Men posing near a large Christmas tree to be put up between the fountain and pavilion building in Gateway Park.

Unnamed man on the corner of Washington Avenue, 1959.

The Brody Loan Company at 115 Washington Avenue South, Minneapolis, 1950s. Customers could pawn dress clothing and jewelry at the store or use them as collateral for payday loans. Photograph by Dick Palen.

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.