Christian missions like Gateway Gospel provided meals and beds to homeless residents of the Gateway district.

The neoclassically-inspired park was Minneapolis’ first attempt to revitalize the old downtown. Two blocks of buildings, including the old city hall and several saloons, were razed to make way for the park in 1915, and the 650-room Nicollet hotel was completed soon afterwards. Photograph by Norton and Peel company.

Front and center is Minneapolis’s old city hall, constructed in 1873 on the narrow lot between Hennepin(right) and Nicollet(left) avenues. The wide open space often served as a farmer’s market.

Laborers standing outside the Employment Bureau in the Minneapolis neighborhood that became known as the Gateway District, 1908. Shown in the window are postings for work as a “steam driller” for $2.50 a day near the city, and a posting for a bridge carpenter position in Missoula. Day laborers came by rail from all over the Midwest to Minneapolis’s “Bridge Square” to find work and blow off steam in saloons. Named for its proximity to the series of bridges over the Mississippi on the current site of Hennepin Avenue, the area was derided as early as the 1880s as a gathering spot for working-class and unemployed men, sex workers, and others deemed “unsavory.”

Street view of Washington Avenue, Minneapolis, 1960s. Pictured are the Beacon Hotel (40 Washington Avenue South), the Gay Nineties Tavern, and the Body Loan Office (42 Washington Avenue South).

Guadalupe Area Project, an adult education program, exhibiting and selling products at the Career Expo, Neighborhood House, in West Side St. Paul, April 1975.

Brown Berets marching in Mexican Celebration Parade, St. Paul, September 15, 1972.

Aerial view of the West Side of St. Paul during flooding, 1952.

Children playing softball at the playground of Our Lady of Guadalupe (Nuestra Señora de Guadalupe) Church on St. Paul’s West Side, ca. 1950. At the time, the church stood at the corner of Concord Street (later Cesar Chavez Street) and South Andrew Street.