Wander Minnesota: Those Special Places
What is it about lone buildings, whether abandoned or not, usually old, sometimes quirky, that catch our attention? I recently started two occasional series on my Flyover Land blog, the Church Project and the Post Office Project, looking at some of the more beautiful or just plain more fun buildings I've seen on my journeys around the state. I'm not the only one intrigued with these: Minnesota Prairie Roots' Audrey has also taken a shine to the beauty of the sometimes underappreciated or unnoticed buildings all around us.
That's why I was so delighted to discover a series of books put out by the Minnesota Historical Society Press called the Minnesota Byways Series, by photographer Doug Ohman.
There are currently six books in the series, each highlighting a different type of building found throughout the state. While all are edited by Ohman, each has a prominent Minnesota writer providing commentary on the beautiful and fun photos that generously illustrate the subjects. For example, Cabins of Minnesota has Bill Holm reflecting not only on the Minnesota need to get away from it all, but how it's really a cherished tradition across centuries and nations, even if the actual getaways varied. Churches of Minnesota benefits from Jon Hassler's nostalgic, lively, and sometimes wry remembrances:
"This was also the year, I believe, that my sainted grandmother, in that very church, was refused absolution and cast out of the confessional by a roaring priest whose name we never learned and whose form of insanity we speculated about for years after we left the city. The experience, as I recall, did nothing to diminish her faith. She thought—as all churchgoers must, no matter what their religion—that as long as mere mortals were entrusted with the Divine Word, we were always liable to come in contact with priests and ministers with human faults. This grandmother, my mother's Irish mother, died about three years later on a Sunday morning as she rode a streetcar on her way to Mass."
In Barns of Minnesota, Will Weaver uses a fictional barn to look at generations of farming in Minnesota, all accompanied by gorgeous scenes of barns inside and out, winter and summer. A more stately form of architecture is explored in Courthouses of Minnesota, with text by Mary Logue, while Jim Heynen looks at numerous facets of the Schoolhouses of Minnesota, including his own time spent in a one-room schoolhouse.
The latest installment in the series, Libraries of Minnesota, will be published this May, and takes a slight departure from the previous format by having several Minnesota writers contribute, including Pete Hautman and Kao Kalia Yang.
This is a beautiful series to dip into, both for the quality (and variety) of the writing and for the photography. What are you waiting for? Start exploring!
What else is happening in our state? Be sure to check out the 10 p.m. Sunday night WCCO newscasts, where you can learn more in the weekly segment, Finding Minnesota.
