Killing of Alex Pretti

Whittier is a neighborhood within the Powderhorn community in the U.S. city of Minneapolis, Minnesota, bounded by Franklin Avenue on the north, Interstate 35W on the east, Lake Street on the south, and Lyndale Avenue on the west. It is known for its many diverse restaurants, coffee shops and Asian markets, especially along Nicollet Avenue (also known as "Eat Street"). The neighborhood is home to the Minneapolis Institute of Art, the Minneapolis College of Art and Design, and the Children's Theatre Company. While the neighborhood is officially part of the greater Powderhorn community, it is separated from most of those areas by Interstate 35W, and also lies further north than the rest of the community area. Most of Powderhorn is east of Interstate 35W and south of Lake Street; the Whittier neighborhood is west of I-35W and north of Lake Street. Whittier is often associated with adjacent neighborhoods, such as Lowry Hill East in the Calhoun-Isles community to the west and Stevens Square neighborhood in the Central community to the north.

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 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 Elisha and Lizzie Morse Jr. House is a house in the Whittier neighborhood of Minneapolis, Minnesota, United States, listed on the National Register of Historic Places. The house is designed in the Italian Villa style. Its most distinctive feature is the cupola with shallow arches over paired windows. The siding is also a unique design. The planks were made to look like cut stone by cutting incisions at regular intervals, then painting the siding with a mixture of paint and sand. This technique was rarely practiced in Minnesota architecture, and there are few surviving buildings with this treatment.The house was originally located at 2402 4th Avenue South and was built for grocer Elisha Morse, Jr. and his family as a country home. It was moved to its present location in 1991. Its previous location was radically altered around 1966 during the construction of Interstate 35W, so its current location is more like the original neighborhood on 4th Avenue South.

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.

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.

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.

The Washburn-Fair Oaks Mansion District is a historic district in the Whittier neighborhood of Minneapolis, Minnesota, United States, centered on Washburn-Fair Oaks Park. The city of Minneapolis designated a district bordered by Franklin Avenue, Fourth Avenue South, 26th Street East, and First Avenue South. A smaller district, listed on the National Register of Historic Places, includes seven mansions along and near 22nd Street East.

Area code 612 is a telephone area code in the North American Numbering Plan (NANP) in the U.S. state of Minnesota. The numbering plan area comprises the city of Minneapolis and a few surrounding municipalities such as Fort Snelling, St. Anthony, and Richfield. Geographically, it is the smallest area code in the state of Minnesota. The area code is one of the two original area codes in the 1947 nationwide numbering plan for the state, when it was assigned to a much larger area, including the entire Twin Cities region and a wide area surrounding it.

I-35W & Lake Street is a bus rapid transit station along the METRO Orange Line and planned METRO B Line in Minneapolis, Minnesota. It replaced an inconvenient pair of on-highway bus stops along the outside lanes of I-35W at Lake Street. The station itself cost $20 million and was built as part of the 35W@94: Downtown to Crosstown reconstruction project. The new two-story station is located between I-35W over Lake Street with a transit plaza on Lake Street with a landscaped ramp connecting it to the Midtown Greenway. The old bus stops were not compliant with the Americans with Disabilities Act (ADA) since stairways were the only way pedestrians were able to access the freeway stops to and from Lake Street below. The new station will be ADA-compliant with four elevators (along with ramps and stairs) for a seamless transition between either side of the busway platforms and Lake Street platforms.

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.

Nicollet Park was a baseball ground located in Minneapolis, Minnesota, United States. The venue was home to the minor league Minneapolis Millers of the Western League and later American Association from 1896 to 1955. The ballpark opened on June 20, 1896, with a 13-6 win over Milwaukee. The new grounds were first known as Wright Field, named for one of baseball's founding fathers, Harry Wright. Area newspapers had held a contest and chose that name over "Nicollet Park" among others, awarding season tickets to the winning entrants.[Minneapolis Star-Tribune, June 17, 1896, p.5] The papers acknowledged the built-in pun on "right field", and added to it by describing one hit in the opener as a home run "knocked by the right-fielder, across right field, out of Wright Field." The club owners were not enamored of the name, and it was soon renamed "Nicollet Park", the name "Nicollet" being ubiquitous in Minneapolis then and now. The wooden ballpark was replaced by a steel and concrete structure in 1912. Lights were installed in 1937. The first night game was played on July 16, with the Millers hosting the arch-rival St. Paul Saints. The teams had also played the previous night, in Lexington Park's first night game. The ballpark was on a small block bounded by Nicollet Avenue on the east, 31st Street on the south, Blaisdell Avenue on the west and Lake Street (or 30th Street) on the north in the present-day Lyndale neighborhood. Home plate was in the southwest corner. A small ticket office building with a Spanish-style roof stood outside the right field corner, at the Nicollet-31st intersection. Because of its location, the field dimensions at Nicollet Park favored left-handed batters. The park was considered a "homer haven" because of its official distance down the right-field line, listed as 279 feet. In fact, the distance was actually closer to 260 feet, but this never made it out of the local press. In 1955, the Millers had a team with particular home run prowess, setting the league record by decimating their own franchise record of 217 feet by smashing 241 home runs. The Millers collected 163 (nearly 68%) of those four-baggers at Nicollet Park. With the all-time league home run record in tow, the Millers went on to become the American Association champions that year. Joe Hauser hit 69 homers for the Millers in 1933. Ted Williams also made a bit of a splash here in 1938, on his way up to the major leagues, registering 43 round-trippers to lead the league. Willie Mays was enjoyed by the Minneapolis fans for only a month or so in 1951 before the parent club New York Giants brought the young ballplayer to the big leagues. Nicollet Park, which had opened with a big win 60 years earlier, went out with a bang in September 28, 1955, as the Millers won the American Association championship tournament, and then went on to vie for the Junior World Series championship, facing the Rochester Red Wings of the International League. The series went the distance of seven games, and the finale on September 28 was a close-fought win for the Millers in what was also the final game at Nicollet Park. In 1956 the Millers moved to Metropolitan Stadium in the suburb of Bloomington. The park also held early National Football League games as the Minneapolis Marines and Minneapolis Red Jackets played home games there during the 1920s. In 1944 the Minneapolis Millerettes of the All-American Girls Professional Baseball League called Nicollet Park home. Nicollet Park was also the place that the cereal Wheaties was first advertised. Augsburg University's football team played their home games at Nicollet from 1946 to 1950. The New York Giants and Green Bay Packers played a preseason game on August 29, 1948 at Nicollet Park. In 1955, the ballpark closed. Currently, a condominium building with a Hennepin County Medical Center clinic is located on the north portion of the former baseball park's site, bordered by Lake Street. Until 2020, the south section of the site included a Wells Fargo Bank branch, built originally as a major branch for Norwest Bank, and an external drive-up building positioned near what was once the center field corner. On the night of May 29th, 2020, during the George Floyd protests, the bank and nearby drive-up building were looted and set on fire. As of 2021, the remains of these buildings have since been demolished and plans are underway to rebuild the bank, along with an apartment complex containing at least 200 units of affordable housing. There was a plaque detailing the ballpark's history, though with the bank's demolition, it has been removed.