Minnesota Architecture: Cream of Wheat HQ

Posted at 12:27 PM on July 25, 2011 by Marianne Combs
Filed under: Architecture, Arts around the state, We Art Minnesota

Sometimes it's not just the architecture that draws us to a building, but the childhood memories it evokes.

Cream of Wheat, Minneapolis
Photo by Stuart Klipper

Such was the case for photographer Stuart Klipper. Here's his nomination:

I moved to Minneapolis from NYC nearly 41 years to the date.

I quickly began exploring. I wanted to get a handle on the place I had plopped myself down in. An early and exultant discovery was the Cream of Wheat HQ on Stinson Blvd. in one of the industrial quadrants of the city I was drawn to.

From the moment I laid mine eyes on it, I've claimed it to be my favorite building in the known universe. Florid phrasing; but really not hyperbole.

It was archetypal! It bore a cast of purity and authenticity. It was a plainspoken and forthright structure. It was heraldic of American enterprise, and ideals. Standing apart and four-square, flag gloriously rampant at the apex of its tower, I marveled at its bearing and presence.

Across its façade, the name of a favorite cereal of childhood. Yum! I still can sing its advertising jingle.

I am a photographer and have perennially returned to the building and its immediate surrounds to make pictures of it again and again.

Here's what else I was able to find out about the website on the City of Minneapolis website:

The Cream of Wheat Company exemplifies the business spawned in the late nineteenth century by the Midwest's flourishing agricultural economy. Drawn to Minneapolis by the region's dominance in the grain-milling industry, the fledgling company grew to become a major player in the hot cereal market. A symbol of the company's success was its 1927-28 corporate headquarters and factory at 730 Stinson Boulevard. The Cream of Wheat Building, with its prominent corner tower, is of architectural interest as well. Featuring a classic 1920s design that seamlessly incorporates office and factory uses, the building is further enhanced by its setback from Stinson Boulevard and the landscaped yards that surround it on three sides. The noteworthy design by engineer Walter H. Wheeler served the Cream of Wheat Company for several decades until Kraft Foods purchased the company and relocated it in 2002.

Now you can actually live in the old Cream of Wheat Company building - it's been converted into "CW Lofts."

Thanks to Stuart Klipper for his nomination. Have a building you admire, that you'd like to share? Send a photo or two along with your nomination to mcombs@mpr.org.

Architect Leonard Parker dies at age 90

Posted at 4:57 PM on July 25, 2011 by Euan Kerr (1 Comments)
Filed under: Architecture

Leonard Parker, known for his work designing the Humphrey School and the Mondale Law school at the University of Minnesota, the Minneapolis Convention Center and the original Minnesota Public Radio building died Sunday at age 90.

Parker whose parents were travelling across Poland in a wagon when he was born, moved to Milwaukee as a boy. After a stint in the army in World War II, during which he took part in the liberation of the Dachau death camp, he returned to the US and ended up going to School at the University of Minnesota architecture school.

After getting a masters in architecture at MIT he joined modernist Eero Saarinen's firm, and worked on two of his significant US projects, the St Louis Gateway Arch and Christ Church Lutheran in Minneapolis. Following Saarinen's death he formed The Leonard Parker Associates in 1958.

The list of his projects is significant: Minnesota Public Radio (1979), the Mondale Law School at the University of Minnesota (with one of the earliest green roofs in Minnesota 1978), the Humphrey Center (1988), the Minneapolis Convention Center (1989 & 2002), an addition to the Minneapolis Institute of Art with Kenzo Tange (1974), the Minnesota Judicial Center (1998), the Totino Fine Arts Northwestern College (1974), the South Korea Embassy in Ottawa (1996), and the US Embassy in Santiago Chile (1994).

Parker also taught at the University of Minnesota for many years, and many of his students have gone on to have significant careers themselves.

Services for Leonard Parker will be held at Temple Israel in Minneapolis on Wednesday afternoon.

You can listen to Marianne Comb's 2005 interview with Leonard Parker in the second part of a Voices of Minnesota program posted here.

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