Wars, Pianos, Harry Blackmun and a Duplex

Many museums are closed on Mondays, including the Minnesota History Center, so Tuesday turned into St. Paul Museum Day.

First stop, the Minnesota History Center with friends Don and Jini.  This is the gigantic Minnesota state museum near the State Capitol in St. Paul.  Here's the capitol, photographed from the museum, just to prove I'm not misleading you.  And to prove that I can correctly use the word "capitol" which has only one meaning:  the building that houses a government.

It's a capital capitol.  And that is today's grammar lesson.

The Big New Exhibit at the History Center is about Minnesota and the Civil War.  When I think about the Civil War - and I've done so a fair amount in the past few weeks - I don't think about Minnesota.  And, of course, no Civil War battles were fought here (although there was a war fought in the state in 1862 - see below).  But Minnesotans were among the first Americans to sign up to support the Union, and as a result took very heavy casualties since the first several years of the Civil War were particularly bad for the North.

Commemorating the sesquicentennial of the Civil War, the museum has assembled a large amount of memorabilia - clothing, weapons, photographs, mementos - just for this exhibit which will only be around until the fall.  If you're in the area at all, you should go.

There were two highlights for me.

First, they have a flag from the 28th Virginia Infantry which was captured in 1862 by a soldier from St. Paul during Pickett's Charge (arguably the only bright spot for the North during the Battles of Gettysburg).  Over the years, the Minnesota Historical Society ended up with it and maintained the flag in honor of the Minnesotans who gave their lives during the war.  In 1998, some Civil War reenactors from Roanoke, Virginia, wanted it back, citing a 1905 Congressional resolution that ordered the Federal War Department to return all captured Confederate flags.  The matter was duly considered by the Minnesota Attorney General who declined to return it.  Being a Minnesotan, I'm sure he was very polite about it.  He may have even sent some sort of pastry as a consolation, but the flag is still in St. Paul.  Never confuse "nice" with "pushover."  (I think it's funny that this matter was apparently up to the Minnesota Attorney General in the first place.  It seems like he might not have been completely neutral in his legal analysis.  But I'm just speculating and hey, who said that life was fair?)

The second highlight wasn't part of the exhibit but it was learning that Don's grandfather (grandfather) fought in the Civil War, as did his grandmother's brother.  (This is chronologically possible because both Don's grandfather and father were in their late 40's when they had Don's father and Don.)  In fact, his grandmother's brother was called a "train stealer," a Union soldier who snuck into the South to sabotage rail lines and rolling stock.  It is most remarkable to know an actual living person who is so close to a war that was not only 150 years ago but that was possibly the most important single historical event in our nation's history after the Constitutional Convention of 1787.

I hinted above that there was a war fought in Minnesota during the Civil War.  It was the Dakota War of 1862 and was between Dakota Indians and white settlers.  The vast majority of the 600 white people who were killed were unarmed homesteaders.  The number of Dakota who died was much smaller, but over a quarter of the Dakota people who surrendered died the following year in the diaspora that followed, with thousands of Dakota moving/being moved from their lands to reservations, often several states away.  It's a very good exhibit, and very depressing.

After that, Jini and Don and I needed something a bit more positive, and we found it in an exhibit about, of all things, a house.

The house is 470/472 Hopkins Avenue, in east St. Paul, and was sort of randomly chosen by the museum as a method to show that everyday people are part of history.  The home was built in the 19th century by a family named Schumacher who were upper middle class German immigrants and who lived there as a single family residence.  In 1923, the family sold it to two Italian cousins who converted it to a duplex, one side for each cousin's family.  This part of St. Paul became a "Little Italy" in the 1930's with lots of Italian immigrants.  After World War II the building was converted to a triplex and has housed people with a variety of ethnic backgrounds, including the Hmong people who resettled in the Twin Cities following the Vietnam War.  The Open House exhibit attempts - with a large amount of success - to track down the names of everyone who's ever lived there and interview a number of people.  It's a very interesting concept for an exhibit and really helps someone understand his or her city's history.

Here's part of the exhibit:

The next day, you may not be shocked to learn that I tracked down the house:

As I took the picture, I wondered whether the people who live there now have gotten used to local history nerds photographing their house.  Or, perhaps, I'm the only one.  Hard to say.

One last shot of the History Center, for Jini's sake, because she wanted me to represent Minnesota in my chronicle of aviation history. You see, Charles Lindbergh was from Minnesota.  I didn't know that, but when I thought about it I realized, "his name is Lindbergh - of course he's from Minnesota."  The museum has Lindbergh's early plane, Jenny.



After a delicious lunch, I bid goodbye to Jini and Don and decided to spend the afternoon taking in a bit more of St. Paul.  This whole traveling thing is made a lot easier by the existence of the Interwebs and, more specifically, mobile technology.  There's a great website/app called Trip Advisor where you can just hit a couple of buttons on your smartphone and voila, there's a list of things to do in your area plus reviews of them by other travelers.  Using this, I found the Landmark Building in downtown St. Paul which is home to a couple of actual museums and a ton of history.

The building was originally the Federal Courthouse, and is actually where Supreme Court Justice Harry Blackmun began his judicial career.  There are still some federal offices there, along with a number of non-profits, two of whom have small museums.

My initial reason for going was to see the Schubert Club Museum of Musical Instruments.  I'm still unclear as to what exactly the Schubert Club is, but the museum itself includes a number of historic pianos.  For instance, the first grand piano, built by John Broadwood in the late 18th century.

Or Liszt's favorite piano:

Or pianos that are just beautiful:

But as luck would have it, the Schubert Club wasn't even my favorite museum in the building, because the Landmark Building is also home to the American Association of Woodturners.  They have a small museum featuring lathed pieces by their members.  Beautiful work.  These pictures won't do them justice but they give you an idea.

Both museums are technically free but they do accept donations.

The rest of the building is also a museum of sorts, with signs all around explaining some of the historical events that occurred here.  Here's a surprise:  I was intrigued by a Supreme Court antitrust case involving the railroads.  James J. Hill, St. Paul's biggest businessman at the turn of the century and owner of a couple of railroads (you can tour his mansion on Summit Avenue but I didn't - after all, I've already been to Biltmore) got into a bidding war with Edward Harriman (of the Union Pacific) over control of Hill's companies and Hill created a holding company (also called a trust) to prevent this from happening again.  Teddy Roosevelt's Justice Department sued under the Sherman Antitrust Act and the lawsuit went to the Supreme Court which ruled that the holding company posed a direct restraint of interstate commerce and thus violated the Act.  Depositions for this case were taken in the St. Paul Federal Building.  Anyway, I think that's very cool but we established long ago that I am a nerd.

Because of the freakishly late winter, there were some things in the Twin Cities I didn't get to go (i.e., things that required going outside), so I imagine I'll make a point of returning some year in July, after the snow has mostly melted.