Mill City Nights

Butler Square (originally the Butler Brothers Company building) is a former warehouse and office building in Minneapolis, Minnesota, United States. The building is located within the Minneapolis warehouse district and was listed on the National Register of Historic Places in 1971. It is significant for its restrained Chicago School design by major Minneapolis architect Harry Wild Jones, and as a leading example of the older warehouse/office buildings in Minneapolis–Saint Paul. Jones designed other buildings in Minneapolis such as the Minneapolis Scottish Rite Temple, Calvary Baptist Church, the Lakewood Cemetery Chapel, and the Washburn Park Water Tower.It was originally built as a warehouse for Butler Brothers, a mail-order firm, on the land that formerly housed the Athletic Park baseball stadium. It had rather heavy construction in keeping with its function as a warehouse, featuring thick interior masonry walls with thin, recessed windows topped by corbelled parapets. The interior is built with heavy timber posts and beams, cut from Douglas fir grown near Aitkin, Minnesota. The columns are 24 inches (61 cm) wide at the bottom level, gradually diminishing to 9 inches (23 cm) wide on the top level. The basement included a horse stable, to accommodate deliveries, and the building had three large coal-fired boilers for heating. Mechanical elevators were used to move goods throughout the building. The building had a rail spur to facilitate boxcar loading. Gradually, as truck transportation became more competitive with rail transportation, the urban location of the building rendered it inefficient as a warehouse.In 1972 real estate developer Charles Coyer purchased the building with plans to rebuild the east half of the building as an office-retail complex. As part of the renovation, a central atrium in the eastern half of the building was built to allow natural light into the building. This made the retail and office space more marketable, since the large floor space and small windows made it difficult to get enough natural light into the interior. James H. Binger purchased the building in 1979 with similar plans to develop the west half of the building. The atrium on western side was built with more of the heavy timber construction exposed, and more efficient mechanical systems were installed. The renovation of the building has served as a catalyst for additional development and preservation within the Minneapolis Warehouse District.

Athletic Park was the home of the Minneapolis Millers baseball team from 1889 to mid-season 1896. The park was located behind the West Hotel at 6th St and 1st Ave North in Minneapolis near where Target Center and Target Field are today. The park was originally built in 1889 under the supervision of local architects Fremont D. Orff and George W. Orff. Bleachers seating roughly 1,600 people were added in 1890; a grandstand with capacity for 1,800 people was built in 1892. The park burned down in 1893, but was rebuilt the next year and further improved.Athletic Park's playing field was very small with distances estimated at between 200 feet (61 m) to 250 feet (76 m) to the left and right field foul poles. This meant home runs were common in an era otherwise not known for them. Perry Werden's 42 home runs in 1894 and 45 home runs in 1895 were several times higher than contemporary American Association or National League players and would not be challenged until Babe Ruth's rise in the 1920s. The park's shallow outfield meant hits (particularly to right field) still required batters to run hard to first base to avoid being thrown out. High fencing and wire mesh in the outfield helped prevent balls from leaving the field. The park's small dimensions also required some ground rules for ruling whether outfield hits were counted as a ground rule double or home run.The park was the stage for one major league game: a contest between Columbus and Milwaukee of the American Association on October 2, 1891. Milwaukee won 5-0 thanks to excellent pitching from former Minneapolis Miller Frank Killen. Several other games had been planned, but cold and rainy weather prevented playing on October 1st and 3rd. This would be the last major league baseball game played in Minnesota until the Minnesota Twins were founded in 1961.Ice hockey was played here in 1896 when the Minnesota Golden Gophers men's ice hockey team played the Winnipeg Victorias. The Minnesota Golden Gophers football team also made use of the field. The ballpark was sold during May of the 1896 baseball season and the Millers were evicted. They returned from a June road trip and opened their hastily-constructed new facility, Nicollet Park. The site remained open as a site for various events, until finally being turned over to developers. In 1901, the so-called "baseball block" was purchased by T. B. Walker and later developed into the Butler Square warehouse.

The Warehouse District/Hennepin Avenue station is a light rail station on the METRO Blue Line and Green Line in Minneapolis, Minnesota. This was the original northern terminus of the Blue Line until the new Target Field station opened on November 14, 2009 to provide access to the new Northstar Commuter Rail line. The Warehouse District station is located on 5th Street North, between 1st Avenue North and Hennepin Avenue in downtown Minneapolis. This is a center-platform station with one traffic lane to the south of the platform. Service began at this station when the Blue Line opened on June 26, 2004, and this station is where the opening ceremony was held. The first train departed at 11:00 a.m. on that day. The station was designed by ESG Architecture & Design, who also designed the adjacent Nicollet Mall station. To reflect its neighborhood, the station incorporates brickwork and metal columns into the design. The public art installation, Untilted, by Penny Rakoff and Bill McCullam depict labor disputes that occurred in the city in the first half of the 20th century, most notably the Minneapolis Teamsters Strike of 1934. Images are printed onto ten 15.5 × 12.25 inch and two-hundred 2.75 × 2.75 inch tiles.This station is planned to a stop on the METRO E Line. The Target Center, home of the Minnesota Timberwolves, is a block from the station. Although Target Field station is the official stop for the Minnesota Twins' Target Field, Warehouse/Hennepin also sees significant traffic during Twins games.

Pizza Lucé () is a pizzeria restaurant company in Minnesota with locations in the Minneapolis–Saint Paul area and Duluth. Pizza Lucé was founded in 1993.

The Unique Theater was an 830-seat vaudeville theater, built in 1904 on Hennepin Avenue in downtown Minneapolis, Minnesota. It was built in the Renaissance Revival style, and situated between the Hennepin Center for the Arts and the West Hotel. The hotel catered to a family audience with daily performances priced at ten or twenty cents.

The Cowles Center for Dance and the Performing Arts (formerly the Minnesota Shubert Performing Arts and Education Center) is a performing arts center and flagship for dance in downtown Minneapolis, Minnesota, United States. The Cowles Center was developed as an incubation project by Artspace Projects, Inc and includes the refurbished 500-seat Goodale Theater (formerly the Sam S. Shubert Theater); the Hennepin Center for the Arts, home to 20 leading dance and performing arts organizations; a state-of-the-art education studio housing a distance learning program; and an atrium connecting the buildings. The Cowles Center is a catalyst for the creation, presentation and education of dance in the Twin Cities. Both the Goodale Theater and the Hennepin Center for the Arts (formerly the Minneapolis Masonic Temple) are on the National Register of Historic Places. The distance learning program began teaching students in 2002. Using IP videoconferencing technologies, it brings artists into classrooms throughout Minnesota, nationally and internationally, creating two-way interactive, real-time teaching environments.

The Hennepin Center for the Arts (HCA) is an art center in Minneapolis, Minnesota, United States. It occupies a building on Hennepin Avenue constructed in 1888 as a Masonic Temple. The building was designed by Long and Kees in the Richardsonian Romanesque architectural style. In 1978, it was purchased and underwent a renovation to become the HCA. Currently it is owned by Artspace Projects, Inc, and is home to more than 17 performing and visual art companies who reside on the building's eight floors. The eighth floor contains the Illusion Theater, which hosts many shows put on by companies in the building. HCA is now a part of the Cowles Center for Dance and the Performing Arts (formerly the Minnesota Shubert Performing Arts and Education Center). The new performing arts center is a three-building complex that includes the renovated Shubert Theatre building (renamed the Goodale Theater) and a new glass-walled atrium connecting the two historic buildings and serving them both as a common lobby. The Cowles Center hosted a three-day Grand Opening Gala September 9–11, 2011. The building was listed as the Masonic Temple on the National Register of Historic Places in 1975 for its local significance in the theme of architecture. It was nominated for the craftsmanship and integrity of its design by a significant local architectural firm, and for being one of the last well-preserved Richardsonian Romanesque business buildings in Minneapolis.

Rifle Sport Alternative Art Gallery was an underground art space open from 1985 to 1988 in the Block E segment of Hennepin Avenue in downtown Minneapolis, Minnesota. It was an important and groundbreaking venue for non-mainstream and punk-rock art in the Twin Cities. Writer Andy Sturdevant has noted that the gallery's memory and influence have lasted among Twin Cities artists long after its closure, "like it might have happened in a Jacques-Louis David painting."The gallery was founded in September 1985 by artist Colleen Barnett. It was named after the defunct arcade (whose signage remained) which had previously occupied the space. The neighborhood around Block E attracted a broad cross-section of punks, artists, and musicians, and, because of the infamous bar Moby Dick's next door, as well as the similarly troubled bar Brady's Pub directly below, was also notorious for attracting criminals, vagrants, and alcoholics.In the three years it was open, around 130 artists, musicians and performance artists used the space. Artists who exhibited work at Rifle Sport include Shannon Brady, Phillip Johnson, Michael Joo, Ross Knight, Ruthann Godollei, Jan Elftman, Frank Gaard, Melissa Stang, W. Joe Hoppe, Julia Scher, The Slime Clowns (Zingo & Bloppo), Steve Grandell (Venus De Mars), Mann Hawks, Robert Grassel, and Ken Avidor. Bands that performed at the gallery include The Slime Clowns, The Swabs, Ting Kong, Lies Inc., and Chris Strouth's King Paisley and The Pscho-del-ics.The building that housed Rifle Sport was demolished with the rest of Block E in 1988, the victim of downtown redevelopment. The gallery lived on after the demolition, moving near Loring Park, but closed after a year. Its final show was a dual exhibition by artists Stuart Mead and Dean Lucker.An unrelated local band, Rifle Sport, also named after the arcade, established their name before the gallery in 1981.

Opened in 1884, the West Hotel was Minneapolis's first grand hotel. It had 407 luxuriously furnished rooms, 140 baths, and featured an immense and opulent lobby which was claimed to be the largest in the nation. These elements combined to make what was considered for a time to be the most luxurious hotel west of Chicago. The West was designed by LeRoy Buffington and built on land that was once owned by the first resident of Minneapolis, John H. Stevens. Buffington created the West in the Queen Anne style that was quite popular in the last decades of the 19th century. The Queen Anne style featured an elaborate architectural look that included gable roofs, projecting bay windows, towers, and dormer windows. The West combined most of these concepts into a grand, larger than life look that seems graceless to some modern observers but was a popular building style at the time, a style that was introduced in 1876 at the Centennial Exposition in Philadelphia. The West hotel was situated on the southwest corner of the intersection of Hennepin Avenue and Fifth Street (the site currently occupied, in part, by the Shubert Theatre, moved there in 1999), in the center of a burgeoning entertainment district that started coming together in the 1880s and was a temporary home to such well-known public figures as Mark Twain and Winston Churchill. It also catered to delegates of the 1892 Republican National Convention (held at the Exposition Building across the Mississippi River). It was Minneapolis's largest and most luxurious hotel for many years after its construction. In 1906 a large fire burned through the hotel killing 10 people. The adjacent Unique Theater was used as a morgue. That and a general business downturn caused the West to go through a period of decline and finally in 1940 the West Hotel was demolished.

Mayo Clinic Square on Block E in downtown Minneapolis, is a building bounded by Hennepin Avenue, North 6th Street, North 7th Street, and 1st Avenue North. It is part of the Downtown West neighborhood in Minneapolis, historically known as the Warehouse District. It is one block south of the Warehouse District/Hennepin Avenue light rail station on the METRO Blue and Green lines. "Block E" is a City planning department designation of the block; other blocks have similar designations ("Block F," for example, is the adjacent block on which First Avenue and the Pantages Theatre sit.) Block E has a long history which includes theaters, bars, retail, and restaurants. Currently, it is home to basketball practice facilities and front offices of both the Minnesota Timberwolves of the NBA and Minnesota Lynx of the WNBA. Mayo Clinic Square is connected to Target Center via the Minneapolis Skyway System. The building also contains a Mayo Clinic sports medicine facility, which is open to the public. The street-level redevelopment has been spearheaded with the new restaurant City Works.

Target Center is a multi-purpose arena located in Minneapolis, Minnesota, United States. Opening in 1990, it hosts major family shows, concerts, sporting events, graduations and private events. Target Corporation, founded and headquartered in Minneapolis since 1902, is the original and current naming rights partner of the arena.The arena has been the home to the Minnesota Timberwolves of the National Basketball Association (NBA) since its opening and is currently also the home of the Minnesota Lynx of the Women's National Basketball Association (WNBA). The facility has also hosted the LFL's Minnesota Valkyrie, the RHI's Minnesota Arctic Blast and the Arena Football League's Minnesota Fighting Pike in the past. The arena is the second-oldest in the NBA after Madison Square Garden.

The Plymouth Building is a 12-story building in Minneapolis. Built in 1910–1911, it was touted as the world's largest all reinforced concrete office building at the time it was constructed.In 1936 the building's exterior was renovated, removing much of the ornamentation and beaux arts styling in favor of a cleaner and more modern appearance. This style of architecture (somewhat typical of government buildings in the 1930s) is sometimes called "starved classicism."In 2014 the building was added to the National Register of Historic Places on the basis of its unique construction methods. Later that year plans were released to convert the building from office space to a boutique hotel.On August 25, 2016, the Plymouth Building re-opened as the Embassy Suites by Hilton Minneapolis Downtown. It has 290 guest suites, 9,000 square feet of meeting space, as well as a connection to the Lyon's Pub next door.