Around Swedish America in 548 Days - Day 87

Day 87 - Milwaukee Avenue

If you want to see how the early Swedes in Minneapolis lived, you should visit the nicely restored private residences on Milwaukee Avenue between Franklin Avenue and Twenty-fourth Street. The area was known as "Copenhagen Avenue" for a short while because there were so many Swedish and other Nordic working-class residents living there. Many of the early immigrants in the area worked in the flour mills and the nearby Millwaukee Railroad yards. An unusual feature of the two-storey houses dating from the 1880s is the lovely lattice work on the front porches. In 1974 the entire four-block area was placed on the National Register of Historic Places. Milwaukee Avenue is reserved for pedestrians only.