MINNEAPOLIS, the largest city of Minnesota, U.S.A., a port of entry, and the county seat of Hennepin county; at the Falls of St. Anthony and the head of navigation on the Mississippi river, 2,16o m. from its mouth, immediately above and west of St. Paul, and exactly midway between the equator and the north pole. It is on Federal highways 12, 52, 169; has direct airmail service to Chicago, connecting there with the transcontinental airways; and is served by ten trunk railroad lines (the Burlington Route, the Chicago Great Western, the Chicago, Milwaukee, St. Paul and Pacific, the Chicago, St. Paul, Minneapolis and Omaha, the Great Northern, the Minneapolis and St. Louis, the Minne apolis, Northfield and Southern, the Northern Pacific, the Rock Island and the Soo Line) and by electric railways, terminal switching and belt lines, motor coach and truck lines in all di rections and river barges. The population was in 1930 (est. 489,000 in 1936), making it the 15th city of the United States. There were 80,834 foreign-born whites (largely from northern Europe and Canada). The "Twin Cities" and their im mediate suburbs constitute a great urban community with a popu lation in 1930 of 832,258. Minneapolis lies on both sides of the river, on a plateau 800 ft. above sea-level at the Falls and rising to points several hundred feet higher. It covers 55.38 sq.m. and has 22 m. of frontage on the Mississippi, which here averages about 1,200 ft. in width. Nineteen bridges (12 highway and 7 railroad) cross the river within the city limits, and some of them have great structural beauty. Clustered about the Falls, mostly on the west bank of the river, and approached by a long, low bridge of con crete, are the great flour mills, forming a huge mass of limestone masonry, impressive by its bulk and outline. With the addition in recent years of large creameries to the mill district, the sil houette against the western sky has come to be known as "the bread and butter skyline." Minnehaha Creek, the outlet of Lake Minnetonka, flows through the southern part of the city, and just before joining the Mississippi plunges over a cliff so ft. high in the falls celebrated by Longfellow (who never saw them, but formed his idea from a photograph) in his poem "Hiawatha." Minnehaha Falls are in one of the city's parks. Adjoining it, in grounds of 51 ac., given to the State by the city, is the State soldiers' home (1887), Just beyond (lying between Minneapolis and St. Paul, at the mouth of the Minnesota river) is the Ft. Snelling Military Reservation (established 1819), where the original fort built in 1822, an ivy-covered round stone tower, stands, with the modern barracks and other buildings of the post, on a high bluff overlooking the gorge of the Mississippi and the valley of the Minnesota. At Ft. Snelling a U.S. Veterans hospital of 56o beds was constructed in 1926-27, There are six large natural lakes and several smaller ones within the city limits. Twelve miles west is Lake Minnetonka, one of the oldest and most famous summer resorts of the North-west, a beautiful body of water i2 m. long, surrounded by wooded hills, with a dozen islands and a shore-line so indented by inlets and points that its length is variously estimated at from 25o to Soo miles. The city owns 140 parks, covering 5,147 ac., of which about i,000 ac. is outside the city limits. The system embraces a playground or neighbour hood park for every square mile of residential area (and more than an acre to each hundred of the population), 4 public golf courses, 39 athletic fields, i5o tennis courts, so skating rinks, 45 baseball diamonds, II rinks, 16 picnic grounds, and 56 m. of boulevards encircling the city, connecting the lakes and the larger parks and passing through beautiful residential districts—called the "Grand Rounds," one section of which is the Victory Memorial Drive way, dedicated in 1921.
Minneapolis has wide streets and many fine public and business buildings. Building permits for 29,779 buildings during the five years (1931-1935) represented values aggregating $30,192,000. The assessed valuation of property for 1936 was $259,561,232. There are some 150 hotels of all grades, many of them with from 300 to 600 guest-rooms. A magnificent municipal auditorium of gran ite and Bedford stone (completed in 1927 at a cost exceeding $3,000,000) has an assembly room seating a stage so by 90 ft., and many ingenious interior arrangements for comfort and convenience, The Federal Reserve Bank, designed by Cass Gilbert and completed in 1924, is impressive and unusual. With only one entrance, and lighted entirely from above, it conveys a sense of tremendous strength and security. The Art Institute, designed by McKim, Mead and White (opened 1915) is a beau tiful building 575 ft. long by soo ft. deep. The main campus of the University of Minnesota (q.v.) occupies 128 ac. in a bend on the east bank of the Mississippi, entirely within the city of Minne apolis. Its memorial stadium (opened 1924) seats 52,000 spec tators. Among the other educational institutions in the city are Augsburg college and Theological Seminary (Norwegian Lutheran, 1869), the Minnesota College of Law, Northwestern College of Law, the William Hood Dunwoody Industrial Institute (an en dowed trade school founded in 1914) and the Minneapolis School of Art. The public school system included (1934) 92 elementary, 18 junior and senior high, and several special and vocational schools—a total of 114 ; and there are 22 parochial schools main tained by the Roman Catholic church. The public library (615,759 volumes, 1935) grew out of a private institution, the Athenaeum. There are 272 churches in the city, representing many faiths and denominations. The hospitals, public and private, have an aggregate of 3,500 beds. The civic and philanthropic agencies of the city, public and private, are affiliated for the purpose of promoting the general welfare in a Council of Social Agencies; and the 65 or 70 organizations among them which are not financed by endowment or from the public treasury or in some special way unite in a joint campaign for funds which raised $1,483,865 during the year 1935. Three general daily newspapers are pub lished in English, and there are weeklies in both Swedish and German. There are special daily publications devoted to the in terests of finance and commerce, the building trades, farming and grain dealers. The city operates under a charter secured in 1872, revised in 188r, and readopted in 1920 with the addition of the numerous amendments made to that date. Under the "home rule" amendment to the State Constitution, new charters repre senting various plans of government were formulated and pre sented to the voters in 1900, 1904, 1906 and 1913, but all were rejected. Administrative powers, under the present charter, are vested in a mayor, a council, and several boards (school, library, estimate and taxation and public welfare). Since 1912 the non partisan system of nomination has been in effect. A city-planning commission was established in 1919, and in 1924 a zoning ordi nance was adopted. The water-supply is taken from the Mississippi river, filtered and purified and distributed by a gravity system through 765 m. of mains. With extensions already planned, the plant will have a capacity of 150,000,000 gal. a day, while the average daily consumption at present is about 50,000,000 gallons.