Twin Cities Travelin' Episode Four: The Guthrie Theater and Stone Arch Bridge

Oh Boy! I am late on this one. TOOOOO much going on.

Have you heard this song:

It is my JAM right now.

Anyway back to TCtravels. So my friend Zhenya over at Beingzheyna.com is one of the coolest chics I have ever met. Last Tuesday was her birthday so I knew that we had to have a great day. We decided to hand out in the Saint Anthony Main area. We wanted to go on the Stone Arch Bridge and go to the Guthrie Theater!

We started our day out at Wild Roast Cafe, I had this white chocolate raspberry mocha and Zhenya had some other specialty Mocha that I almost got, and wish I would have because they put it in a cuter cup. And you know how I am with my coffee. The cuter the better.

We both got breakfast too. All in all the drinks were really good, but SUPER sweet. Like too sweet. we both started to feel a little sugar sick and ended up throwing the rest away :(

We started our trek out by walking down on Saint Anthony Main.

Saint Anthony Main is this great little cobble stone road filled with coffee shops, bar patios, shops and condos.

It is very historic and has many spots that you can read about the rich history from the mills and logging industry sitting right on the Mississippi River that Minneapolis has enjoyed since its early beginnings.

One of my favorite parts about it though:

The absolutely amazing views.

This is the Saint Anthony Falls. It runs from the 3rd Avenue Bridge to the Stone Arch Bridge(I will talk about this later). This was the only natural waterfall on the upper Missisippi River, until it had to be replaced by a concrete spillway (still beautiful to look at) in 1869 when the natural rockery collapsed.

The falls were named after Saint Anthony of Padua (Incidentally one of my favorite pictures at the MIA (TCTravels Episode one) is of Saint Anthony of Padua.

I made a specific trip to show Zhenya. They did a whole restoration of the painting. You can find more information about it here!) and this area of Minneapolis used to be a town called St. Anthony. Minneapolis and St. Anthony combined in 1872 to turn into a super milling city. From the late 1800 until 1930 Minneapolis was the "Flour Milling Capital of the World", the St. Anthony Falls, and the Mississippi River helped make this happen.

So we made our way down to the Stone Arch Bridge.

The Stone Arch bridge was designed and built by a railroad guru named James J. Hill (He's kind of a big deal in Minnesota) in 1883. The bridge was built to help the increasing amount of people and goods that needed to cross the river. It is a pedestrian bridge now but once was a working railroad bridge. The Stone Arch Bridge is the only one of it's kind spanning the Mississippi River in any state. It is made of 23 granite from Minnesota and also native limestone arches, measuring 2100 feet long and 28 feet wide.

As you walk along the bridge you can find all of those little view finders that I love. I stopped to look in one that over looked the Guthrie Theater.

We continued to walk the bridge and ended up at the Mill City Ruins.

This is the ruins of what was once the worlds largest flour mill. Gold Metal Flour. On May 2, 1878, a spark ignited airborne flour dust within the mill, creating an explosion that demolished the Washburn A building and killed 18 workers instantly. The fire that happened because of the explosion resulted in four more deaths, destroyed 5 other mills, and reduced Minneapolis' milling capacity by one third.

Down below looked like the ruins in Italy. This is called Mill City Park. You can take a little walking trail down to it.

Next we walked over to the Guthrie Theater. Which I used to work at in a previous life.

Most people know this as a theater. I know it as a building that is open to the public almost every day of the year. You can not go into the theaters if you do not have a ticket to a show but you sure can go look around, get some history of the theater and take some AMAZING pictures. It is a 9 story building where level 1, 4, 5, 9 are open to the public. (For the record I used to work on the 7th floor in the dramaturge department.)

These costumes were down the Procenium Stage Hallway on the Fourth Floor.

Down the way of the Wurtle Thrust Stage Hallway on the Fourth Floor offers this tiny little bar and a great little nook with an over view of the city.

We then walked our way up to the Target Bar. The Target Lounge is this little nook under the Endless Bridge. It was nice to pop in there with no one in it as we were able to crawl into the window spaces and take some pictures.

After we played with selfies we went up onto the Endless Bridge. ***Total Copy Paste from the Guthrie Theater Website coming up*** One of the signature features of the new Guthrie, the cantilevered lobby known as the "Endless Bridge" is an observatory for the Mississippi River falls and landscape. Jean Nouvel's primary goal was to create an exciting and inspiring place for people to gather at the river. The windows on the bridge walls are all set on predetermined sightlines. Framed and "forced perspective" views highlight and give focus to many nearby historical landmarks. Stretching more than half a block (178 feet) from the building face, the 30-foot-wide Endless Bridge towers over West River Parkway. One of the longest occupied cantilevers in the world, the Guthrie's Endless Bridge is quite an engineering feat.

After we had some fun on the bridge (there was an acting camp so there were a ton of kids out there) we went to the Dowling Studio up on the 9th floor, and took a shoefie:

Kidding. Well clearly not...but we did more than that. The Dowling Studio is an "amber glass cantilevered lobby with a breathtaking birds'-eye view of the Mississippi River, the Minneapolis skyline and adjacent landmark." The amber glass makes for this to happen:

I love that picture.

We got lots of shots of Minneapolis too.

I love that you can see the old Gold Medal Flour Sign.

After we explored the Guthrie we went back outside. Zhenya got a picture of her and Anton Chekov

You know. Because she is Russian.

So then I got a picture of me and Tennessee Williams.

You know. Because I am Southern.

We walked back across the Stone Arch Bridge and went down into the trails on the Saint Anthony Main Side of the river. Then we did a little High Fashion Hiking.