May’s History Friday: Kraus-Anderson Projects Featured in Doors Open Minneapolis
By Matt Goff, Kraus-Anderson Historian/Archivist
Inspired by the Open House festivals that occur around the world, beginning with London in 1992, Doors Open Minneapolis is a relative newcomer to this sort of event. The first occurred in 2019. 112 buildings across Minneapolis, many of which are not normally accessible to the general public, were opened for anybody to explore, free of charge, and with no reservation required. Building owners or caretakers were on site to give tours and answer questions. The 2019 event was more successful than anticipated, but COVID-19 lockdowns postponed a Doors Open follow-up until last year. The event returns to the city again on May 13th and 14th, 2023.
Kraus-Anderson has been building in Minneapolis for over 125 years, so, naturally, many of the venues included in Open Doors were built by KA. From the Scottish Rite Masonic Center of 1906 to the recently completed Minneapolis Fire Station Number 1, and several examples in between, Doors Open shows the impact Kraus-Anderson continues to make on the built environment of Minneapolis.
Scottish Rite Masonic Center
Harry Wild Jones is one of the most prolific designers of landmark buildings in Minneapolis. More often than not, to construct these landmarks he turned to KA’s founding father J.L. Robinson. An example of this partnership can still be found on the corner of Dupont and Franklin Avenues.
For more than a hundred years, this structure has been home to the Ancient and Accepted Scottish Rite Masons of the Valley of Minneapolis in the Orient of Minnesota. What Robinson built over the years 1906 and 1907, however, was the Fowler Methodist Episcopal Church. The typical flourish and flamboyance of Wild Jones cause us to forget that we are actually looking at the mere extension of an existing church, albeit an extension that is larger than the original structure. The Methodist congregation for which the church was built used the building for a decade. They sold the structure to the Scottish Rite Masons in 1915 when the Fowler congregation merged with the Hennepin Avenue Methodist Church. The Scottish Rite temple hosted the largest funeral ever to take place in Minneapolis after the famed pilot Charles “Speed” Holman crashed his plane in 1931. In 1974, the building was added to the National Register of Historic Places. The Scottish Rite Temple was one of the more popular destinations on the 2019 Doors Open Minneapolis tour.
Christ Church Luther
Christ Lutheran Church was designed by renowned Finnish architects Eliel and Eero Saarinen, father and son respectively. Amazingly, it represents the last completed work of both Eliel and Euro Saarinen, and it is one of only three buildings in Minneapolis designated as a National Historic Landmark.
The Christ Church Lutheran congregation was established in the Longfellow neighborhood of Minneapolis in 1911. By the 1920s, the congregation expanded so as to require a new church building. The economic downturn of the 1930s postponed plans, and WWII delayed them further. This seemingly unfortunate delay turned out to be a great gift to this congregation. Instead of implementing an existing plan for a traditional gothic revival church that would have been both expensive and, well, traditional, the congregation’s new pastor, William Buege, convinced Eliel Saarinen to grace the Longfellow neighborhood with a modern masterpiece.
The church building was constructed by Kraus-Anderson in 1949, and Eliel Saarinen died the next year. A decade later, when the congregation wanted to add an education building, Eero agreed to design it, and, incredibly, this turned out to be Eero’s final commission before his death in 1960.
The strange coincidence that Christ Church Lutheran represents the final work for both of these giants of modern architecture is one reason for the significance of this building. The grace with which Eero was able to make the Christ Church addition his own while respecting his father’s work is a display of his strength as an architect, but it is also a touching tribute to one of the most important relationships of twentieth-century architecture.
When, in 1977, Christ Church Lutheran was given the 25-year award by the American Institute of Architects, they noted, “Art, science, and faith achieve a serene harmony in this church whose spirit and simplicity of form recall the early Christian era. A living symbol of architectural integrity, it has provided inspiration and guidance to countless architects.”
Star Tribune Heritage Center
In the late 1980s, Kraus-Anderson built a new, improved, and, frankly, enormous printing plant for the Star Tribune. Located near Plymouth Avenue in Minneapolis’ North Loop neighborhood, the Star Tribune Heritage Center was meant to streamline the printing for the newly consolidated Minneapolis daily newspaper. Although the Cowles family owned and published both the Minneapolis Tribune and the Star Journal since 1940, the two newspapers were printed and circulated separately – the Tribune in the morning, and the Journal in the afternoon. When the two papers were combined to form the Star Tribune, an ambitious facility was proposed to take advantage of new technology and more efficiently produce Minneapolis newspapers. It was the first facility in the United States to use automated guideways. When Kraus-Anderson completed work on the Heritage Center, the circulation and readership of printed newspapers in the United States was increasing every year, as it had for time out of mind. It would be seven more years before Star Tribune put out its first digital edition, and around the year 2000, circulation of print newspapers began to decline.
We can’t know if the Cowles family would have built this huge printing facility if they had known about the coming nationwide decline in print newspaper circulation, but, surprisingly, it was this decline in demand that made the Heritage Center the asset that it is today. As the biggest, most modern newspaper printing facility in the area, the Heritage Center benefitted from consolidation. Not only are local copies of national papers created here but the Tribune’s rival paper, the Pioneer Press, is now printed at the Heritage Center. It is easy to imagine a day when printed newspapers will be a nostalgic anomaly, but it is difficult to know when or even if that day will come. Twenty-five years after the Star Tribune produced its first digital edition, it gained its 100,000th digital subscriber. The average paid circulation for the Star Tribune is about a quarter of a million, usually keeping it within the top ten most circulated newspapers in the United States. As publisher and CEO Mike Klingensmith put it, “Success in the digital business only strengthens the vitality of the Star Tribune’s print franchise.”
Minneapolis Fire Station #1
Contrasting with some of the historic landmark buildings included in Doors Open, Fire Station # 1, in the Mill District neighborhood of downtown, was recently completed by Kraus-Anderson. In fact, the rest of the block is still under construction. Two residential buildings are currently being added to the block. Both Ladder 260 and O2, like the fire station itself, are developed by Sherman Associates and built by Kraus-Anderson.
The brand new Fire Station #1 replaced a building that was constructed in 1908. Having been substantially renovated in the 1960s, and deemed totally inadequate for the current needs of the Minneapolis Fire Department, the city decided to start over. The old fire station sat on a block mostly taken up by asphalt, so the city worked with Sherman Associates to make the Fire Station part of an ambitious residential development.
Minneapolis’ newest fire station is almost 20,000 square feet and is one of only two stations that are designed and equipped to serve the downtown area. The forest of skyscrapers that is downtown Minneapolis creates special challenges for first responders, so this new and forward-looking station is likely a comfort to downtown’s existing and future residents.
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