The Mill City Museum

MILL CITY MUSEUM. By Libby Norris, Chelsea White, Nikki Fulton, Matt Billitteri and Ashley Miller

THE SITE and our DOCUMENTATION:

The Mill City Museum is located in the heart of Minneapolis on the Mississippi River. It is a museum that is dedicated to the preservation of the historic ruins of the former Washburn A Flour Mill and to the education of the community about the history of Minneapolis’ milling industry, which essentially gave birth to the commercial city we know today. The most noticeable feature of the Mill City Museum is the “Gold Medal Flour” lighted sign that has become an icon for Minneapolis. It can actually be seen from the U of M campus. The sign is part of the old flour mill and the museum has been built into the old flour mill. In 1991 the abandoned mill, which was once the largest flour mill in the world but was shut down in 1965, caught fire. This fire sparked an interest in preserving the building as a historic site and the Minnesota Historical Society began working on plans to create a museum. When approaching the museum, we immediately noticed how unique the building is in its ability to blend old mill ruins with innovative modern architecture. The façade of the building is eight stories of layered glass panels. The façade faces the Mississippi River and from inside the museum, it provides spectacular views of the river. There is a boardwalk along the edge of the courtyard area where you enter the building. The courtyard is housed within the original brick and limestone walls of the original mill and contains other ruins from the mill left behind after the fire. Windows are left with shattered glass. Twisted metal beams are left exposed from the walls. This courtyard gives you an eerie feeling like you are truly stepping back in time. Informational plaques provide background information about the history of the flour mill and the equipment ruins that are displayed in the courtyard. Inside the courtyard, straight ahead lies the giant glass façade. Life size prints of milling machinery are on some of the glass panels. Entering the building, you can precede into the paid portion of the museum where there are exhibits about the flour and tree milling industry, the history of Minneapolis and its industrial roots and more. If you do not wish to pay, you follow the stairs up to the street level plaza. As you come up the stairs, the first thing you see is a boxcar from a train. Train tracks lead into the museum from outside, left behind from the operating days of the mill. There are more informational pieces about the history of the mill, the city of Minneapolis and the Mississippi River. There are gallery spaces that display works of art about Minneapolis in this area and a museum gift shop. Outside and around the riverbanks, there are more informational plaques describing the importance of the river to the milling industry and the rise of Minneapolis as a center for industry.

A common question would be what’s the importance of this and why does this museum about the milling industry and power of the Mississippi river impact us? This is something we all asked ourselves before digging deep into the significance of this place. Originally, power from St. Anthony falls became the source of power for both the sawmilling and flour milling industries in Minneapolis and the falls slowly became the mighty strength of this future famous landmark. The growth and success of this Washburn A mill, which was powered from the falls, was extremely significant to the people in society and specifically workers in industries at this time due to its high energy source and technological advancements. Our city was rapidly changing and we were staying right on top of this developing city. So now years and years later something needed to be done or in this case needed to be built, in order to create a story to reinforce the significance of this mill in the history of our culture.

As established above, The Mill City Museum was built on the ruins of the mill along the banks of the Mississippi. After being constructed in 1874 it added to the foundation of the city of Minneapolis and was declared the largest flourmill of its time. This museum represents how big this industry was in Minneapolis and how the community, nature and workers came together to form and preserve the “Flour Milling Capital of the World”. This was a great place to go as an historic place to visit for our project group. We should all care and be impacted by this historic landmark due to the fact that it is so much a part of the city where we go to school in and contributed to the development of Minneapolis forever. Now, all we had to do was examine or data we found about the story of the history of our city, and see HOW the history is being presented/represented what arguments does the presentation make on the history and identity of Minneapolis.

ANALYZING THE OUR DATA:

THE STORY BEING TOLD and OUR ANALYSIS: The Mill City Museum attempts to recreate the Washburn A Mill for people in the present to learn about the milling industry and understand how the milling industry—and essentially the Mississippi River, which provided power for the milling industry to start—has played a major role in forming the identity of the city of Minneapolis. Before the milling industry sprung up in Minneapolis, the city’s population was only about 13,000 and after through the growth of the milling industry, the population swelled to 165,000. Minneapolis became considered the “Flour Milling Capital of the World.” The museum tells the story of the role of the milling industry in the history of Minneapolis. Many different means are used by the museum to get the information they want to share to the desired audience, including reading displays, photos, videos, hands-on activities, an elevator ride, and role-play characters. But in order to understand the museums ultimate goal in displaying history, a few important questions must be asked… Who is the audience? What perspectives are shared and which are left out? Who is paying for or supporting this museum? These questions actually have very interesting answers that we found to be crucial in understanding how the Mill City Museum is presenting the history of the milling industry for people today. The museum does a good job in incorporating many different perspectives of the milling industry. Groups that are represented by the museum are the founders, owners and mill executives that profited greatly from the industry and were influential in the development of the city of Minneapolis as an economic center, the authorities of the city of Minneapolis who helped the milling industry to get started in the city, the mill workers themselves who put in the hours of hard labor to make a living for their families, and even the Native Americans who really lost a lot of their important land and livelihood due to the expansion of the city and development of the river. These perspectives allow for the same story to be told from different viewpoints spanning across ethnic backgrounds and economic status. But it becomes more interesting when we realized what perspectives are given in certain parts of the museum. The museum consists of free displays—open to the public—and a paid portion of the museum. The free areas only tell the stories of prosperity and the history from the viewpoints of owners, and city authorities. These free displays focus on how much of a positive impact the milling industry had in creating the identity of Minneapolis as an industrial power. These displays all imply that the milling industry was the best thing to happen to the city of Minneapolis. Only once you enter the paid portion of the museum do visitors get to see the story from different viewpoints not represented in the “prosperity” side of the story. In the paid portion are the stories of the Dakota and Ojibwa Indians who lost their sacred land of the St. Anthony falls as the mills developed the river area to generate power. For these Native American groups, the river gave them their identity. The milling industry stripped them of their identity and used the river for a new identity, an identity of economic and industrial power. This story is only told to the audiences willing to pay. The stories of mill workers who are the unsung heroes behind the whole milling boom are only told to those willing to pay, too. It is ironic because most often it is the more affluent people who will pay (from $5-$10) to enter this part of the museum. Therefore, people who are Native American’s themselves or possibly lower working class people who cannot afford to pay, do not get to see their parts of the story told. They do not learn their own history and identity, and instead are given a sense that they are just another part of this whole prosperity that came about because of the mills. We have learned from this project that economics drives history. The general population wants to hear about the city’s prosperity and all the greatness that has come from the milling industry. Most people do not want to hear about all the bad things that happened in order for a section of the population to get rich. Like any establishment involving money, the Mill City Museum is ultimately a business. The main goal of a business, even a museum, is to generate popularity so as to keep up with the costs of operation. The best examples of money influencing the museum's content are the differences between the free portion of the museum and the paid portion. Because the museum wishes to paint a good picture of the time period to all, only the grandest details are shared in the free area. If someone is going to pay money to enter, the museum's designers can feel safe that the customer will read thoroughly enough to allow for more not-so-dazzling details, and still acquire the overall perception of "our mill was great." It is important to charge a fee to get into the museum because regulation is necessary in containing the aged artifacts and history within the building. However, because the general population is not directly financing the museum, rather the money goes towards the finances for the museum through the Historical Society, the Historical Society has the power to influence what does and does not go into the museum e.g. lacking information about the Dakota and Ojibwa tribes and the lower class throughout the public area of the museum. The Mill City Museum, while being the source for interesting and valuable information about Minneapolis’ past, argues the main portion of visitors to only have the viewpoint that the milling industry was had a completely positive effect of the city of Minneapolis and does not encourage the general public to look at the negative aspects of the history of the mills and how the mills effected 3^rd parties. Unless you are willing to pay, you only get the economically driven part of history.