The calming of Franklin Avenue

BY ED FELIEN

Franklin Avenue has come a long way in a hundred years. Before World War I, Franklin Avenue was the way station between Snoose Boulevard on Cedar Avenue and the Hub of Hell on 26th and 26th. Hard working and hard drinking Scandinavians would begin on Snoose Boulevard after work at one of the many industrial sites along the railroad tracks and hoist a few, then walk through the neighborhood to Franklin Avenue where a number of bars offered serious and cheap drinks, and then go on to the end of the Liquor Patrol Limits (as far as a police officer could travel on a horse) to 26th Street and 26th Avenue where a night’s entertainment could mean music and illicit love.

The action didn’t really stop with the passage of Prohibition and the Volstead Act—it just went under wraps. Some Scandinavians took personal offense at Prohibition. After all, Andrew Volstead was Norwegian and from Minnesota, but he was part of the pious half of the immigrant wave, and those people took their Evangelical Lutheranism very seriously.

When the Liquor Patrol Limits were abolished by popular referendum in 1974, there was no longer any need to concentrate liquor south of 26th Street, and Franklin Avenue began to become a normal neighborhood Main Street.
Today, the east end of Franklin Avenue boasts the largest co-op grocery store in the Midwest, yoga studios, pottery centers and Asian eateries never dreamt of a hundred years ago.

Perhaps the final act of the neighborhood calming the Avenue is placing crossing guards at corners to help pedestrians across the street during rush hour. By their presence, the crossing guards tell motorists, “Slow down! We live here! And, we’re staying!”