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Metropolitan Dreams: The Scandalous Rise and Stunning Fall of a Minneapolis Masterpiece
The story of one of Minnesota’s most famous and most mourned buildings, set against the history of downtown Minneapolis
When it opened in 1890, the twelve-story Northwestern Guaranty Loan Building was the tallest, largest, and most splendid commercial structure in Minneapolis—a mighty stone skyscraper built for the ages. How this grand Richardsonian Romanesque edifice, which later came to be called the Metropolitan Building, rose with the growth of Minneapolis only to fall in the throes of the city’s postwar renewal, is revealed in Metropolitan Dreams in all its scandalous intrigue. It is a tale of urban growing pains and architectural ghosts and of colorful, sometimes criminal characters amid the grandeur and squalor of building and rebuilding a city’s skyline.
Against the thrumming backdrop of turn-of-the-century Minneapolis, architectural critic and historian Larry Millett recreates the impressive rise of the massive office building, its walls of green New Hampshire granite and red Lake Superior sandstone surrounding its true architectural wonder, a dazzling twelve-story iron and glass light court. The drama, however, was far from confined to the building itself. A consummate storyteller, Millett summons the frenetic atmosphere in Gilded Age Minneapolis that encouraged the likes of Northwestern Guaranty’s founder, real estate speculator Louis Menage, whose shady deals financed this Minneapolis masterpiece—and then forced him to flee both prosecution and the country a mere three years later.
Dubious as its financial beginnings might have been, the economic circumstances of the Metropolitan’s demise were at least as questionable. Anchoring Minneapolis’s historic Gateway District in its heyday, the building’s fortunes shifted with the city’s demographics and finally it fell victim to the fervor of one of the largest downtown urban renewal projects ever undertaken in the United States. Though the long and furious battle to save the Metropolitan ultimately failed in 1962, its ghost persists in the passion for historic preservation stirred by its demise—and in Metropolitan Dreams, whose photographs, architectural drawings, and absorbing narrative bring the building and its story to vibrant, enduring life.
When it opened in 1890, the twelve-story Northwestern Guaranty Loan Building was the tallest, largest, and most splendid commercial structure in Minneapolis—a mighty stone skyscraper built for the ages. How this grand Richardsonian Romanesque edifice, which later came to be called the Metropolitan Building, rose with the growth of Minneapolis only to fall in the throes of the city’s postwar renewal, is revealed in Metropolitan Dreams in all its scandalous intrigue. It is a tale of urban growing pains and architectural ghosts and of colorful, sometimes criminal characters amid the grandeur and squalor of building and rebuilding a city’s skyline.
Against the thrumming backdrop of turn-of-the-century Minneapolis, architectural critic and historian Larry Millett recreates the impressive rise of the massive office building, its walls of green New Hampshire granite and red Lake Superior sandstone surrounding its true architectural wonder, a dazzling twelve-story iron and glass light court. The drama, however, was far from confined to the building itself. A consummate storyteller, Millett summons the frenetic atmosphere in Gilded Age Minneapolis that encouraged the likes of Northwestern Guaranty’s founder, real estate speculator Louis Menage, whose shady deals financed this Minneapolis masterpiece—and then forced him to flee both prosecution and the country a mere three years later.
Dubious as its financial beginnings might have been, the economic circumstances of the Metropolitan’s demise were at least as questionable. Anchoring Minneapolis’s historic Gateway District in its heyday, the building’s fortunes shifted with the city’s demographics and finally it fell victim to the fervor of one of the largest downtown urban renewal projects ever undertaken in the United States. Though the long and furious battle to save the Metropolitan ultimately failed in 1962, its ghost persists in the passion for historic preservation stirred by its demise—and in Metropolitan Dreams, whose photographs, architectural drawings, and absorbing narrative bring the building and its story to vibrant, enduring life.
- GenresHistory
248 pages, Hardcover
First published November 27, 2018
55 people want to read
About the author
Larry Millett
53 books81 followersLarry Millett has combined his interest in journalism, architectural history, and mystery fiction to create an unusual writing career. A native of Minneapolis, he attended school there and then went on to obtain a bachelor’s degrees in English from St. John’s University and a master’s degree from the University of Chicago.
He began working as a general assignment reporter for the St. Paul Pioneer Press in 1972 and became the newspaper’s first architecture critic after a year of study on a fellowship to the University of Michigan.
Larry’s first book, The Curve of the Arch, appeared in 1985. Since then, he’s written eleven other works of nonfiction, including Lost Twin Cities, which has been in continuous print for more than twenty years.
Larry began writing mystery fiction in 1996 by bringing the world’s most famous consulting detective to Minnesota for The Adventure of Sherlock Holmes and the Red Demon. He’s published six other novels featuring Holmes, Dr. Watson, and St. Paul saloonkeeper Shadwell Rafferty.
Larry lives in St. Paul’s historic West Seventh Street neighborhood with his wife and occasional writing partner, Jodie Ahern, who is also an accomplished painter and a freelance copy editor.
He began working as a general assignment reporter for the St. Paul Pioneer Press in 1972 and became the newspaper’s first architecture critic after a year of study on a fellowship to the University of Michigan.
Larry’s first book, The Curve of the Arch, appeared in 1985. Since then, he’s written eleven other works of nonfiction, including Lost Twin Cities, which has been in continuous print for more than twenty years.
Larry began writing mystery fiction in 1996 by bringing the world’s most famous consulting detective to Minnesota for The Adventure of Sherlock Holmes and the Red Demon. He’s published six other novels featuring Holmes, Dr. Watson, and St. Paul saloonkeeper Shadwell Rafferty.
Larry lives in St. Paul’s historic West Seventh Street neighborhood with his wife and occasional writing partner, Jodie Ahern, who is also an accomplished painter and a freelance copy editor.
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Displaying 1 - 3 of 3 reviews
January 19, 2025
Why do I now have feelings about a building I have never even seen?
January 14, 2025
A sad, but also fun, remembrance of an amazing building and the story of its rise and fall. Such history of the city I never knew! Menage and his financial skullduggery leading to a monument to Minneapolis that stood for 70 years before being brought low for banal reasons. I'll have to visit other buildings of its type in Saint Paul and even go touch the stones at Icehouse in remembrance!
January 10, 2020
What a waste. A beautiful building destroyed and replaced by a bland, unassuming building. For over twenty-five years I have worked in old city hall in downtown Minneapolis which was built about the same time as the Met and I have never had a brick, block, or rock fall on me. Too many times people who think they are smart make dumb decisions.
Displaying 1 - 3 of 3 reviews