Mill City Museum, Minneapolis, Minnesota

I recognized the entry courtyard of the Mill City Museum as soon as I stepped inside. A few months ago I was flipping through an old high school friend’s wedding pictures on Facebook, wondering why she’d chosen to be married at an abandoned building in Minneapolis. But she’s always been a bit quirky so I figured it was her way of being different. It turns out she’d been married at the museum and the pictures were taken in the courtyard, where visitors can see the original walls of the building that was destroyed by a fire in 1991. They left the courtyard as it was, giving visitors an idea of what the space looked like before its renovation.

When we visited Minneapolis with my sister Tina, we each chose a tourist destination to visit. The kids picked the mall of America, I selected the art museum, and after examining the guidebook Tina settled on the Mill City Museum, which told the history of the flour industry in Minneapolis, which she thought might appeal to both the kids and adults in our group. I was skeptical, but went along.

The museum was once the Washburn A Mill, at one time the world’s largest flour mill. The mill was built along the shores of the Mississippi River in the late 1800s and enjoyed a long period of prosperity and employed generations of Minneapolis’ citizens, before newer technology rendered it obsolete. The mill closed its doors in 1965 and lay abandoned for decades before a fire destroyed it in 1991. In the nineties the Minnesota Historical Society announced plans to turn the ruins into a museum celebrating the flour industry in Minneapolis.

We wandered through the museum, seeing historic product packaging, sinking our hands into dough in the baking lab, using toy trains and block bridges to understand shipping issues and observing how the use of dams affects water power at a water table.

The highlight of the museum was the Flour Tower ride. We filed into a large elevator and took our seats, all facing the doors. The elevator then traveled up and down between the eight stories of the building, the doors opening on each floor to reveal a vignette showing one aspect of the mill’s history, including a mock explosion on one floor. It reminded me of the Tower of Terror ride at Disney’s Hollywood Studios, but without the plummeting and screams.

The elevator left us on the top floor of the museum and we walked out onto the observation deck to enjoy magnificent views of the Mississippi River and Minneapolis. As we rode back down we congratulated Tina on her most excellent attraction choice.

Contact Info:

Mill City Museum

704 South 2nd St.
Mpls, MN 55401

 (612)-341-7555

http://www.millcitymuseum.org/