In the early 1950s, downtown Minneapolis had a problem. The Gateway District — the city's original downtown, where Hennepin, Washington, and Nicollet Avenues met — had become Skid Row. Three thousand single men lived in cheap hotels and boarding houses. Sixty bars and saloons operated within twenty blocks. The grand buildings of the 1880s and 1890s had aged into flophouses.
Minneapolis's solution was simple: demolish everything. Between 1959 and 1963, the city razed over 200 buildings covering 25 blocks — roughly 40% of downtown. It was the first federally funded urban renewal project in America. When it was done, Minneapolis had erased its birthplace, destroyed its finest Victorian architecture, and displaced thousands of people who had nowhere else to go.
What replaced it? Parking lots. Office buildings. A sea of concrete where a city used to be. The Gateway demolition is now considered one of the greatest urban planning disasters in American history.
The Original Downtown
The Gateway District was Minneapolis. In the 1850s, when the city was barely a settlement, this was where it happened — the intersection where ferries crossed the river, where mills drew workers, where the railroad brought the world. The city's first buildings rose here. Its first businesses opened here. Bridge Square, at the heart of the Gateway, was Minneapolis's Times Square.
By the 1890s, the district had matured into a dense urban neighborhood of handsome commercial buildings. The Metropolitan Building, completed in 1890, was Minneapolis's first skyscraper — a Romanesque brownstone tower that anchored the skyline. Hotels, theaters, banks, and offices crowded the streets. It was the city at its most vital.
"The Gateway was in desperate need of redevelopment. But the solution chosen by the city was an extreme one — total destruction."
— Larry Millett, Historian, "Lost Twin Cities"
The Decline
Like downtowns across America, the Gateway District declined in the early twentieth century. Retail and business moved away from the riverfront. The grand buildings aged. Middle-class residents moved to newer neighborhoods. What remained was housing for people with nowhere else to go.
By the 1940s, the Gateway was home to roughly 3,000 single men — railroad workers between jobs, seasonal laborers from farms and forests, men down on their luck. They lived in SRO hotels (single room occupancy), ate at cheap restaurants, drank at the dozens of bars that lined Washington Avenue. The city called them "bums" and "hobos." They called it home.
The Demolition
Over four years, Minneapolis demolished more than 200 buildings. The wrecking balls didn't discriminate. Victorian commercial blocks came down alongside deteriorated hotels. The Metropolitan Building — the city's first skyscraper, a masterpiece of Romanesque architecture — was demolished in 1962 despite preservation efforts.
One by one, the landmarks fell. The Gateway Pavilion. The Northwestern National Bank building. The Nicollet Hotel. Theaters, churches, bars, hotels — eighty years of Minneapolis history reduced to rubble and trucked away.
What Replaced It
The promised revival never materialized. Downtown Minneapolis didn't boom — it cratered. The Gateway project eliminated the street life that made downtowns work. The new buildings were islands in a sea of parking. The urban fabric that took eighty years to develop was replaced by emptiness.
The Lessons
The Gateway demolition is now a cautionary tale taught in urban planning schools. It demonstrated that "slum clearance" destroys more than it creates. That displacing people doesn't solve poverty — it just moves it. That historic buildings, once gone, are gone forever. That parking lots are not progress.
Minneapolis eventually learned. Later urban renewal projects were more targeted, more preservationist, more humane. The city that razed the Gateway now protects its remaining historic buildings. But the lesson cost 200 buildings, 3,000 displaced people, and the birthplace of Minneapolis.
Other cities learned too — often by watching Minneapolis's mistakes. The Gateway project helped spark the historic preservation movement. It showed what happened when cities surrendered to the wrecking ball. Some cities listened. Others repeated the errors. The debate continues.
Walk through downtown Minneapolis today and you'll find no trace of the Gateway District. The Metropolitan Building is gone. Bridge Square is gone. The intersection where Minneapolis was born is now a plaza surrounded by office buildings. The 3,000 men who lived there scattered to the wind.
Minneapolis traded its history for modernity and got parking lots. It traded its first downtown for a second one that took decades to become livable. It traded the messiness of a real city for the sterility of a planned one. Some deals can't be undone. The Gateway is gone, and it isn't coming back.
Finding What Remains
The Gateway District occupied roughly the area bounded by Washington Avenue, Hennepin Avenue, and the riverfront. The Minneapolis Central Library now sits on part of the site. The Mill City Museum and Stone Arch Bridge are nearby but were not part of the demolition zone. The Minnesota Historical Society has extensive photographs of the Gateway before demolition.
