Washburn-Fair Oaks Mansion District

The Alano Society of Minneapolis Clubhouse is a historic clubhouse located in the Whittier neighborhood of Minneapolis, Minnesota. It is located within the Washburn-Fair Oaks Mansion District. The house was originally built in 1887 for John Washburn, the nephew of Cadwallader C. Washburn, who founded Washburn, Crosby & Co., which later became General Mills. The house came up for sale in March 1942, and the Alano Society of Minneapolis purchased it for $19,000. Other groups were offering up to $30,000 for the house, so it is possible that the owner, Sydney Young (daughter of John Washburn and his wife Elizabeth) was supportive of the goals of Alcoholics Anonymous and the Alano Society of Minneapolis. The deed to the property directed that some or all of the house would be kept in its original form. Alcoholics Anonymous itself was formed in the spring of 1935, when its founders Bill W. and Bob S. met. Bill W. had recently found sobriety through the Oxford Group, while Bob S. was a struggling alcoholic. Bill lived with Bob and his wife Anne for several weeks and convinced Bob to give up alcohol. In the process, Bill W. and Bob S. were convinced they could help other men give up alcohol, so they brought others to Oxford Group meetings, as well as meetings in Bill W.'s own house. In 1938, Bill W. had formulated the Twelve Steps. The next year, Bill published the book Alcoholics Anonymous: The Story of How One Hundred Men Have Recovered from Alcoholism. A group in Cleveland, Ohio was founded in May 1939 under the name Alcoholics Anonymous, and by October 1939 both the original group in Bill W.'s home in Brooklyn and the Cleveland group had separated from the Oxford Group. During 1941, AA members traveling on business brought the movement to new cities such as Milwaukee, St. Louis, Boston, Miami, and Minneapolis. An article in the Saturday Evening Post in February 1941 brought national recognition to the group. In Minneapolis, Bernard Patrick John Thomas Cronin was struggling with alcoholism. He found a review of the book Alcoholics Anonymous in the early summer of 1940, and then later found the book in the public library. Cronin wrote to the Alcoholic Foundation in New York hoping to find AA members in Minneapolis. The New York office forwarded his contact information to two AA members in Chicago, who visited Cronin in November 1940. Chandler Forman and Bill Long stayed with Cronin for four days, over the span of the 1940 Armistice Day Blizzard, and Cronin found sobriety. He wanted to spread the message to other alcoholics, although success was limited until the Saturday Evening Post article in February 1941. Cronin worked with Minneapolis Star columnist Cedric Adams to get the word out about Alcoholics Anonymous. By April 1941, six AA members were meeting in rented quarters on Franklin Avenue. By July, the group had almost 80 members. In October of that year, with about 100 members, the chapter was moved to rented club rooms at 19th Street and Park Avenue. The group often divided into smaller "squads" that met in members' houses, club rooms, and the Citizen's Aid Building in downtown Minneapolis. Growing membership required more space, so Pat Cronin, Barry Collins, and Mary Barnd organized the Alano Society of Minneapolis in order to purchase property. Alcoholics Anonymous chapters traditionally did not own property, so Alano clubs were organized across the country to serve as landlords. They bought the 2218 1st. Avenue South property in May of 1942. The club continued to expand with its new headquarters. In November 1943, the group had 200 members, including 12 women. Three years later, there were 600 members, and AA had its own telephone number in the city directory. Chapters were also formed in St. Paul, Duluth, Hibbing and many other communities in Minnesota. Other groups were formed in Wisconsin, North Dakota, and South Dakota. By 1950, Minnesota had 44 AA chapters. The club at 2218 1st Ave. S. served as an incubator for several of these chapters, such as Rochester and Mankato in 1946 and Robbinsdale in 1952. Minneapolis 2218, as the club was known, continued as the leading chapter in Minneapolis and the Upper Midwest. The clubhouse was becoming too small to accommodate all of its members, so a 53 feet (16 m) by 33.5 feet (10.2 m) two-story reinforced concrete block addition was built in 1950. The clubhouse acted as the central clearinghouse for information about AA activities in the greater Minneapolis area. Groups were spreading outside Hennepin County to Anoka, Dakota, and Scott counties, so by 1968, an AA Minneapolis Intergroup office was established. This was two years after the St. Paul Intergroup office was established. The clubhouse was listed on the National Register of Historic Places in October 2021 for its role in social history. It is the oldest Alano Club in the world to operate continuously at a single location.

The Edwin H. Hewitt House is a historic house in the Stevens Square neighborhood of Minneapolis. Edwin Hawley Hewitt (1874–1939) was a prominent local architect. He designed this house, at the corner of Franklin Avenue and Stevens Avenue, in 1906. It was listed on the National Register of Historic Places in 1978.

The Minneapolis Institute of Art (Mia) is an arts museum located in Minneapolis, Minnesota, United States. Home to more than 90,000 works of art representing 5,000 years of world history, Mia is one of the largest art museums in the United States. Its permanent collection includes world-famous works that embody the highest levels of artistic achievement, spanning about 20,000 years and representing the world’s diverse cultures across six continents. The museum has seven curatorial areas: Arts of Africa & the Americas; Contemporary Art; Decorative Arts, Textiles & Sculpture; Asian Art; Paintings; Photography and New Media; and Prints and Drawings. Mia is one of the largest arts educators in Minnesota. More than a half-million people visit the museum each year, and a hundred thousand more are reached through the museum’s Art Adventure program for elementary schoolchildren. The museum’s free general admission policy, public programs, classes for children and adults, and award-winning interactive media programs have helped to broaden and deepen this museum’s roots in the communities it serves.

Hennepin History Museum is a museum dedicated to the history, people, and communities of Hennepin County, Minnesota, United States. The museum provides in-house exhibits, history-themed programming, and social events throughout the year.

Stevens Square (officially Stevens Square-Loring Heights) is the southernmost neighborhood of the Central community in Minneapolis. Although one of the densest neighborhoods in Minneapolis today, the land was originally occupied by a few large mansions. Today, the area is composed mostly of old brownstone apartment buildings or mansions that have been subdivided into apartments, giving the neighborhood a heavy population density within its small geographical area; a short and wide neighborhood, it is nearly a mile long but only three blocks tall. Much of the neighborhood is a National Historic District, and five of the apartments were listed on the National Register of Historic Places in 1993.It is bordered on Lyndale Avenue on the west, Franklin Avenue on the south, and Interstates 94 and 35W on the north and east, respectively. Although Stevens Square faced many of the same challenges which confronted other inner-city neighborhoods through the 1990s, the neighborhood has seen significant increases in safety and average income in recent years. These have been attributed both to a successful Neighborhood Revitalization Program and to limited gentrification, with many apartments buildings converted to condominiums or co-ops. The half of the neighborhood east of Nicollet Avenue (Stevens Square) is part of City Council Ward 6, while the part to the west (Loring Heights) is in Ward 7. The whole neighborhood is represented in the Minnesota State House of Representatives in district 62A, in the Minnesota State Senate in district 62, and in the United States House of Representatives in Minnesota's 5th congressional district.

The Children's Theatre Company (formerly known as The Moppet Players from 1961 to 1965) is a regional theater established in 1965 in Minneapolis, Minnesota, specializing in plays for families, young audiences and the very young. The theater is the largest theater for multigenerational audiences in the United States and is the recipient of 2003 Tony Award for Outstanding Regional Theatre. The founding is credited to John Clark Donahue and Beth Linnerson. Many productions are adaptations from children's literature including Pippi Longstocking, The 500 Hats of Bartholomew Cubbins, Cinderella, How The Grinch Stole Christmas, A Year with Frog and Toad and Alice in Wonderland that have been in the company's repertoire for many seasons. Among their early premiere productions was Richard Dworsky's musical version of The Marvelous Land of Oz, which was one of several productions to be issued on video in the early 1980s. The casts themselves are a mix of adult and young adult performers.The programs began operating from space donated in a restaurant before moving to an abandoned fire station donated when the troupe affiliated itself with the social service agency Pillsbury-Waite Settlement House. It is now located next to the Minneapolis Institute of Arts. It previously operated as an accredited school, The Children's Theatre Company and School, first as an "after school" component of the Twin Cities' Urban Arts program and, by the early 1980s, as its own accredited grade school and high school. Students were taught regular academic curricula for the first half of the day and then studied performance arts for the second half. The theater was founded by John Clark Donahue along with John Burton Davidson, Shirley Diercks, Martha Pierce Boesing and Beth Leinerson. Jon Cranny served as the theater's second artistic director from 1984 until 1997, when Peter C. Brosius became the theater's third artistic director alongside the theater's managing directors: Theresa Eyring (1999–2007), Gabriella Callichio (2007–11), Tim Jennings (2011–15) and Kimberly Motes (16-present). The theater's production of A Year with Frog and Toad, which completed a run at the Cort Theatre on Broadway in June 2003. In 1998, under Brosius' leadership, the theater established Threshold, a new play laboratory which has created world premiere productions by Nilo Cruz, Jeffrey Hatcher, Kia Corthrun, and Naomi Iizuka. Along with new play development, Brosius has helped launch new education programs, including the internationally renowned Neighborhood Bridges program. Architect Michael Graves designed the expansion for the theater in 2001. In 2003, the theater received the Tony Award for excellence in regional theater. The November 2, 2004, edition of Time magazine named the company as the top theater for children in the U.S.

The Minneapolis College of Art and Design (MCAD) is a private college specializing in the visual arts and located in Minneapolis, Minnesota. MCAD currently enrolls approximately 800 students. MCAD is one of just a few major art schools to offer a major in comic art.

The Church of Saint Stephen is a historic Roman Catholic church in the Whittier neighborhood of Minneapolis in the U.S. state of Minnesota. This neighborhood is where entrepreneurs and businessmen built their mansions in the modern-day Washburn-Fair Oaks Mansion District. The building was built with sandstone, brick, concrete, and copper in 1889–1891.It was listed in the National Register of Historic Places in 1991. It is considered significant as an early and well-preserved example of a Richardsonian Romanesque/Romanesque Revival church.

On May 30, 2024, a mass shooting occurred in the Whittier neighborhood of Minneapolis, Minnesota, United States. Four people were killed by gunfire: two civilians, Minneapolis Police Department officer Jamal Mitchell, and the gunman Mustafa Ahmed Mohamed. Three other people were injured by gunfire.

Abbott Hospital is a former hospital building in the Stevens Square neighborhood of Minneapolis, Minnesota, United States. The hospital was originally built in 1910, with several additions up until 1958. The hospital eventually merged with Northwestern Hospital in 1970 to form Abbott Northwestern Hospital, and the Abbott Hospital building closed in 1980.While the Abbott Hospital building is a contributing property to the Stevens Square Historic District, a separate listing was desired for the hospital because of its significance within the development of the health care system in Minneapolis. For that reason, a separate nomination was prepared and submitted, and the hospital was listed on the National Register of Historic Places on June 1, 2011.: 8 

The Anne C. and Frank B. Semple House is a historic house in the Stevens Square/Loring Heights neighborhood of Minneapolis, Minnesota, United States. It is located on the same block as the George R. Newell House and the George W. and Nancy B. Van Dusen House. The house was listed on the National Register of Historic Places in 1998. The house was built in the Beaux-Arts architectural style, reflecting a shift in style toward the classicism of the Renaissance and away from Victorian ideals. Its first owner, Frank Semple, was a partner in Janney, Semple, and Co., a wholesale hardware firm. The entry on Franklin Avenue has a balustraded entry porch with Ionic columns, a detailed Palladian window, and a rounded bay. The interior has a reception hall with mahogany paneling, a hardwood floor with marble inlays, and a frescoed ceiling. Interior spaces include a 1,000-square-foot (93 m2) living room and a ballroom.The mansion is now available as a reception site for weddings and other events.

The Electric Fetus is a record store in Minneapolis, Minnesota. Minnesota Public Radio said the Electric Fetus is "widely regarded as the pre-eminent indie record store in Minnesota."[1] Owner Keith Covart estimates that the store has an inventory of approximately 50,000 titles.[2]The store was founded in June 1968 by partners Dan Foley and Ron Korsh. Several months after opening Korsh sold his half of the enterprise to Keith Covart, who also obtained Foley's half about ten years later. Operations began in 1968 when Korsh rented a storefront in the Cedar-Riverside neighborhood, known at that time as the Haight-Ashbury of Minneapolis. In 1972 the business moved to its present location on the corner of 4th Avenue and Franklin. [3] Electric Fetus previously had two locations in St. Cloud and Duluth, which closed permanently in 2014 and 2020 respectively. A definitive history of the store was written in 2006 by Penny Peterson and Charlene Roise: "A History of the Electric Fetus" as prepared for the Greater Twin Cities Blues Music Society. The Electric Fetus Onestop is the wholesale distribution portion of the Electric Fetus. It has "a huge emphasis on local music and aims to provide an outlet for local musicians / bands to consign their CDs or records to be available for distribution through the One Stop. The One Stop's primary focus is local indie record stores and secondly national Independent Record Stores." The Electric Fetus Onestop is located in the basement of The Electric Fetus in Minneapolis and is not open to the public. Musician Prince was a long-time customer of the store, and made purchases there for Record Store Day five days before his death in 2016.