May/June 2025
Check out what’s new and noteworthy in Special Collections.
Construction of the second Minneapolis Central Library, 1960.
Saturday, May 17, 10am-5pm Sunday, May 18, Noon-5pm
Visit Minneapolis Central Library during Doors Open Minneapolis, a community event offering visitors a chance to explore the buildings that tell the story of Minneapolis. Take a self-guided tour of the library, a downtown destination for reading, learning, and connecting, designed by renowned architect César Pelli. Stop by Special Collections on the 4th floor to see historical displays on the current and previous Minneapolis central libraries—a peek into the library’s past with old photos, plans, posters, books, and more. A rare opportunity to visit Special Collections on a weekend!

Over 140,000 photos of Minneapolis houses were just added to the Digital Collections! Roughly every five years, on a rolling basis, the City of Minneapolis Assessing Department does a systematic survey of the city, photographing every house and building. Through a public data request, Special Collections obtained the images from multiple surveys dating back to 2010.
Nearly all of the photographs of houses have been loaded to our City of Minneapolis Collection in the Digital Collections, and more photos of businesses and apartment buildings will be added soon. The survey is comprehensive in scope and greatly augments the many thousands of images of houses and buildings we already have in our Digital Collections.
The Assessing Department photographs are noteworthy for often including multiple vantage points of individual buildings; and the image quality is generally better than what you can find in other surveys, like Google Street View. While the images are recent, it is remarkable to see how often the features of houses change in only 10-15 years. Their significance as historical records of the built city will only increase as time goes on.
 We recently added a number of cities to our City Directory Collection. The following are now available to search and browse:
- Bloomington, 1963-1966
- Brooklyn Center, 1966-1982
- Brooklyn Park, 1964-1980
- Crystal, 1969-1983
- Edina, 1941-1977
- Golden Valley, 1951-1981
- Hopkins, 1942-1977
- Lake Minnetonka, 1940-1977
- Minneapolis, 1859-1963
- Morningside, 1962-1966
- New Hope/Plymouth/Wayzata, 1964-1983
- Osseo/Maple Grove, 1977-1982
- Richfield, 1950-1976
- Robbinsdale/Crystal, 1937-1981
- Louis Park, 1933-1977
Elaina started in Special Collections as a student volunteer in fall 2024, processing the City Pages photographs, as part of her Advanced Archival Management course for St. Catherine University’s Master’s in Library Science program.
She was hired as an archival processing assistant this year to process neighborhood association archives, a project funded by the Minnesota Arts and Cultural Heritage Fund.
Elaina lives with her two dogs, Lily, a “shepherd and pitty mix,” and Oliver, “a mixed breed with dachshund coloration.” She enjoys sewing and has even earned ribbons at the Minnesota State Fair for some of her sewing creations. She even made the dress she’s wearing in this photograph. Elaina will graduate this month with her MLIS. More from Elaina:
Q: What’s your favorite part about working with archives?
A: My favorite part about working with archives is that you can never know what you are going to find. At one point you are combing through dry legalese to make sure there is nothing confidential, the next you are reading about the drama of two organizations playing hot potato over responsibility after someone had changed an official boundary and did not say anything a decade prior, or paperwork that mentions a name from that school project you did in high school. Every day is a new day to learn something new.
Q: If you could transport yourself to another time in history, when would you choose and why?
A: If I had the opportunity for time travel, I would choose to go back about 8-14 thousand years to see Lake Agassiz and collect any neat rocks I find on its shore from the glacier. I would hope to land in a time where it was draining quickly to see the water flow that flattened large sections of southern Minnesota.
Q: Book you’re currently reading or favorite book of all time?
A: My current favorite is Redwall by Brian Jacques. It is a wonderful fantasy book (the first in a series of generally standalone, but interconnected works) from my childhood that tells the epic tale of mice, squirrels, badgers and other woodland creatures defending their home from invading rats, while the protagonist, a young mouse named Matthias solves different puzzles to find a legendary weapon while making friends along the way.
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These collections have all recently been processed (organized and rehoused), with finding aids now online:
Armatage Neighborhood Association Records – Minutes, reports, newsletters, correspondence, subject files and photographs created or compiled by the Armatage Neighborhood Association (from the 1990s-2020s), and its predecessor Armatage Community Council (1950s-1960s).
Cedar-Isles-Dean Neighborhood Association Records – Administrative files, board meeting minutes, topical subject files, newsletters, and photographs from the Cedar Isles Dean Neighborhood Association (CIDNA). Includes local newsletters and materials on southwest light rail development.
Field Regina Northrop Neighborhood Group, Inc. Records – Administrative files, general neighborhood meeting minutes, board and committee meeting minutes, topical subject files, newsletters, and photographs created or compiled by the Field Regina Northrop Neighborhood Group (FRNNG) from 1990 to 2017. FRNNG serves three neighborhoods in south Minneapolis.
Kingfield Neighborhood Association Records – Minutes, reports, newsletters, contracts and their amendments, subject files and photographs created or compiled by the Kingfield Neighborhood Association from 1989 through 2020. Subject files include grants sponsored by the KFNA, murals painted in the neighborhood, the Martin Luther King Park, local development, and neighborhood events.
Radisson Hotel Photographs and Video – Print photographs, negatives, slides, and VHS tape of the Radisson Hotel in downtown Minneapolis. Includes the original building, building implosion, and new building (Radisson Plaza Hotel) built in the 1980s.
Seward Redesign Records – Photographs, audio recordings, transcripts, news clippings, subject files and history materials created or compiled by Seward Redesign (now Redesign, Inc.), a nonprofit community development corporation located in the Seward Neighborhood of south Minneapolis.
South Side Oral Histories – Six oral history interviews with ten elders in the Minneapolis Black community who grew up on the city's southside. Each interview includes a recording (audio, video, or both) and a transcript. Some interviews also include photographs. Oral histories were each conducted by one or more graduate students from the University of Minnesota.
Collecting South Side oral histories.
James K. Hosmer Special Collections
Minneapolis Central Library 300 Nicollet Mall Minneapolis, MN 55401
Hours: Monday - Thursday, 9am - 4:30pm.
Appointments are not necessary, but you do need to call Special Collections or check-in at the 4th floor reference desk upon arrival for department access. You can speed up your visit by requesting materials be pulled in advance. Photocopier and scanners are available. Please bring a flash drive to store your scanned images.
Photo: Inside the climate-controlled Special Collections vault, where rare books, negatives, and AV materials are stored.
Email specialcoll@hclib.org or visit hclib.org/specialcollections for more information.
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