When the Minneapolis Institute of Arts (MIA) proposed appreciating Third Avenue South between the Mississippi River and the MIA as an "Avenue of the Arts" in the 1990s it made sense to rebuild the bridge over highway I-94 with an artistic architect's sensibility... after all, the stretch includes designs by the likes of IM Pei & Partners, Kohn Pedersen Fox Associates and Maya Lin, designer of the Vietnam Veteran's Memorial in Washginton, DC.
As the city began thinking about designing a bridge that would help link downtown, the Minneapolis Convention Center and the Minneapolis Insitute of Arts the idea of using an unbuilt bridge design of Frank Lloyd Wright came to the forefront. Taliesin Architects, the firm that carries on his work, was chosen to dust off and update a 1937 unrealized design.
As it turned out, his actual bridge designs didn't work for the site, but they used Frank Lloyd Wright elements and put them together in a fresh way. True to Wright's site-specific sensibilities, the curve required to connect the realigned street going around the convention center became the inspiration for the curving shapes of the design, which includes fiber-optic light poles, curving shapes and a 'trellis' of arched lights.
It seems only fitting that the Minnepaolis Institute of Arts has one of the top three collections of Prairie School objects in the United States, including a window-lined hallway of the Francis Little House built on Lake Minnetonka in 1915. It was one of Frank Lloyd Wright's last great Prairie School houses, purchased and dismantled by the NY Metropolitan Museum of Art in 1972.
The Minneapolis Institute of Arts owns the Prairie School gem, the Purcell-Cutts House, designed by Purcell and Elmslie. It is located by Lake of the Isles and is open for tours the second weekend of every month.
The Malclom Willey House, designed by Frank Lloyd Wright in 1934 and located in the Prospect Park neighborhood of Minneapolis, remains a private residence.
Search homes for sale in Minneapolis. I would love to help you find a home with an architectural style to match your design sensibilities.
Sharlene Hensrud, RE/MAX Results - Email - Minneapolis Prairie School Realtor
