Day THREE | Minni-ha-ha

      The Savanna Studio day started as you would suppose.  Thunderstorms in the forecast, windy, cold, and some interesting attire, namely shorts with tights on a couple of very weathered guys.  Heidi Holdiman, our guest professor AND A FOLLOWER OF OUR BLOG! was broadcasting her knowledge on the history of Minneapolis.  So we started by the Mississippi River and proceeded over the Stone Arch Bridge designed by James J Hill who was a railroad magnate in the mid 1800's.  

Mississippi River and Stone Arch Bridge from
atop of the City Mill Museum's balcony.

      Next, we sauntered over to Minneapolis Riverfront District.  Here Heidi started her key point about the factories and industries located on the riverbanks that formed the stepping-stone to what we know Minneapolis as today.  The industries included logging and milling.  We saw factories like Pillsbury Mill A, a flourmill, which was rundown but is going to be restored as ritzy condominiums.  We also saw across the river the remains of the Gold Medal Flour mill.  Also in the riverfront district was St. Anthony's Main that over the last one hundred years has had a series of booms and busts in its use.  

New Urbanism?

     Next on our agenda, we headed to the Nicolette Island.  This is the stepping-stone for pedestrians over the river.  This is where we were introduced to New Urbanism, which is new designs built to express materiality, scale, or essence of the old.  

Critiquing 2 and 5 minute sketches

     Heidi commanded in her own special way... for us to develop our skills in the art of gestural sketching, aka frantic 3rd grade scribbles.  It was challenging to really loosen up and understand that yes, drawing messy, is okay (thanks 131 teachers).

Mill City Ruins and Museum

      After lunch we continued in our nostalgic trip back to the third grade with watercolors!  But what we found is that for our first time we're kicked some watercolor booty.  After that excitement we headed to our final destination, the Mill City Museum, which was A. warm, and B. dry so anything for us would have been great.  But to our surprise the museum was really interesting, and stellar according to Morgan.  Here we learned during "Minneapolis in 19 Minutes"," that the name Minneapolis originated from the indigenous word Minni-ha-ha meaning running water and Polis meaning city.  The best feature was the Flour Tower, unfortunately not a theme park ride, but similar.  Here we watched a sequenced history of the milling industry of the Mill City Museum and eventually ended up on a balcony on top of the ruins of the mill.  

      As the last day in Minneapolis we felt that although we were cold and damp with runny noses galore and some interesting rain suit attire, we had a good understanding of urban landscapes especially that of Minneapolis.  Most of all we want to thank Heidi for trekking up to Minneapolis and helping all us Savanna kids understand the concept of urban landscapes.

- Morgan and Mark

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