At the corner of Second Avenue South and Third Street stands the Metropolitan Life Building, erected at a cost of one million six hundred thousand dollars. Adjacent is the Post Office, in a Romanesque style.
On Hennepin Avenue, at the corner of North Fifth Street, is the imposing Lumber Exchange. To the right are the West Hotel and the Masonic Temple. At the corner of Eighth Street is the private art gallery of Mr. T. B. Walker, containing good specimens of British portrait painters and of the Barbison school and also works by or ascribed to Raphael, Michael Angelo, Rubens, Rembrandt, Van Dyck, Holbein, and Murillo.
Farther on, at the corner of Tenth Street, is the Public Library and Art Gallery, an ornate Romanesque structure.
At the corner of Sixteenth Street is the new Roman Catholic Cathedral.
Other prominent churches are the First Unitarian Church, at the corner of Mary’s Place and Eighth Street; the Westminster Presbyterian Church, Nicollet Avenue; the Church of the Redeemer; the Fowler Methodist Episcopal Church, on Lowry Hill; the Second Church of Christ, Scientist; Plymouth Church, and St. Mark’s Cathedral.
At the other end of Hennepin Avenue is the Union Depot. Among other prominent buildings in the business quarter are the Court House and City Hall, a handsome building in Fourth Street, completed at a cost of three million dollars, with a tower three hundred and forty-five feet high; the New York Life Insurance Building, Fifth Street and Second Avenue, with an elaborate interior; the Northwestern National Bank; the First National Bank; the Andrus Building; Donaldson’s Glass Block Store; the Security Bank Building, and the Chamber of Commerce, Fourth Street South and Fourth Avenue.
The University of Minnesota lies on the left bank of the river, between Washington and University Avenues, and occupies various well-equipped buildings.
Other notable institutions are the Augsburg Theological School, Minneapolis Normal School, and a Conservatory of Music.
Within the urban limits of Minneapolis are fourteen wooded lakes, while the gorges of the Mississippi and the Minnehaha Creek are very picturesque. These natural features have been made the basis of a fine system of boulevards. From the southeast side of Lake Harriet the road runs to the east along the Minnehaha Creek, passing Lake Amelia, to Minnehaha Park, containing the graceful Falls of the Minnehaha, fifty feet high and immortalized by Longfellow.