St. Anthony Falls Historic District

The story

Written by AI from this property's National Register nomination and the record above; every sentence is checked against its sources before it appears here. Corrections: privacy@treealive.com

St. Anthony Falls Historic District is a historic district along the Mississippi River in Minneapolis, Hennepin County, between Plymouth and South 10th Avenues. It was listed in the National Register in 1971, and its 39 contributing buildings, 37 sites and 14 structures represent the mills, dams and power plants built around the falls.

Why it's listed

It was listed under criteria A, C and D, with state level significance in industry, commerce, engineering, transportation, exploration and settlement, architecture, social history and historic non-aboriginal archeology.

Physical character

Its buildings are mostly brick and limestone, on foundations of stone, concrete or concrete block, with roofs of metal, slate or shake. Water is managed through timber-crib and wing dams, a rock-filled timber-crib dam, and a limestone headrace and conduit, while power buildings added brick-and-concrete boiler houses and a cylindrical concrete smokestack. Individual buildings range from Greek Revival and Second Empire designs with mansard roofs to a Queen Anne commercial style, some with Palladian-type windows.

Historical context

The St. Anthony Falls Dam was built from 1856 to 1858, and in 1872 C. A. Pillsbury and Company bought a mill site there and made it the Empire Mill; Northwestern Consolidated Milling Company acquired other mill property in 1891. The Hennepin Island Plant, completed in 1908 as the nation's first surplus-power hydroelectric installation, became property of Northern States Power Company in 1923, and the company added a hydroelectric generating unit in 1932.