,
Associated Banc-Corp, and other local businesses as seen from Riverside Avenue The neighborhood has been a port of entry for immigrants since
Swedes,
Germans, and
Bohemians began arriving in large numbers during the late 19th century. Cedar Avenue became a hub of the Minneapolis Scandinavian community in the late 1800s. Swedish, Norwegian, and Danish were spoken in many of the businesses, and in the early days, stars of Swedish American vaudeville entertained at Dania Hall, Mozart Hall and
The Southern Theater. There was Samuelsen’s confectionery and soda shop, Hagen's appliance store, Moberg’s Norwegian deli, and a host of other Scandinavian-owned businesses. On Cedar Avenue was
Dania Hall, where the Danish community would meet. An eclectic mix of Gothic and classical styles, the building included a dining hall and kitchen in the basement, commercial space on the first floor, offices for the Society of Dania plus billiard and reading rooms on the second floor. A theater/assembly hall on the third and fourth floors featured Scandinavian vaudeville acts and weekend dances. On the corner of Cedar and Washington, just before the Washington Ave Bridge, was the Breezy Point Tavern owned by Oscar Carlsen, a Norwegian immigrant from the turn of the 20th century. Oscar had come to Minnesota to work in the lumber camps and saved a stake to buy this tavern. (right) Whereas men in the community had once worked in small businesses or as skilled tradesmen, railroad workers or in flour mills and breweries, Cedar-Riverside declined as a core community in the 1920s due to the impact of
Prohibition on the entertainment district. Into the 1940s, Cedar-Riverside remained heavily Scandinavian. Postwar immigrants from all over Eastern Europe then settled in the area. The junction of
Washington Avenue,
Cedar Avenue, and 19th Avenue was known as Seven Corners. The Cedar-Riverside area had been known as "Snoose Boulevard" (Snusgatan) because so many Scandinavians lived there.
Venues in Cedar-Riverside Cedar-Riverside, with the locally infamous Seven Corners district, mouldered into a
skid row scene in the 1950s. In the mid-to-late 1960s, the University of Minnesota expanded across the Mississippi River into the Cedar-Riverside area, which was on the river's west bank. The area became known as the "West Bank" and became the center of the University-oriented
counterculture and
antiwar movement. It was home to local
hippies, protesters, and other anti-establishment groups between the 1960s and early 1970s. During those days, the neighborhood was known as the "
Haight-Ashbury of the Midwest." The Café Extempore was a hub for a wide variety of people, including musicians, poets, chess players, LGBTQ+ individuals, runaways, academics, and both religious and non-religious people. It was a welcoming place where anyone and everyone was accepted, and people from all walks of life talked freely with one another. The Extempore provided an escape from stresses of poverty and it was a non-alcoholic, music-filled haven where patrons could enjoy low-cost concerts in the gallery, and a sense of safety and fun was pervasive. The venue's unpaved, potholed back lot even offered free parking. Inside, chess and other board games might be in play, and it was safe for adolescents. But music was its great attraction, especially for local artists. In the first years, it was the venue where up-and-coming musicians such as
Dakota Dave Hull and Sean Blackburn frequently performed. In the 1980s and until 1987 when it closed, hundreds of musicians had performed at the Coffeehouse Extempore in those years alone. Many of the businesses that were established during that time — Martha's Antiques, the Whale Leather Shop, the Five Corners Saloon, Richter's Drug Store and Smith's Leather Shop — eventually went out of business, gradually giving way to newer stores and shops. The Depth of Field also closed in the last half of 2019. Brian Coyle Community Center, named after onetime city councilmember
Brian Coyle, opened adjacent to Riverside Plaza in 1993. The neighborhood's past still has an influence in the present. Some of the businesses in the area harken back to an earlier time, like the worker-controlled punk hangout,
Hard Times Café and the now-closed North Country Food Co-Op. In fact, some of the businesses, specifically in the Seven Corners district, use the history to promote their own business, such as the "Legend of the Seven Switchmen." Fairview Hospital and St. Mary's Hospital figured prominently in the neighborhood, located only a few blocks away. Fairview and St. Mary's, which merged in 1986, later merged with the University of Minnesota Hospitals, forming a major medical complex straddling the Mississippi River. The organization is now known as
University of Minnesota Medical Center. ==Geography==