November History Friday: Chateau Community Housing

By Matt Goff, Kraus-Anderson Historian/Archivist

In 1973, Kraus-Anderson built an eighteen-story apartment building for the Chateau Community Housing Association. Anyone familiar with the University of Minnesota’s Dinkytown neighborhood is aware of this concrete building that towers over it, but behind the somewhat brutal architecture is a humane, even charming, story.

Chateau Co-Op Dining Club

Chateau Community Housing began in 1945, when thirty students, all of them WWII veterans in search of camaraderie and access to affordable meals, formed the Chateau Co-op Dining Club. This dining club was so successful that by 1953, the group occupied a building designed by modernist master and Dean of the U of M School of Architecture, Ralph Rapson.

From Dining Club to Housing Co-Op

In the 1960s, fast food (namely McDonalds) moved into Dinkytown, making the dining club a comparatively expensive meal option. With fifteen-cent hamburgers available down the street, the not-insignificant trouble (Chateau advertised to help “middle-aged or elderly woman preferred” almost constantly for twenty years) of administering a dining co-op was no longer worth it. The final straw may have been placed in 1965 when thirty co-op diners ended up at a U of M medical clinic for food poisoning.

Building the Chateau

Mutating from a dining co-op to a housing co-op was far from a straightforward process. Banks were unlikely to issue a multi-million-dollar loan to an ever-changing group of college students, so the Chateau community obtained funding from both the University of Minnesota and the federal government. The Minneapolis City Council had to make a zoning change for Dinkytown’s first high-rise.

Architects Lorenzo Williams and James O’Brien, known for running one of the most socially conscious firms in Minneapolis, were a natural choice for designing what is as much an ambitious social experiment as an ambitious residential high-rise. Kraus-Anderson may also have been a natural choice for the builder, as KA had extensive experience with the post-tensioned flat slab system used to build the Chateau.

The Chateau continues to provide cooperative housing to University of Minnesota students. It is one of seven co-ops operated by Riverton Community Housing.