Mill City Museum

Coordinates: 44°58′46″N 93°15′26″W / 44.97938°N 93.25711°W / 44.97938; -93.25711

Mill City Museum
Established	2003
Location	704 South 2nd Street Minneapolis, Minnesota, USA
Type	History Museum
Director	Laura Salveson
Public transit access	Bus: 3, 7, 16, 22, 50, 55, 94, Hiawatha Line
Website	http://www.millcitymuseum.org/
Washburn A Mill Complex
U.S. National Register of Historic Places
U.S. National Historic Landmark
The Washburn A Mill complex in Minneapolis, Minnesota. The blue structure jutting out beyond the grain elevators is the skybridge from the new Guthrie Theater. The two buildings on the right are historic buildings that have been retrofitted for residential use.
Location:	1st St., S. at Portland Ave. Minneapolis, MN
Built:	1879
Governing body:	Minnesota Historical Society
NRHP Reference#:	83004388
Significant dates
Added to NRHP:	May 4, 1983[1]
Designated NHL:	May 4, 1983[2]

Mill City Museum is a Minnesota Historical Society museum in Minneapolis. It opened in 2003, built in the ruins of the Washburn "A" Mill next to Mill Ruins Park on the banks of the Mississippi River. It focuses on the founding and growth of Minneapolis, especially flour milling and the other industries which used water power from Saint Anthony Falls.

The mill complex, dating from the 1870s, is listed on the National Register of Historic Places. It is part of the St. Anthony Falls Historic District and within the National Park Service's Mississippi National River and Recreation Area.

Exhibits

The museum features exhibits about the history of Minneapolis, flour milling machinery, a water lab and a baking lab. The centerpiece of the exhibit is the multi-story Flour Tower, in which visitors sit in the cab of a freight elevator and are taken to different floors of the building, each designed to look like a floor in a working flour mill. Voices of people who worked in the Washburn A Mill are heard throughout the show. Visitors exit on the 8th floor, where extant equipment is interpreted by staff, and are then lead to the ninth floor observation deck to view St. Anthony Falls.

The Gold Medal Flour sign still shines at night at the top of the adjoining grain elevator. Across the river, the former competitor Pillsbury A Mill is topped with a sign reading "Pillsbury's Best Flour."

Local Artists

The work of local artists is featured throughout the building. Pieces by Joann Verburg, Tom Maakestad, Kim Lawler, Kathleen Richert, Paul Wrench and Becky Schurmann include murals, an art glass collage, a 15' Bisquick box, and sculpture.

Mill City Live

Mill City Museum began an outdoor concert series named "Mill City Live" in the summer of 2004. The concerts are held in the museum's Ruin courtyard and features Twin Cities bands of various genres. "Mill City Live" was traditionally held on the first and third Thursdays of June, July, August, and September, however in 2009 and 2010 concerts will be held every Thursday in July and August

List of Bands/Performers
Year	Band/Performer	Band/Performer	Band/Performer	Band/Performer	Band/Performer	Band/Performer	Band/Performer	Band/Performer
2004	Tim Mahoney	Adam Levy	Ellis	Big Ditch Road	Kraig Johnson; Member of Run Westy Run, Iffy, The Jayhawks, and Golden Smog	Mark Mallman	Jessy Greene	The Owls
2005	Adam Levy	Nachito Herrera	The Hopefuls	Willie Walker and the Butanes	Faux Jean	Dana Thompson	Mark Olson; Founding Member of The Jayhawks	Spaghetti Western String Co
2006	The Hopefuls	Charlie Parr	New Primitives	Chris Koza	Yawo	Desdamona	Becky Schlegel	The Ashtray Hearts
2007	The Brass Kings	The New Congress	Molly Maher and Her Disbelievers	White Light Riot	JoAnna James	Salsa Del Soul	The Alarmists	Kip Blackshire
2008	The Owls	Romantica	M.anifest	Roma di Luna	Salsabrosa	Jelloslave	Kid Dakota	Little Man
2009	Jeremy Messersmith	Gospel Gossip	Caroline Smith and the Good Night Sleeps	Charanga Tropical	First Communion Afterparty	The Butanes
2010	Koerner & Glover	Aby Wolf	Joey Ryan & the Inks	Salsa Del Soul	The 757s	Idle Hands	Black Blondie

Washburn A Mill

Front of building

The first Washburn A Mill, built by C. C. Washburn in 1874, was declared the largest flour mill in the world upon its completion, and contributed to the development of Minneapolis. On May 2, 1878, a spark ignited airborne flour dust within the mill, creating an explosion that demolished the Washburn A and killed 14 workers instantly. The ensuing fire resulted in the deaths of four more people, destroyed five other mills, and reduced Minneapolis’s milling capacity by one third. Known as the Great Mill Disaster, the explosion made national news and served as a focal point that led to reforms in the milling industry. In order to prevent the buildup of combustible flour dust, ventilation systems and other precautionary devices were installed in mills throughout the country.

By 1880, a new Washburn A Mill, designed by Austrian engineer William de la Barre, opened as the largest flour mill in the world, a designation it retained until the Pillsbury A Mill opened across the river in 1881. At the peak of the Washburn A Mill's production, it could grind over 100 boxcars of wheat into almost 2,000,000 pounds of flour per day. An ad from the 1870s advertised, "Forty-one Runs of Stone. Capacity, 1,200 Barrels per Day. This is the largest and most complete Mill in the United States, and has not its equal in quantity and quality of machinery for making high and uniform grades of Family Flour in this country." Advertising hyperbole aside, the mill, along with the Pillsbury A Mill and other flour mills powered by St. Anthony Falls, contributed greatly to the development of Minneapolis.^[3]

Washburn later teamed up with John Crosby to form the Washburn-Crosby Company, which later became General Mills.^[4]

After World War I, flour production in Minneapolis began to decline as flour milling technology no longer depended on water power. Other cities, such as Buffalo, New York became more prominent in the milling industry. Later on in the mill's lifetime, General Mills started putting more emphasis on producing cereals and baking mixes and shifted away from flour milling. The mill was shut down in 1965, along with eight other of the oldest mills operated by General Mills, and left in disuse.

In 1991, a fire nearly destroyed the old mill, but during the late 1990s, the city of Minneapolis, through the Minneapolis Community Development Agency, worked to stabilize the mill ruins. After the City of Minneapolis had cleaned up the rubble and fortified the mill's charred walls, the Minnesota Historical Society announced plans to construct a milling museum and education center within the ruins. Construction on the museum began in March 2001. Designed by Tom Meyer, principal for the architectural firm Meyer, Scherer & Rockcastle, the museum is a new building, built with the ruin walls of the 1880 Washburn A Mill. Efforts were made to retain as much of the historic fabric of the building as was possible. Many features of the Washburn A Mill were left intact, including turbine pits, railroad tracks, a train shed and two engine houses.

Gallery

• 

  1878 Stereograph rendering of the Great Mill Disaster.

• 

  An 1879 boxcar shows how railroads transported wheat to the mills, and flour to market.

• 

  A millstone used in previous flour milling processes.

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  Equipment used in the roller milling process.

References

1. ^ "National Register Information System". National Register of Historic Places. National Park Service. 2006-03-15. http://nrhp.focus.nps.gov/natreg/docs/All_Data.html. 
2. ^ "Washburn A Mill Complex". National Historic Landmark summary listing. National Park Service. http://tps.cr.nps.gov/nhl/detail.cfm?ResourceId=1868&ResourceType=Building. Retrieved 2007-11-06. 
3. ^ George R. Adams and James B. Gardner (September 1978). National Register of Historic Places Inventory-Nomination: Washburn A Mill ComplexPDF (1.11 MiB). National Park Service.  and Accompanying 7 images, including photos from 1978.PDF (692 KiB)
4. ^ "Falls of St. Anthony". A History of Minneapolis. Minnesota Public Library. http://www.mpls.lib.mn.us/history/eh5.asp. Retrieved 2007-08-02. 

External links

• Mill City Museum Homepage
• Mill City History Portal