Deir Yassin Remembered

On the Greenway, at Pillsbury Ave.

From the Wikipedia entry "The Deir Yassin Massacre":

The Deir Yassin massacre took place on April 9, 1948, when around 120 fighters from [Israeli/Jewish] paramilitary groups  ... attacked Deir Yassin, a Palestinian-Arab village of roughly 600 people near Jerusalem... during the civil war that preceded the end of British rule in Palestine.
 Around 107 villagers were killed during and after the battle for the village, including women and children...."

Photo Francesca Davis DiPiazza

The Marie Antoinette

 

From the AIA Guide to the Twin Cities:
Marie Antoinette Apartments
Blaisdell and 22 St. W.
Architect Carleton W. Farnham, 1939
"A charming Moderne apartment building with black vitrolite glass around the entrances."

Photo: Francesca Davis DiPiazza

1908 in Phillips: "Nervy Thief Takes Mare"

I found this news item about a horse theft in 1908 here:
http://www.pnn.org/History/Stories/horsethieving.htm
I searched the address on Google maps, and put the two together:

By Francesca Davis DiPiazza, who is forced to be resourceful because she broke her camera last week...

Lamp Post From The Past

The lamp post is on the boulevard across from an historic mansion in Whittier on 22nd St.

Photo: Jo Ann Musumeci

Baby John Kitz

How sad that this baby only lived a little over a year--and was buried in Pioneers and Soldiers Memorial Cemetery almost 99 years ago!  The cemetary is north of Lake Street between Cedar Ave. and 21st Ave. According to the tombstone, the baby had lived at the Bohemian Flats, which was a neighborhood on the Mississippi below the Washington Ave. Bridge where workers of the breweries and lumberyards lived.  Check out photos and a map: http://matthewbuell.com/bohemianflats/development.html

Photo: Jo Ann Musumeci

Phillips' Namesake

In this time of Occupy Wall Street, it might be interesting to recall activists of former times.

Phillips Neighborhood, for instance, is named for activist Wendell Phillips (1811–1884, click to link to Wikipedia). 

Here he is, pictured below. [Candy corn frame, for this Halloween weekend, courtesy of free photo editing site picnik.com.]

Phillips worked for Native American and women's rights and for the abolition of slavery.

 Phillips said:

"Revolutions are not made: they come. A revolution is as natural a 

growth as an oak. It comes out of the past. Its foundations are laid far back."

Photograph taken between 1853 and 1860 by famous Civil War photographer Matthew Brady;
from the Library of Congress, Prints and Photographs Division (click for link).

Post by Francesca Davis DiPiazza

Renovation In Progress

This building at 109 26th St. is being renovated.  It was constructed in 1887.  Walk by it to see the artisan-created, tooled-in-metal design over the entrance--original with the building.

Photo:  Jo Ann Musumeci

Ghost Mansion

 Fair Oaks, the W. D. Washburn residence, as it looked in 1886 in the location that is now Fair Oaks Park.  The house was donated to the Minneapolis Park Board in 1912, after W.D. died;  It bacame too expensive to maintain and was razed in 1924.  It seems so sad that such a magnificent building wasn't saved.  Fortunately, other residences around the park from that era are still in use and preserve the grandeur of the young city of Minneapolis.

Photo of the W.D. Washburn residence, courtesy of the Minnesota Historical Society.

Photo compositie: Jo Ann Musumeci

Who is your street named after?

I guess I knew Garfield was a U.S. president before I read Sarah Vowell's book Assassination Vacation, but I couldn't have told you he was shot dead 200 days into his first (and, naturally, only) term, in 1881. 

(Wikipedia entry.)

Photo w/ text: Francesca Davis DiPiazza

Lutherans on Chicago

colportage: is the distribution of publications, books, religious tracts, etc., by carriers called "colporteurs". The term is an alteration of French comporter, "to peddle" as a portmanteau or pun with the word col (Latin collum, "neck"), with the resulting meaning "to carry on one's neck". Porter, is from Latin portare, "to carry."

Taken late at night opposite Peavy Park.



Photo: Michael Wright