Grove Street Flats, Riches to rags to riches

William W. Eastman was an entrepreneur and a risk taker. In 1859, he and his brother founded the Cataract Mill, the first commercial flour mill on the west side of the Mississippi River. He founded the North Star Woolen Mill in 1864 with another milling partner, Paris Gibson. He built the first wheat elevator in the state. Later on, he and his partners built the largest flour mill in the city, which became the Pillsbury A Mill. He was also involved in lumbering.

His most [in]famous risk was attempting to bore a tunnel beneath the Mississippi to expand milling above St. Anthony Falls in 1869. The falls collapsed and nearly eroded away, threatening the entire city’s milling industry. It took several years and hundreds of thousands of dollars to plug the hole. That’s why there’s a concrete apron protecting the limestone shelf beneath the river today.

Four years earlier, Eastman and John L. Merriam purchased Nicollet Island from Hercules Dousman. Dousman had acquired the island from Franklin Steele, who had purchased it from the federal government for $60; Steele was in arrears on a loan from Dousman, and Dousman foreclosed. Eastman and Merriam picked up the island for an appreciated value of $24,000 from Dousman.

They originally had plans to harness water power from the island (some guys never learn). When that idea fell through, they tried to sell the island to the city for use as a park. After the city refused, they decided to develop it into a neighborhood for the city’s well-to-do.

Deluxe row houses

In 1877, Eastman commenced construction of the first of two deluxe row houses. 

According to a 2007 report to the St. Anthony Falls Heritage Board, “The Eastman Flats were built in the French Second Empire style that was fashionable in the 1870s in Minneapolis.” The style included a dual pitched mansard roof, which allowed a full upper story under the roof and dormers. “The four-level townhouses boasted bay windows, mansard roofs, and stone trim. The high basement housed the kitchen and dining room, the second level was for parlors, while the third and fourth levels were devoted to bedrooms or general purpose rooms,” the report continued. Each unit offered 10 to 14 rooms. The units cost $5,000 each to build.

The Eastman Flats contained 30 units and stretched like a belt across the width of the island. The Grove Street Flats, finished the following year, had 20 units.

“Mr. W. W. Eastman seems to be leaving no stone unturned to make his beautiful Island [sic] property beautiful and inhabitable,” gushed the July 27, 1878, Minneapolis Tribune. The paper listed the amenities: “water, gas, fine sidewalks, the only complete sewerage system on the Island, cool houses and abundant shade which in summer make this lovely spot what the poet sighed for — a ‘lodge in some vast wilderness.’”

Eastman worked hard to promote the island as a neighborhood for the city’s elite, and even built a mansion for himself on the island. He and Merriam laid out parcels on the north end and encouraged people to build homes.

But the well-to-do weren’t interested in living there. Charles Nelson wrote in the Winter 1993 issue of Hennepin History, “Nicollet Island, in the heart of the industrial district, had little attraction for the Minneapolis elite. The lure of Loring Park, Lowry Hill, Fair Oaks, Mount Curve and Park Avenue heralded the dawn of the Gilded Age of Minneapolis of the 1880s.”

Cheap housing

By the 1890s, barely 20 years since they were built, the row houses were subdivided into one or two apartments per floor. A 1905 ad in the Minneapolis Journal listed seven rooms at 8 Grove St. for $30 per month. At 42 Eastman Ave., a seven-room “modern” apartment rented for $25 per month.

Instead of catering to the upper middle class, Eastman’s row houses now furnished homes for people who worked on the south end of the island in the industrial section he had assembled. 

In the 1920s, part of the Eastman Flats were demolished to make way for the expansion of DeLaSalle High School. The remainder fell to a second school expansion in 1959.

The island became more rundown. In 1946, the flats served as the backdrop for the murder of Dorothy Hickman. The police questioned Hickman’s brothers, Gordon and Gilbert LaLonde. Gordon later admitted killing his sister, then committed suicide.

The smaller Grove Street Flats building began to deteriorate, along with other buildings on the island. By the 1960s, the elegant building with the mansard roof was a $1-per-night flophouse, housing the bums and winos who were chased out of the downtown Gateway district and across the Hennepin Avenue Bridge.

Redevelopment

Change — in the form of historic preservation — came to Nicollet Island in the 1970s. In 1971, the island was listed in the National Register of Historic Places as part of the Saint Anthony Falls Historic District. 

A complicated series of negotiations between the Minneapolis Community Development Agency (MCDA) and the Minneapolis Parks and Recreation Board (MPRB) took place over the next ten years. In the end, the Park Board purchased land — including land under the Victorian homes clustered on the north end of the island from MCDA — and leased it back to MCDA. MCDA used the money to restore the homes. They were then put up for lease by lottery, with 99-year leases going for $1-$99. MPRB was charged with maintaining the homes.

But while placement on the register protected some homes from demolition, the Grove Street Flats were another matter. The flats, and the 1886 Frank Griswold home, were privately owned; the flats belonged to the Lerner family, who at one time owned several properties on Nicollet Island, including the Island Grocery.

Minneapolis Star columnist Barbara Flanagan, an ardent preservationist, sounded the alarm in 1980, “I hear that the historic Grove Street Flats — the last of the row houses built by W. W. Eastman in the 1870s — will be demolished.”John Kerwin, a mechanical engineer who had earned his restoration stripes with the successful renovation of the Lumber Exchange Building downtown, was able to persuade the Lerner family to sell the flats to him.

“Most of the 18 condominium apartments will be two-story spaces,” Flanagan wrote a year later. “Those on the lower floor will have enclosed back gardens. The upper apartments will have rooftop greenhouses with spectacular views of the Mississippi River.”

But first, Kerwin had to stabilize the building. Years of neglect had caused the front wall of the limestone building to bow out. Using a technique he learned in the U.S. Navy, Kerwin inserted steel beams in the wall. Like dental braces, they pulled the limestone blocks back into line. Stabilization done, he went about restoring the apartments to their former glory. The condos were priced at $80,000 to $100,000 ($276,000 to $288,000 today).

W.W. Eastman’s vision of a wealthy neighborhood has come full circle. Recently, a townhome at 8 Grove St. was listed for sale with an asking price of $1.2 million. 

Sources:

Anfinson, Scott, “Archaeology of the Central Minneapolis Riverfront,” The Minnesota Archeologist, Vol. 48, No. 1-2, 1989

Flanagan, Barbara, “Historic sites on island face wrecking ball,” Minneapolis Star, May 9, 1980

Flanagan, Barbara, “Island may get condos,” Minneapolis Star, July 3, 1981

Folwell, William Watts, A History of Minnesota, Vol.3, Minnesota Historical Society, 1926

Millet, Larry, “Lost Twin Cities: Rare today, row houses were once a common sight here,” Minneapolis Star Tribune, April 28, 2017

Nelson, Charles W. “Minneapolis Architecture for the Elite,” Hennepin History, Winter 1993

Roper, Eric, “How did Nicollet Island become parkland with private housing on it?,” Star Tribune, May 3, 2019

“River of History,” National Park Service, https://www.nps.gov/miss/learn/historyculture/

Architecture and Historic Preservation on the Minneapolis Riverfront Prepared for the Saint Anthony Falls Heritage Board by Hess, Roise and Company, March 2007