permanent exhibition, opened Sept. 13, 2003. Open Tu—Sa 10–5 (except Th 10–9), Su 12–5. Adults $8, seniors and college students $6, children 6–17 $4, children 5 and under and Minnesota Historical Society members free. 12,000 sq. ft. Nina M. Archabal, director, Minnesota Historical Society; Daniel Spock, head of exhibits; Kate Roberts, exhibit developer; Thomas Meyer of Meyer, Scherer & Rockcastle, Ltd., architect.       Walking tours of surrounding area, lectures, and summer concerts.       Internet: brief description and history of museum, school resources, and online store <http://www.millcitymuseum.org> (Sept. 16, 2005).
According to a former worker at the Washburn A Mill, milling was so ubiquitous in Minneapolis, Minnesota, in the early twentieth century that walking around downtown, one would become coated with flour. Minneapolis was once the flour-milling capital of the world, a title that the city held until 1930 when Buffalo, New York, surpassed it in production. Birthplace of General Mills and Pillsbury, the mills of Minneapolis processed millions of bushels of grain that came into the city from the bonanza farms of the Dakotas, Montana, and Manitoba. During the peak of production, the Washburn A Mill, where the Mill City Museum is located, milled enough grain into flour to make 12 million loaves of bread a day.	1
The Washburn A Mill in Minneapolis, Minnesota, is seen from the ruins of its courtyard. At the zenith of its productivity in the early twentieth century, the mill, built in 1880, was the largest flour mill in the world. Photo by Nicole Heater. Courtesy Nicole Heater.
A visitor to Minneapolis today would be hard-pressed to find immediate evidence of this past. Although the towering elevators that stored grain prior to milling still dot the urban landscape and the local beer is called Grain Belt, these reminders seem divorced from the service-oriented industries that now make up the local economy. Most of the remaining mill structures along the Mississippi River in the downtown area either have been converted into upscale residential lofts or office space or are being converted. The Mill City Museum should be praised for offering an alternative to the trend whereby the industrial buildings of the past find use only as the gentrified homes and offices of the future. The Mill City Museum has transformed a historical space that is awe-inspiring in its immensity into a museum that preserves a prominent landmark of the city's past.	2
St. Anthony Falls are the only naturally occurring waterfalls on the entire length of the Mississippi River and the source of hydropower that led white migrants to settle what would become Minneapolis. Although lumber mills first used the falls, by the 1870s flour milling had become the predominant industry in the area. The Washburn-Crosby Company (which became General Mills in 1928) completed the second Washburn A Mill at the base of the falls in 1880, only two years after a devastating dust explosion killed eighteen workers and destroyed the company's original structure. The Washburn A Mill closed for business in 1965. Although it was named to the National Register of Historic Places in 1971 and was designated a National Historic Landmark in 1983, it was not until 2001 that the Minnesota Historical Society began work on the building. The museum opened its doors in 2003.	. . .