This article from the Star Tribune has been sent to you by Mary Belfry .
Mary Belfry wrote these comments: Please post for members of the MN Issues Forum can be informed regarding the Minneapolis Parks Legacy Society. Thank you BYLINE: CREDITLINE: HEADLINE: Editorial: Wirth house / A fine place for a museum If your task were to give a Minneapolis grade-schooler a one-day tour that would impart some city history and instill some hometown pride, where would you go? You would start, undoubtedly, where the city began, at St. Anthony Falls on the Mississippi River. Then you would want to take in Minnehaha Falls, the parkways, the Chain of Lakes. You would stroll around the historic fountains and flowers of Lake Harriet. Then when her legs were tired and her interest well piqued, you might want to go to a nearby place where she could learn the story behind all she had seen. A museum explaining and interpreting the history of the city's magnificent park system would do nicely -- in the very place where much of the system was designed, the home and office of Theodore Wirth, legendary Minneapolis park superintendent. That is the fine idea being promoted by Wirth's grandson and namesake, Theodore J. Wirth, and a civic-minded group called the Minneapolis Parks Legacy Society. They are seeking permission to establish a privately funded museum in the 1910 mansion in the southeast corner of Lyndale Farmstead park that several generations of Minneapolitans knew as the Wirth house. It's an idea the house's landlord, the Minneapolis Park and Recreation Board, should welcome. Since 1997, a year after the house ceased to be used as a superintendent's residence, the Wirth house has been leased to a professional organization, the Minnesota Recreation and Park Association, at the surprisingly low base rent of $9,000 a year. While the park board may have no quarrel with that tenant, board members should ask themselves whether leasing the entire house as office space is the highest and best use of real estate with a remarkable history. Wirth the grandson spent boyhood summers at the house the park board offered to build to lure his grandfather to leave Hartford, Conn., in 1906. He attests that it was there that his grandfather implemented his vision of a park within six blocks of every child's home. There he supervised a staff of designers who planned the gardens, buildings, ball fields and playgrounds that make each park distinctive. There he made the transactions that expanded the system's acreage threefold, to very nearly its present size. It's no accident that the house stands alone in a park. Wirth wanted the inspiration of watching people using parks. It's also no accident that Wirth's Lakewood Cemetery grave is visible from the house. That, too, was his plan. There can be no better setting in which to learn that it was human genius, persistence and leadership, and not the kindness of nature alone, that made Minneapolis one of the nation's most beautiful cities. The park board should make room for a museum in the Wirth house. _______________________________________ Minneapolis Issues Forum - A Civil City Civic Discussion - Mn E-Democracy Post messages to: [EMAIL PROTECTED] Subscribe, Unsubscribe, Digest option, and more: http://e-democracy.org/mpls
