Lost Twin Cities

I recently watched the second installment of TPT's "Lost Twin Cities" series from the mid-'90s, based on Larry Millett's book by the same name. (Yes, the same Larry Millett who gets my hackles up whenever I think about his Sherlock Holmes stories.) While the segments about Northwest's Stratocruiser and the downfall of Porky's Drive-Ins were boringly quaint, the series really delivered when it described the tragedy of lost architecture in St. Paul and the racial unity (however brief it was) around jazz at the Treasure Inn.

Treasure Inn sax player Percy Hughes wistfully described the turning point in the Inn's life:

There was an argument. And all of a sudden there were gunshots. And I remember kneeling behind, of all things, my music stand, which wouldn't stop a bullet. No way! And a dear friend of mine was killed. He was shot. And my heart just went out to Dick and Claude and Howard [the club's owners]. But to see a club, black and white and everyone just enjoying, there's a beautiful message there. We need more messages like that right now.

The most heartbreaking segment was about the callous destruction by St. Paul officials of the culture and homes at Swede Hollow on the east side of the city. Tucked away in a ravine that you can only access through an old railroad tunnel -- and towered over by brewer magnate Theodore Hamm's mansion -- Swede Hollow was the home of numerous waves of immigrants who couldn't afford to live anywhere else. Sure, the Hollow probably wasn't the safest or healthiest place to live, but why slash and burn (quite literally, by the way) when you could help the residents build safe homes up to public health standards instead of shipping them all off to apartments?

On the upside, at least Minneapolis' Urban Adventurers, the Action Squad, have found pleasure in exploring the abandoned ruins of Hamm's Brewery. Until the brewery gets razed by the city, that is.