Seats of the Past

As I was prepping for tomorrow's January Twitter round-up, I came across these two mid-month images I had favorited from an account called mpls photo bot:

Pedestrian Seating in Crystal Court
[Undated, but probably 1980s]
Address: 700 Nicollet Ave.
Source: Hennepin County Library

 

Peavey Plaza
Date: 1995
Source: Hennepin County Library

I marked them not out of a fit of nostalgia or because they're such great photos. Instead, it's because neither of these places would be designed this way in downtown Minneapolis now because they have abundant seating in a public place.

As Heather McGhee described so well in The Sum of Us, once white people realize they have to share public goods with people who aren't white, they take them away. That's what has been happening with seating in public places, especially in downtown Minneapolis. Hennepin Avenue and Nicollet Mall (the location of both the Crystal Court and Peavy Plaza) were both redone in the past few years without benches.

The were even built with intentionally anti-human infrastructure, such as planters designed to be too small to sit on or with tilted edges. It's like the ledges you see on buildings that have spikes to prevent pigeons from roosting, except for humans.

So seeing those two photos from not that long ago made me both sad and angry. 

This is what the Crystal Court looked like more recently:

Those white benches with arms were removed some time ago. A recently completed renovation now looks like this:

So, a bit to my surprise, there is some seating available on those 3D-printed black things, though it looks like it's designed to make sure no one can sleep on it. And there are some tables and chairs under the trees, which can be repositioned (or taken away completely). 

The renovated Peavy Plaza is harder to find photos of. The center fountain has been turned into a single large, shallow pool. This is an article that ran in the Star Tribune from the day it was opened in July 2019. 

It's interesting that there don't seem to be random photos of the park posted online, or even proud shots of it on its designers' page. In a few spots, there appear to be a few blue plastic Adirondack chairs that can be removed. It's hard to tell if there's much other seating, or if people are hanging out there. 

If not, maybe it's because there's no shade.