 Down and Out: The Life and Death of Minneapolis' Skid Row
Photos by Edwin C. Hirschoff
Essay by Joseph Hart
University of Minnesota Press, 2002
(From the publisher) Minneapolis' skid row, known as the Gateway district, was a lively area consisting of dozens of bars, flophouses, pawnshops, burlesque houses, charity missions, and office buildings that had aged past their prime. Encompassing some 25 blocks centering on the intersection of Hennepin, Washington, and Nicollet Avenues, the neighborhood was demolished between 1959 and 1963 as part of the first federally funded urban renewal project in America. Gathered here for the first time, Edwin C. Hirschoff's stark and moving images of the Gateway district's final days—its streets, buildings, and parks; the rubble, smoke, and heavy equipment of its destruction—eloquently capture its demise. Down and Out provides a unique historical perspective and the most extensive photographic record available of the Gateway demolition project.
Joseph Hart's engaging and comprehensive essay complements Hirschoff's photographs by detailing the district's social and economic evolution and the political decision making that led to its destruction. Hart presents a popular history of Minneapolis' skid row and the people who lived there, migrant workers who learned that changes in the local economy could quickly degrade their status from valued laborer to societal menace (vagrant, tramp, or bum). By capturing the texture of life on skid row, Hart reveals the lost American culture of a bygone community.
About the Photographer
(From the publisher) Edwin C. Hirschoff was a leader in the camera club movement that thrived in Minneapolis during the 1930s and 1940s. A creative photographer, entrepreneur, and inventor, he had a successful career in public relations before founding Art-O-Graph, a Minneapolis business that has prospered for more than half a century. He was born in Zurick, Switzerland, in 1905, and lived in Minneapolis for almost ninety years before his death in 2002.
About the Author
(From the publisher) Joseph Hart is a writer, editor, and teacher. His features, reviews, profiles, and essays have appeared in publications including the Utne Reader, the Star Tribune, Minnesota Monthly, Mpls/St. Paul, and the Twin Cities news weekly City Pages, where he served as a staff writer. He is a member of the affiliate faculty at the University of Minnesota's Department of English where he teaches writing and editing. He earned a bachelor's degree in English (1992), and an MFA in creative writing (2000) from the University of Minnesota. Hart is a co-founder of the Tracy's Tertulia, a literary salon. He lives in Minneapolis with his wife, writer and journalist Anne O'Connor, and their three children. Down & Out is his first book.
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