Market Update in Marshall Terrace Neighborhood

Marshall Terrace Park and Marshall Terrace Gardens

Marshall Terrace Neighborhood

Marshall Terrace is a neighborhood in the Northeast community in Minneapolis, Minnesota.

Location and Characteristics
Marshall Terrace’s boundaries are Saint Anthony Parkway to the north, 4th Street and University Avenue to the east, Lowry Avenue to the south, and the Mississippi River to the west. It is named for former Minnesota governor William Rainey Marshall.

Much of Marshall Terrace is reserved for industrial use with utilities and industries situated along the western border and railroad tracks along the east. Its housing was developed in the early 20th century to provide homes for those working in nearby industries and is concentrated in the central part of the neighborhood. The housing stock consists largely of smaller single family homes.

Landmarks
Marshall Terrace has two parks located along the Mississippi River: Marshall Terrace Park and Marshall Terrace Gardens. The Grand Rounds Scenic Byway also runs along St. Anthony Parkway on the neighborhood’s northern border.

Transportation
The neighborhood is served by Metro Transit bus routes 11 (2nd Street NE/Grand Street NE) and 32 (Lowry Avenue). St. Anthony Parkway and part of University Avenue have separated bike paths.

Marshall Terrace is a substantially industrial neighborhood in Northeast Minneapolis, but from an era when living where one worked was considered normal. Its northern and southern borders are St. Anthony Parkway and Lowry Avenue NE; more consequentially, the neighborhood spans from BNSF’s Northtown (rail) Yard to the Mississippi River.

Walking All the Streets of Marshall Terrace
My route started and ended at the southeastern corner of the neighborhood, the intersection of University and Lowry Avenues NE. That’s marked A and B for the start and end of the little blue loop that encompasses just a few blocks. I interrupted that loop by taking the segment of Lowry marked in purple to the other A/B point, the start and end of the other much larger blue circuit that winds through the rest of the neighborhood. When that was complete, I took the purple connector back to the southeast loop and finished it off. Aside from the purple connector, I walked a number of other segments (shown in red) twice, but those were immediate forward-and-back spurs.

With nearly 10 miles to walk, I wanted to start well fueled, so I visited Stanley’s Northeast Bar Room for brunch, a vegetarian variant on eggs Benedict they call “Rio,” featuring poblano pepper augmented by mushrooms and spinach. The name initially puzzled me, given that Rio de Janeiro is considerably further from Puebla, Mexico, than Minneapolis is. My best guess is that it references the forthcoming movie Rio, which stars an actor named Benedict. At any rate, I enjoyed it with sweet potato hash on the super dog-friendly “pawtio,” which features the only dog menu I’ve seen.

Heading west from Stanley’s on Lowry, I took a brief spur northward on 3rd Street NE. That was emblematic of the neighborhood in that it was lined with residences (largely single-family detached houses) but ended at the blank concrete-block wall of an industrial building. When I later passed the front of that building, I learned it houses Hard Chrome, a metal plating firm.

On Lowry itself, I passed a variety of residential and commercial buildings, as well as one religious and educational facility, the Dar Al-Qalam Cultural Center. For much of its lifetime, this building housed Park Printing, whose newer, larger building I’d see later in the walk.

Although Marshall Terrace does include a substantial portion of houses, I’m not showing many in this post—they simply aren’t the most interesting part of the neighborhood mix. However, I can’t resist showing my favorite house of the whole walk, located in Marshall Terrace Park. My first thought was that families coming to play here must remember to bring some mail with them to give the kids something to deliver into and retrieve from the mailbox. But then I remembered that kids are perfectly capable of playing endlessly with mail made out of thin air and imagination.