Join MNSAH for our events and tours. Although our name sounds exclusive, we are not. In fact, many MNSAH members are simply people who love architecture and are eager to experience the fascinating built environment of Minnesota and the Upper Midwest with their fellow enthusiasts.
MNSAH Fall Tour 2026 – University of Minnesota – St. Paul Campus
MNSAH Fall Tour
University of Minnesota – St. Paul Campus
Past Events
MNSAH 2023 Annual Meeting
This year’s annual meeting presentation features Jane King Hession, who will speak about her Gebhard Award-winning book Elizabeth Scheu Close: A Life in Modern Architecture.
Elizabeth “Lisl” Scheu Close (1912-2011), a pioneering woman in the field of architecture, left an indelible mark on Minnesota’s built landscape during her long career. In 1938, with her husband, architect Winston Close, she founded the first practice in the state dedicated to modern design. Over the next six decades, the firm designed more than 250 modern residences as well as medical and laboratory facilities.
Works in Progress
MNSAH invites you to attend Works in Progress on Wednesday, March 1, 2023, at 7:00 p.m. via Zoom.
Our presentations include:
Fall Tour 2022
MNSAH’s Fall Tour features a walking tour of both Peavey Plaza and the Loring Greenway in downtown Minneapolis, which were designed by New York landscape architect M. Paul Friedberg, who promoted an innovative approach to urban design, the park plaza. Using urban materials, such as concrete and metal, and rectilinear rather than curvilinear forms, the park plaza was a modern counterpoint to the picturesque greenery that had characterized parks until that time.
The Greenway and Peavey were embraced by the community and received broad acclaim for their pioneering design. After decades of hard use, though, they were deteriorating by the twenty-first century. When the city introduced a plan to overhaul Peavey that would have destroyed the original design, preservationists rallied to list the property in the National Register, and Preservation Alliance of Minnesota (now Rethos) and The Cultural Landscape Foundation brought a lawsuit under the Minnesota Environmental Rights Act. The city ultimately rehabilitated the plaza in accordance with the Secretary of the Interior’s Standards, retaining its historic character while making modifications to meet modern environmental and accessibility requirements.
Works in Progress 2022
MNSAH invites you to attend Works in Progress on Thursday, February 17, 2022, at 7:00 p.m. via Zoom.
Rebecca Walker will present her research titled “Greenspace, White Space: Race, Real Estate, and the Minneapolis Park and Recreation Board.” Her research explores the intertwined history of racial inequality and parks in Minneapolis. Using the first complete digitized metro-wide map of racial covenants and archival data from 1910-1930 on greening campaigns by the Minneapolis Park and Recreation Board, this project examines how real estate developers used legal and infrastructural technology to transform Minneapolis’s physical and social landscape. Through both parks and racial covenants, developers capitalized on the ideas of both Whiteness and idealized “nature,” creating exclusive White spaces of environmental privilege. She considers how this history continues to shape Minneapolis, producing persistent environmental inequalities and shaping the politics of greenspace in cities today.
Fall Tour 2021
In a secluded cove on a quiet bay, a barn in a 58-acre wooded setting rises majestically above the water. This image might not be particularly surprising if it were not located on Lake Minnetonka, one of the state’s most popular lakes where homes crowd the shoreline and an undeveloped parcel of land is rare.
The barn was part of the farm on the former Noerenberg estate, now operated by Three Rivers Park District and known as Noerenberg Gardens. The public may visit the gardens, which are located on a 16-acre parcel overlooking Crystal Bay. But the barn and land associated with the farm, which overlook Maxwell Bay, are separated from the gardens by North Shore Drive and are rarely open to the public.
Spring Event 2021
Related to our status as a Consulting Party in the Phelps Mill Section 106 review, MNSAH is hosting a special presentation on the mill’s history and significance. Historical consultant Susan Granger, principal at Gemini Research in Morris, Minn., will summarize the extensive research she conducted as an initial consultant to the U.S. Fish & Wildlife Service (FWS), lead federal agency for the project.
