In 1976, the Minneapolis Housing and Redevelopment Authority chose Kraus-Anderson to restore three Victorian houses on Nicollet Island, as part of an urban renewal project that focused on restoration and preservation in one of the most historic neighborhoods in Minneapolis.
Wita Waste
What we now call Nicollet Island was known as Wita Waste by the Dakota, which means beautiful island, and the island’s scenic qualities were remarked on by early European travelers and explorers. Wita Waste was densely covered with trees, especially maples, which were a source of sugar before European settlers arrived. More than just a source of maple sugar, Wita Waste was (and is) a sacred place to the Dakota people. It was a traditional, or favorable location for Dakota women to give birth to their children.
When the 1837 treaties with the Dakota and Ojibwe sold the land east of the Mississippi River open to European settlers, there was a scramble to claim land near St. Anthony Falls. Fort Snelling sutler turned industrialist, Franklin Steele got there first, and he was allowed to purchase the island from the federal government at the standard rate of one dollar and twenty-five cents an acre. Steele bought the forty-five-acre island for around sixty dollars.
This 1848 map names Wita Waste as Grand Island. The Island would eventually be named for Joseph Nicollet, the French cartographer and topographer whose map of the Mississippi and its tributaries laid the foundation for our current understanding of US geography.
Island of Dreams
As an island at the geographical center of Minneapolis, Nicollet has been the subject of dreams for city planners since before Minneapolis was a city.
In scale and location, Nicollet lends itself to comparisons to the Ile De La Cite of Paris. If Minneapolis had an urban history that dated back to the Middle Ages, the comparison would be more apt, but Minneapolis didn’t grow up around a river island. It grew up on the nearby shore where water mills could be built next to the falls. Instead, Nicollet, like an eye in a storm, has been mostly spared from the grand designs that were directed at it.
One such design was a plan to site the state capital on Nicollet Island. In 1857, the year before Minnesota became a state, legislators from the southern part of the Minnesota territory attempted to locate the state capital away from the territorial capital of St. Paul south to St. Peter. As a compromise between the St Paul and St. Peter factions, legislators proposed Nicollet Island (which was then between the cities of Minneapolis and St. Anthony) as a capital site. Although it is likely that the governor would have vetoed this proposal, it is worth noting that the bill failed by only a couple of votes.
Another, very persistent, dream for Nicollet Island is that it be used for the enjoyment of all as a park. In 1866, the citizens of Minneapolis voted against a plan to purchase the north portion of the island for parkland, but the idea of turning Nicollet into a park is a remarkably persistent one. A 1917 plan for Minneapolis did not mince words on the subject: “The manifest destiny of Nicollet Island is to be a park.” This certainty was shared by the Minneapolis Park Board, who would eventually, gradually, end up owning most of the real estate on the island, albeit conditionally.
The way in which Nicollet Island was eventually developed was piecemeal. The south of the island was built up with industrial buildings, and the north of the island was developed as an affluent residential neighborhood. In the middle of the 20th century, De La Salle cropped up between the two. As the industrial buildings on the island’s south end were cleared to make way for park space, and the residential district north of Hennepin dwindled to a couple dozen houses, a now expanded De La Salle High School dominates the island’s built environment.
In the 1960s, when a dozen blocks of downtown Minneapolis were bulldozed just across the Hennepin Avenue bridge, Nicollet Island was just isolated enough not to be included in these initial urban renewal plans. By the time the Housing Authority turned its attention toward Nicollet, the citizens of Minneapolis had lost their taste for wholesale land clearances, so many of the old Victorian houses on the north of the island can be seen today.
Renewal vs Restoration
As the housing stock on Nicollet Island aged, it became naturally occurring affordable housing. The unique, somewhat isolated nature of this housing enclave gave it a special quality. It was a bastion for alternative lifestyles. According to a 1976 Minneapolis Star article, The most common occupation shared among island residents at that time was country music musician. One resident kept two pet donkeys. Ken Kesey’s band of Merry Pranksters even included Nicollet Island on one of their cross-country bus trips.
Although most of the island’s residents did not own the homes they were living in, they managed to gain enough community support to halt the bulldozing of the remaining homes on the north end of Nicollet. By the 1970s, Minneapolis Housing and Redevelopment Authority owned most of these homes. Aside from De La Salle High School, the other major landowner on the island was the Park Board, who still harbored their long-held dreams of making the entire island into a park.
Throughout the 1970s, the Housing Authority and the Park Board were engaged in a struggle for Nicollet Island. Learning from the experience of the 1960s and the overly aggressive renewal plan for downtown Minneapolis, the Housing Authority was more sensitive to the plight of island residents. In somewhat of a role reversal, it was the Housing Authority who acted the part of preservationist, and this is where Kraus-Anderson (finally) comes into the story.
Three for the Future
The Minneapolis Housing and Redevelopment Authority hired KA to restore three Victorian houses on the north of the island. This was a pilot project meant to get the ball rolling and to test the feasibility of bringing Nicollet Island’s old housing stock up to an acceptable standard.
In 1974, KA spun off a subsidiary called the Kraus-Anderson building company. This was meant to be a more nimble entity, capable of taking on small-scale projects. Home restoration would normally be considered too small even for this new and nimble building team, but this project was deceptively demanding.
Florent Hieman was the superintendent, and this project called on all of his thirty-five years of experience as a carpenter and a builder to walk the tightrope between a faithful restoration and getting the job done within a reasonable budget and timetable. In Heiman’s own words, “This was a challenge, it was a stumper in a lot of ways.”
Sourcing a sufficient quantity of square nails was challenging, and so was crafting replacement spindles and other Victorian doodads, but conducting the detective work necessary for such a restoration while keeping to the timeline must’ve been challenging indeed.
The restoration of these three Victorian homes was a small project that had an outsized impact. Conservation was eventually chosen as the path forward for the north end of Nicollet Island. That being said, the Minneapolis Park Board was mostly victorious in its struggle for the island. The south end of Nicollet is essentially a city park, and, aside from De La Salle, the Park Board owns almost all of the real estate on the island, and this includes the land beneath the old houses on the north end.
In a deal struck in the early 1980s, residents of the island were given an opportunity to sign ninety-nine-year leases if they agreed to renovate the houses to a certain standard. Some houses were even moved onto the island from elsewhere in the city. Walking around Nicollet Island today, one appreciates the quaint and cozy mixed-use compromise that KA had a small part in implementing.