Gateway District

Between the Mississippi River, 3rd Avenue North, 3rd Avenue South, and 5th Street

While little evidence remains, this area is the oldest neighborhood in Minneapolis. Thus, and by assuming that homosexuality and gender fluidity have been ever-present, the Gateway District is the oldest site of queer life in the city. American settlers took advantage of the St. Anthony Waterfalls and built the first of many flour mills over the cascade in the mid 19th century. Soon after, the Hennepin Avenue Bridge, two train stations, The Nicollet Hotel, and an assortment of early urban structures appeared, composing the environment of “Bridge Square.”

The Gateway District in 1929, shortly after workers finished The Nicollet Hotel. Photo by Norton & Peel, Courtesy of the Minnesota Historical Society.

The success of milling and related industries funded early suburbanization on the outskirts of what is now downtown. Neighborhoods such as Steven's Square, Loring Park, and Kenwood filled in with mansions and upscale commercial establishments.

By the turn of the 20th century, this expansion left pioneer-era spaces vacant and disreputable filled the vacuum.Newspapers noted homosocial activity, prostitution, gambling, public alcoholism, and other examples of criminal activity by the turn of the century. Responding to this, civic fathers built the Great Northern Depot and Gateway Park in the 1910s, and encouraged the construction of the New Nicollet Hotel and the Hotel Andrews, giving the troubled area a new motto: “The Gateway: More Than Her Arms, the City Opens Her Heart to You.”

This motto proved to be misleading and eventually ineffective; the Minneapolis Police Department spent much of their time quelling the sexual and social behaviors of the indigent laborers, mischievous businessmen, diverse prostitutes, and murderous drag queens who prowled the new Gateway District. As time progressed, foundational elements of downtown Minneapolis’ vitality—milling, warehousing, and the railroads—dwindled and vanished, leaving the once-tolerated working poor open to harassment.

By the late 40s, The Gateway became an embarrassment and, with funding from the Federal Government, the City of Minneapolis demolished much of it in the late 1950s and early 1960s. Not all of the socially unacceptable uses vanished—the Gateway remains the central site of Minneapolis’ gay nightlife and bar scene.

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This page is still under construction. -SVC

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