Minneapolis Warehouse Parties

Several locations in the Minneapolis Warehouse District

When constructed, the Minneapolis “Warehouse District” was unsuprisingly the site of storage facilities—typically, these buildings stored foodstuffs, lumber, or manufactured machinery until they could be shipped by nearby railroads. One may find the ornate decoration of these buildings strange, yet it is important to remember that they existed before contemporary advertising. With a spectacular building, a warehouser convinced manufacturers that their goods would be stored safely.

An abandoned warehouse in 1974, a few years after queer parties took place in the Warehouse District. Courtesy of the Minnesota Historical Society.

While a piece of this area is conceptually part of the Gateway District, most of Minneapolis’ warehouses survived urban renewal programs in the 1950s and 1960s. Some of the warehouses were still in use, but their saving grace was, perhaps, their close proximity to the noisy railroads. Who would want to live there?

Downtown warehousing severely suffered after General Mills announced plans to leave the Gateway District for the suburbs in 1955.(1) Some warehouse owners leased their buildings to other uses (such as the Locker Room Baths), while others left the buildings vacant.

According to Anne Enke in her book, Finding the Movement: Sexuality, Contested Space, and Feminist Activism, queer women used these buildings for clandestine “warehouse parties” that squatted in the abandoned buildings. With few interior walls, warehouses provided ample space for hundreds of women to drink and dance together. To Enke, this activity offered women a chance to “[claim] the nighttime marketplace],” which was dominated by men.(2)

Butch women and femmes alike used the opportunity to play with notions about gender. Enke interviewed one of the partiers, who recalled that “Everyone dressed in drag. We’d go to shops where you rented suits, tuxedos, fancy men’s clothes . . . We’d look forward to it for weeks. It was fun to dress up, and some people spent hundreds."(3) In many ways, the events resembled modern-day "raves."

The parties stopped when the city took an interest in the district, beginning in the 1970s. Today, the warehouses are converted condominium, office, and apartment buildings.

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(1)Millet, Larry. Lost Twin Cities. St. Paul: Minnesota Historical Society Press, 1992. Page 288

(2)Enke, Anne. Finding the Movement: Sexuality, Contested Space, and Feminist Activism North Carolina: Duke University Press, 2007. "Someone or Something Made That a Women's Bar:" Claiming the Nightime Marketplace" (Part 1: 1). Pages 25-61.

(3)Enke, Page 43.

Part of Minneapolis/St. Paul, MN: 100 Queer Places in Minnesota History, (1860-1969), (1969-2010)