Rediscover East Lake Street!

BY ED FELIEN

Hymies new location on Lake & 39th Ave.

Uptown has always been glamorous. Even after losing Schlamp’s Furs it was
still chic and hip. Midtown was always durable and sensible, even after losing Sears. But East Lake has always seemed like the sad and neglected sibling—a wallflower, standing alone.

It wasn’t always like that. Two long gone anchors of East Lake reflected the character of South Minneapolis in the forties and fifties.

The intersection of Lake and Hiawatha in the 1950s was a fast stop gas station on the northwest corner, the Tuttle family bowling alley on the southwest corner, a White Castle on the southeast corner and White Manufacturing on the northeast corner.

White Manufacturing, more popularly known as Minneapolis Moline, made
International Harvester tractors. It was a noble and worthy occupation. It’s hard now to believe there was a large factory in South Minneapolis, where Target is now. It’s even more difficult to believe the workers were unionized, well paid and with full benefits. These were the thousand blue collar workers that defined the character of South Minneapolis. But it was not all smooth sailing. The gains that workers at the Moline plant won in the forties were the result of militant union organizers led by members of the Minneapolis branch of the Communist Party. In the fifties, in order for CIO locals to join the AF of L, they had to purge their Communist members.

They did and Communist Party workers were blacklisted. And it didn’t end well. With the mililtant union members gone, it was easy for White Manufacturing to cut back on benefits and, when they went bankrupt, to take the worker’s pension fund with them when they left.

At the other end of East Lake Street was another institution that also shaped the character of South Minneapolis. It was Luke Rader’s Gospel Tabernacle—a huge auditorium for what was home to “America’s Pioneer Radio Evangelist,” according to the Billy Graham archives.

These two dissimilar anchors at either end of East Lake, both gone now, were what used to be. What is now is a lot of small businesses coming back from a rough two-year recession. And, just when we thought we were on the road to recovery, tragedy struck at McMahon’s Pub: six people killed in an explosive fire, and a beloved institution in ashes.

One more change for guardians of our past, Hymie’s Records, the best collection of vintage vinyl, has moved in with Papa John at 39th and Lake, next to Blue Moon Coffee House.

Life goes on and, if we can build on what went on before, we can actually believe things are getting better.