MINNEAPOLIS: POWDERHORN

[1964, looking south from Downtown] I-35W cuts through Powderhorn Park, the neighborhood where George Floyd was murdered by the police last spring.

From the @mnspokesmanrecorder: “I looked up one morning and they were cutting down trees, which is not something Minneapolis does.” That’s how Walter Foster, who lived on the 4300 block of Second Ave. South, learned that Interstate 35 West was being built in the early 1960s.

Like many others, he learned about the interstate when he saw bulldozers moving into the neighborhood. Why didn’t people know about this before it happened?"

[SegByDesign comment: MnDOT (@mndot) in fact held only one meeting for public comment]

“The construction of 35W in South Minneapolis destroyed close to 900 properties over 50 square blocks. Thousands of people lost homes and businesses to eminent domain beginning in 1958.

It took almost 10 years to complete the South Minneapolis leg of the freeway. Communities split apart as people suffered through its long, messy construction. How was such an enormous project planned without those who lived along its path knowing about it? Did Minneapolitans have a say about the building of the freeway and its path through the city? We remember the effect 94 East had in Rondo in Saint Paul. What about the Southside in Minneapolis?

George Floyd was murdered by Minneapolis Police at the intersection of 38th Street East and Chicago Avenue South, less than 10 blocks from 35W. In between, at 38th Street East and 4th Avenue South, was the heart of an African American community beginning in the 1930s.”