By Mary Mergenthal
The architecture of the University of Minnesota’s St. Paul campus will be the subject of Kristin Anderson’s April St. Anthony Park history talk.
Anderson, professor emerita of Art & Design at Augsburg University, will conduct her free talk at 7 p.m. on Tuesday, April 8, at St. Anthony Park Lutheran Church, 2323 Como Ave. She is a long-time resident of St. Anthony Park and has been taking neighborhood residents and friends on free monthly visual tours of SAP history for over two years.
In Anderson’s next talk, attendees and viewers can take a photographic tour of the beautiful campus grounds, looking at old and new buildings. She will also point out how the campus has adapted to meet the changing needs of the university.
In the early 1880s, the University of Minnesota abandoned its initial plans for an agricultural school near its Minneapolis campus. With the purchase of a farm at Larpenteur and Cleveland avenues, the St. Paul campus got its start.
Over the next 140 years, the campus has grown alongside the adjacent St. Anthony Park neighborhood, which has provided housing and community for faculty, staff and students.
Besides Anderson’s in-person session at the church, her talk will be accessible live online, with a recording available for one week after the session. Use the SAPLC youtube channel at Bit.ly/Sap-history. You can also find the church’s youtube channel by clicking through from Saplc.org to the Worship link, and then to the livestream link.
Anderson’s history of Commonwealth Avenue presentation, postponed in January, has been rescheduled to 7 p.m. on Tuesday, April 29. Live location and online access details are the same.
The final SAP history session on Hampden Park is scheduled for Tuesday, May 13.
Mary Mergenthal, who lives in St. Anthony Park, is a former editor of the Bugle and is the Bugle’s current obits editor.
Photo caption: “Residence of the Agriculturist,” in Cram’s Superior Reference Atlas of Minnesota and the World (1907). From the collection of Kristin Anderson.
