Neighborhoods of Minneapolis

Minneapolis is officially defined by its city council as divided into 83 neighborhoods. The neighborhoods are historically grouped into 11 communities. Informally, there are city areas with colloquial labels. Residents may also group themselves by their city street suffixes, North, Northeast, South, Southeast, and Southwest.

Description[edit]

General areas[edit]

The local community defines several general areas based on the directional suffixes added to streets in the city. These city areas do not necessarily correlate with official community or neighborhood definitions.

Downtown Minneapolis refers to the street grid area aligned on a diagonal with the Mississippi River bend, as opposed to the true north-south grid orientation. The area north of downtown on the west bank of the Mississippi River is considered North Minneapolis. The part of Minneapolis on the east bank of the Mississippi River is divided by East Hennepin Avenue into Northeast and Southeast, approximately aligned with the communities of Northeast and University, respectively.

The entire area south of downtown is widely called South Minneapolis. The westerly portion surrounding the city's Chain of Lakes is loosely labeled Southwest Minneapolis, bounded on the east by I-35W and on the north by 36th St W, which extends west from Bde Maka Ska to the city limits.

Common conceptions of Minneapolis neighborhoods do not always align with official city maps. Residents on the borders of surrounding cities may sometimes say they live in a bordering community. Twin Cities residents and visitors frequently use generalized names based on geography, such as "North Minneapolis". What most people would consider North Minneapolis is a combination of the Near North and Camden communities, each of which is made up of several neighborhoods.^[2] This also applies to neighborhoods, with residents living by definition in one neighborhood, but classifying themselves in another.

Official designations[edit]

The Minneapolis City Council, made up of one representative from each of the city's 13 wards, has legislative authority to define neighborhood boundaries. Community and neighborhood boundaries are not the same as the Ward boundaries, which are adjusted after each decennial census.^[3][4]

Minneapolis consists of 83 neighborhoods.^[5] On creating the neighborhood designation, the city grouped these neighborhoods into 11 communities, containing between 4 and 13 neighborhoods each.^[6] The official neighborhoods have a variety of origins; some were formed out of the attendance areas for elementary schools, while others are the areas of coverage of neighborhood associations activists formed between 1901 and the 1980s. Most of these neighborhoods are represented by one of 69 Neighborhood Associations, some of which cover multiple neighborhoods.^[7] In 2023, the organizations serving Beltrami and Northeast Park merged, taking the number down from 70.^[8]

The division of the city into official neighborhoods and communities occurred as part of the Neighborhood Revitalization Program (NRP) in the early 1990s. They remain associated with this community-based funding program^[9] and are also used for statistical purposes.^[10] For NRP purposes, some of the neighborhoods have combined forces, leading to a total of 67 NRP neighborhood action plans.^[11] As of 2024, the NRP is under the Neighborhood and Community Relations department,^[12] which also oversees neighborhood organizations, community engagement projects, and language services for the city.^[13]

Neighborhoods historically defined themselves around schools and commercial hubs, and many trace their identities to community organizations formed in the early 20th century. The oldest, the Prospect Park Association, formed in 1901 to oppose city plans to level Tower Hill.^[14] In other neighborhoods, the current official neighborhood association was formed in the 1970s and 1980s; in Linden Hills, the organization was formed in 1972 in response to proposed changes in the park, but several social and commercial organizations in the neighborhood dated to the neighborhood's development at the turn of the 20th century.^[15]

City officials in 2020 designated seven new cultural districts along major commercial corridors to promote racial equity, preserve cultural identity, and promote economic growth.^[16][17] Due to their location on major roads, many of these districts straddle the borders between neighborhoods.^[18] The seven cultural districts are defined by the city as 38th Street, Cedar Avenue South, Central Avenue, East Lake Street, Franklin Avenue East, West Broadway, and Lowry Avenue North.^[19]

List of official neighborhoods by community[edit]

Calhoun-Isles[edit]

Official neighborhoods of the Calhoun-Isles community:

Calhoun-Isles is in western Minneapolis. It is named after Lake Calhoun (the former name of Bde Maka Ska) and Lake of the Isles. It includes the city's Uptown area.

Camden[edit]

Official neighborhoods of the Camden community:

Camden is in far northwest Minneapolis. Along with the Near North, the two communities comprise north Minneapolis.

Central[edit]

Official neighborhoods of the Central community:

The Central community of Minneapolis sits southwest of the bend in the Mississippi River, comprising neighborhoods in and near the downtown area.

Longfellow[edit]

Official neighborhoods of the Longfellow community:

Longfellow is a south Minneapolis community between Hiawatha Avenue and the western edge of the Mississippi River gorge. It is named after poet Henry Wadsworth Longfellow.

Near North[edit]

Official neighborhoods of the Near North community:

Near North is northwest of downtown Minneapolis. Along with Camden, the two communities comprise north Minneapolis.

Nokomis[edit]

Official neighborhoods of the Nokomis community:

The Nokomis community is in south Minneapolis. It takes its name from Lake Nokomis.

Northeast[edit]

Official neighborhoods of the Northeast community:

The Northeast Community sits east of the Mississippi River and north of a combination of streets, highways and rail lines running from 3rd Avenue Northeast on the southwest to I-35W on the southeast.

Phillips[edit]

Official neighborhoods of the Phillips community:

Phillips is a south Minneapolis community adjacent to downtown Minneapolis. It is named after the 19th-century abolitionist Wendell Phillips.^[20] The Little Earth residential area, which has been the center of the American Indian Movement, is within the community.^[21]

Powderhorn[edit]

Official neighborhoods of the Powderhorn community:

Powderhorn is a south Minneapolis community, named for the eponymous park and lake in its center. George Floyd Square at East 38th Street and Chicago is central border for the Bancroft, Bryant, Central, and Powderhorn Park neighborhoods.

Southwest[edit]

Official neighborhoods of the Southwest community:

The Southwest community surrounds Lake Harriet in southwest Minneapolis and is one of several communities comprising south Minneapolis.

University[edit]

Official neighborhoods of the University community:

The University community is named for the University of Minnesota. It sits on the Mississippi River's east bank and includes the parts of the West Bank surrounding the University of Minnesota and Augsburg University campuses.

Other notable areas and districts[edit]

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Many of the city's major business districts sit on major thoroughfares, and since these thoroughfares also form the boundaries of official neighborhoods, local identity may not correspond with these official neighborhoods. Lake Street, running the entire width of the city in south Minneapolis, is a string of commercial districts that includes Uptown, Lyn-Lake, and Midtown, while forming a border of 12 neighborhoods. Other streets with similar linking and bordering qualities include Nicollet Avenue, stringing together Nicollet Mall, Eat Street south of Franklin Avenue, and smaller districts south of Lake Street; Central Avenue, which links downtown to Old St. Anthony Village via the Third Avenue Bridge and then continues to form a core commercial district of Northeast around Lowry Avenue; and University Avenue, which joins Old St. Anthony to Dinkytown, then continues into Midway and the State Capitol in Saint Paul.

Uptown is probably the best-known business district in Minneapolis besides downtown. It centers at the intersection of West Lake Street and Hennepin Avenue, but is not officially recognized as it includes parts of four neighborhoods: South Uptown, East Bde Maka Ska, East Isles, and Lowry Hill East. The Uptown Business Association focuses on the area within a few blocks of Lake and Hennepin,^[22] but the "Uptown" identity can stretch as far north as Franklin Avenue and as far east as Lyndale Avenue, where it merges into Lyn-Lake.

Eat Street is the newest of Minneapolis's commercial districts, named in the late 1990s by the Whittier Alliance to promote the international variety of restaurants along Nicollet Avenue South between Grant St. and 29th St.^[23] Nicollet was historically a central commercial district in the Whittier neighborhood, but the end of the streetcar system and the construction of a K-Mart at the intersection of Nicollet and Lake Street disconnected the area in the 1970s.^[24] The named district was an effort to give the neighborhood a fresh identity.

The Old St. Anthony district, also called Northeast or the Riverfront District,^[25] straddles the neighborhoods of Marcy-Holmes and Nicollet Island/East Bank. It was the downtown for the city of St. Anthony before it joined Minneapolis in 1872.^[26]

Several areas around the University of Minnesota have additional names. Dinkytown is an area just north of the University of Minnesota within the official Marcy-Holmes neighborhood, heavily populated by students.^[27] A row of historic fraternity houses along University Avenue is called "fraternity row."^[28] Similarly, Stadium Village on the east end of campus in Prospect Park is named for the now-demolished Memorial Stadium and current Huntington Bank Stadium.^[29]

The Warehouse District was a 19th and early 20th-century rail and truck shipping center for the region. In the 1970s and 1980s it became an artists' quarter, and then a nightlife and entertainment district, which the southern portion (between I-394 and Hennepin Ave) remains. The district is largely in the North Loop neighborhood, but the heart of the entertainment district is in the Downtown West neighborhood.

Homewood is a historically significant area within Willard-Hay in Near North, spanning from Penn to Xerxes Avenues North between Plymouth Avenue and Oak Park Avenue. The State Historic Preservation Office deemed the district eligible for the National Register of Historic Places in 2002. It is architecturally and culturally significant due primarily to settlement by Jewish families during the first half of the 20th century, when Minneapolis was openly antisemitic. In the 1930s the Homewood subdivision was the center of the North Side Jewish community, populated by middle- and upper-middle-class families. The City of Minneapolis began a formal review process for potential historic designation of the district in 2016.^[30]

As the Mississippi riverfront downtown has been redeveloped since the 1980s, there have been several attempts to rebrand it. The "Mississippi Mile" spanned both sides of the river, but never really caught on locally. "Saint Anthony Main", the name of a commercial development on Main Street Southeast, can refer to the section of the East Bank around it. More recently, people have come to call the West Bank between 3rd Avenue and the University "The Mill District", though the name more properly applies to both sides of the river.

Some neighborhoods enjoy nicknames. Lowry Hill East is also known as "The Wedge" because of its shape.^[31] Local amenities are also taken on as nicknames: "Minnehaha" refers to the businesses by Minnehaha Falls rather than along Minnehaha Avenue, and "Tower (Hill)", along University Avenue Southeast in Prospect Park, refers to the Witch's Hat Tower.

See also[edit]

• Neighborhoods in Saint Paul

Notes[edit]

External links[edit]

• Cornerstones: A History Of North Minneapolis Documentary produced by Twin Cities Public Television
• Fagotto, Elena, Archon Fung (February 15, 2005). "The Minneapolis Neighborhood Revitalization Program: An Experiment in Empowered Participatory Governance". Retrieved 2007-04-05.{{cite web}}: CS1 maint: multiple names: authors list (link)