South Minneapolis

The Hank Hazlett Trio and South Minneapolis Part Eight

~ Frank Hudson ~ Leave a comment

Last time an Afro-American 35-year-old singer and skilled guitarist named Hank Hazlett had left The Cats and the Fiddle, a swing Jazz quartet made up of Chicagoans, when that group’s founding and featured singer returned after serving in the armed forces during WWII. Hazlett had been standing in for that man, and though he never recorded with the Cats* he got experience touring the best Black-oriented entertainment venues of the 1940s and interacting with other acts that the Cats shared bills with.

Hazlett must have decided he was comfortable fronting a band. In the scrapbook that is the centerpiece of this series, we can find two posed large-format glossy promo photos taken at a professional studio in Chicago of his next act: The Hank Hazlett Trio.

Hank Hazlett Trio Promos in Black and White

Interesting pairing visually. One with all black suits against a white background, the other all white against a black background. Could be simple use of contrast, but the poet in me sees metaphor.

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That photo studio location indicates they were formed in Chicago. The trio was touring in 1947, as the scrapbook contains a letter from a San Antonio radio station thanking the group for an appearance there. I’ve also found this ad for a 1949 Trio appearance in Denver.

HHT at Rossonian 1949

The Cats and the Fiddle had played Denver more than 10 years earlier in an early gig before Hazlett joined up. By now this venue says it’s in “The Heart of Denver’s Harlem.”

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Unlike the scrapbook material from Hazlett’s Cats in the Fiddle stint, there are no clipped-out ads for appearances by the Hank Hazlett Trio pasted into the scrapbook. We don’t know who sang in the Trio, and I can’t be certain what kind of music they played either. The rapid, chopped chord-change swing Jazz of the Cats was morphing into what was renamed as Rhythm and Blues, a term invented by music journalist soon to be Atlantic records principal Jerry Wexler to replace the previous music business term “race records.” R&B could include former Jazz band vocalists who now fronted small combos, vocal harmony groups like the Cats or their more successful and smoother contemporaries the Mills Brothers and the Ink Spots, and the newly plugged-in Black rural and southern singers who had moved north to play a gruffer, harder-edged electric Blues. Basically R&B was rock’n’roll, just not named that yet, and with a much smaller white musician contribution when the term was coined.

The first reports I can find of the Trio performing has them backing a Missouri-born by way of Chicago female R&B singer Donna Hightower which are collected on Marv Goldberg’s website.**

The Cats had played as a band for female singers, including backing Lena Horne with Hazlett on guitar.

August 1952 Minneapolis Spokesman (another Black newspaper) wrote this:

The musicians who are playing at the Key Club are Hank Hazlett, leader and Spanish guitar; Maurice Turner, bass fiddle; Buddy Davis, piano and vibraphone; Donna Hightower, Decca recording artist and vocalist. The musicians are all from Chicago and staying at the home of Mr. and Mrs. William E. Gray, 420 E. 37th St.”

That “staying-with” address is in the heart of Black South Minneapolis and would be two short blocks from a Portland Ave address we’ll meet just down the page. Goldberg has them playing at the Key Club in a long-term engagement until New Years Eve. Here’s what the St. Paul Recorder (the other Twin Cities Black newspaper) has to say (with Goldberg’s interjected corrections):

The Hank Hazlett Trio, composed of Buddy Davis, pianist and Maurice Turner, base [sic] drummer, along with the capable leader of the combo Hank Hazlett is now playing at the Key Club, 1229 Washington Ave So., every night and Sunday afternoon matinees.

The popular trio featuring Dinah [sorry Donna] Hightower, vocalist, got its start in Chicago in 1947 and has played successful engagements in many outstanding nightclubs.

Miss Hightower with her ultra modern version of popular music, seems to have a way with the patrons. The entertainers will be here through the holiday season.”

Don’t look for it now, this location was demolished for the I35 freeway.

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If you want more details about The Key Club aka South of the Border, the Twin Cities Music Highlights website has much to read. Many national Jazz and R&B luminaries played at this establishment in the Seven Corners portion of Minneapolis’ West Bank neighborhood. Lots of seedy goings-on too, as this era of the Minneapolis Jazz and music scene often finds stripper acts, guns, and likely mob connections intermingling with the musicians.

This YouTube video dub of an acetate (demo or proof record) is the only audio artifact of the Hank Hazlett Trio I’ve found. Donna Hightower sings backing vocals. The guitar and likely the lead vocal is Hank.

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Around the time of this extended engagement, it seems that Hazlett moved to the Twin Cities, setting up residency at 3648 Portland Ave in South Minneapolis, six blocks from where the scrapbook was found. Why there?

From what I can gather, Minneapolis has a strange and complex racial history, so please excuse these meager paragraphs that try to summarize the highlights of my incomplete understanding that follows. Minneapolis has long had some Black residents, and when it gathered more in the first waves of the Great Migration after WWI, there was white backlash. One instrument of that backlash were special clauses put into property deeds excluding transfer of those deeds to non-white or Jewish buyers. In theory government courts would need to be called in to enforce these racial covenants, but in practice these were often a silent exclusionary agreements, though they were sometimes enforced in breach by mobs of sullen whites who would surround an incursive Black occupied home with threats and vandalism against this blatant integration. This private customary segregation was later reinforced around mid-century by “red-lining,” a practice by home-loan issuers (including federal government loans) to exclude writing mortgages in Black areas. All of this, pretty rotten stuff — but perfectly “normal” and widespread in the United States, not just Minneapolis.***

In Minneapolis there were two sections of the city that became “Black:” one, on the north side of town (shared with a Jewish population that were often excluded by the same covenants and a higher than usual American level of local antisemitism), and the other, a vertical north-south strip in South Minneapolis. 3132 Park Ave was just on the borderline of these redline established sections. Even when I came to South Minneapolis in the ‘70s, you could see by the skin tones of the residents where those invisible lines sort of remained, to a fine resolution that could be almost block by block.****

Our 1953 musician Hank Hazlett lived in a house in the Black South Minneapolis area for several years, his only Minneapolis residence I can establish. I don’t know if he owned it, but the scrapbook maker was proud of it. There are a couple of photos clearly identifiable as his house, one with a new-looking or late-model 1953 Cadillac parked in front. I don’t know what his income was. The city directories continue to list him as musician, and at least in the mid-50s his local gigs were common. Even this late in the 20th century, when radio, television and recordings allowed music to be captured and transmitted on devices, live music was still a vital part of the experience of music. Perhaps for Hank the choice of Minneapolis went like this: I could tour from any city as my home base. The music scene in Minneapolis may be smaller than Chicago or LA, but on the other hand there are fewer Black bands competing for the club slots — and since it’s not a town to launch one’s new act to musical stardom, my middle-aged self may be able to settle down without having to directly compete with the most ambitious young acts.

Portland Ave with Cadillac

One of the pictures of 3648 Portland Ave in the scrapbook. I’m assuming the car is Hazlett’s. The scrapbook has 1955 telegrams directing Hazlett and his trio to go from a gig at Williston ND to Sheboygan WI and that Scotts Bluff in Nebraska is cancelled. If they drove, that’d be a good car for this.

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The city directory records tell us that he had a wife, Edith. It could be that the marriage predates 1953, and there’s certainly lots of 1940s material in the scrapbook if she collected any of it then. There’s a possibility they have a child. The scrapbook is oh so scant on this. There are three photos of young children on its pages. The oldest by background clues may be as early as the 1940s, and it shows a young toddler standing in a quiet road that is not   Portland Ave, and in pen on the bottom it says “Earl P. Jr. 2 years old.” Lawrence/Hank Hazlett isn’t Earl, and “Jr.” traditionally means a father’s name given to an offspring. And then there’s a pair of what looks to me like two snapshots of one child. One shot of this kid shows a smiling sub-1-year-old in their onesie. To the right of that photo is pasted another one of a young Black couple sitting in front of moon and stars backdrop. That man doesn’t look like Hank Hazlett to me, but not only are the two photos near each other, I can sort of see the baby looking like the child of that couple. It’s possible that the man in the moon and stars photo is a much younger version of the performer Hazzlett, who I have only older-age pictures of. And finally there’s a somewhat serious looking, slightly older child in a push stroller-scooter. The back of that last photo has a date: 1952.

Two baby pictures that may be the same child

This is the second set of baby pictures that I think may be the same child. The one in the middle is dated 1952. Do you think the moon & stars picture that’s pasted on the same page as the left-hand baby is a younger Hank? There’s another picture below of a woman that may be an older Edith Hazlett.

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There’s also a handwritten, child-like letter which I transcribe as:

Dear Daddy,

How are you? Fine I hope.

And all the others. We had a vary nice Christmas. Well today is the last day in the year and a new year is coming. Yvonne Dickie Gwen and myself are getting along fine in music. I love my fountain pen. We all like our fountains very much, our pens write fine.

Thanks for the money, Daddy. We were very glad to hear your voice. I have been over to whites ever since last Friday. White has a lot of Christmas cards. They are very pretty. Yvonne and Dickie White has a beautiful Christmas tree. I am glad you liked my present, and I know that picture is a good picture. White Chick and Marshall like there souvenirs very much. Well goodbye and good luck. With a lot of love

Felicia”

This could be an “on tour” letter to a traveling father from home — New Year’s Eve is always a prime gig opportunity. Or it could mean that the child doesn’t live with her father. Someone chose to put this letter in the scrapbook, and I believe the scrapbook was made by Hank, his wife Edith, or the two of them in collaboration. Knowing more would change the meaning of the letter.

Let me be clear: a musician’s life, particularly a touring musician, detracts from marital stability. Incomes change rapidly. Travel and late-night hours bring separation. Alcoholism and drug problems are endemic. Egos swell and are crushed and those changes can abrade a relationship.

The Minneapolis city directory tells us one more thing about Hank Hazlett’s home life. In 1958 the city directory records that Marian M. is now the wife at 3648 Portland. Marian is also listed as working for the Minneapolis Public Library. Hank is now 47, and the city directory doesn’t say “musician” next to his name — instead it says “banquet formn Dyckmann Hotel.” Same in ’59. In 1960 and ’61 Hank is shown at the 3648 Portland address, but he’s a musician and working at the Flame in Duluth, 150 miles north. In 1962 and ‘63 the musicians place of work is listed as the Manor House in St. Paul and the Downtowner Motel in ’63. Marian remains until the most recent city directory available listed as his wife.

The last Hank Hazlett Trio gig I have found a record of was at a strip club/lounge on Hennepin Ave called “The Copper Squirrel” in September of 1963.

Site of the last known Hank Hazlett Trio gig.

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I’ll admit, like someone looking at amorphous clouds in the sky I can picture these scenes: Marian isn’t necessarily up with the musician’s lifestyle. If Edith is the maker of the scrapbook or a collaborator in making of this document largely about her ex-husband’s life and music career she may have taken it with her. Out of spite or from fond memories of their days together? Maybe Marian didn’t want that scrapbook mostly about Hank’s earlier life around anyway? Who can say? Maybe it’s something else. There are no pictures in the scrapbook I can say for sure are post-1958. If Hank was the one making the scrapbook, maybe he had tired of documenting things.

Two women possibly Edith Hazlett

Here are two picture which look like they could be the same woman found in different parts of the scrapbook. The man is Hank Hazlett, and I suspect that the woman would be Edith Hazlett prior to 1958. Edith may have been the person who made the scrapbook of her husband’s career, and may have been the one who put it in a crawlspace to be found in the mid-1970s.

Here’s a quartet of scrapbook photos of the Hank Hazlett Trio performing.

4 shots of the Hank Hazlett Trio

Hank with an Epiphone archtop in most of these photos, but a “blackguard” early ‘50s Telecaster in one. In the upper right there’s a woman holding down the pianist’s spot in the trio, and the white bass player there is crossing time and space with that tie he’s wearing to protest Donald Trump’s haberdashery sense and opinions about Black History Month.

In our next post we’ll track back a bit and talk about how the scrapbook includes the home-front World War II experience and what else it shows about American mid-century race relations and Afro-American cultural pride.

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*The WWII years caused considerable interruption in recording activity. Shellac, the hardened resin that 78 RPM records were made from came from a residue produced by overseas insects located across a warfront Pacific Ocean, and there were strikes by musicians labor organizations as they tried to extract concessions from entertainment companies during this time too.

**I’ve mentioned Marv Golberg’s site multiple times in this series. It’s full of marvelous details about Jazz and R&B artists of this era. Thanks, thanks, thanks, Marv.

***Just after the end of WWII the practice of racial covenants was taken to court, and in an early post-war civil rights victory, they were struck down nationally, but redlining was not addressed, and “it goes without saying” agreements to hew to segregation continued. Yet at the same time in the late 1940s, a young Minneapolis mayor Hubert Humphrey saw to enactment of an early law against racial discrimination in hiring, giving promise that more job opportunities would open up for Black residents.

****By these 1970s properties in these parts of South Minneapolis were affordable, assuming you could swing the finances, because it was still considered a “bad part of town.” This led to some kinds of mostly young white people to move in: gay folks, and Boomer “hippies” and political radicals. Some of that generation are still alive, and still live there, and there’s a new influx: immigrants from Africa and Latin America.

The Author of the Cats and the Fiddle Scrapbook, Part Six

~ Frank Hudson ~ Leave a comment

If I hold to my current plan, there are going to be several more posts this February as I tie up this series dealing with an Afro-American scrapbook found at the house I stayed at when I came to Minneapolis in the 1970s. Those missing the Parlando Project focus on literary poetry combined with original music here should eventually get a return to usual service before the start of U.S. National Poetry Month.

So, that scrapbook, the thing in the middle of this series — I talked to Dave Moore who bought an old South Minneapolis house in 1975, about its discovery this week. As we learned last post, 3132 Park Avenue was originally built as the sort of house for an early 20th century businessman or upper-middle-class family: four large bedrooms on the second floor, spacious rooms on the first floor (two of which could be joined by opening a pair of large pocket doors) and a separate interior set of stairs to an attic third floor which may have been designed as quarters for live-in help. I summarized the house’s history last time, including that from the 1940s on, the house had a succession of tenants after its long-time grain-trader owner died in 1939, eventually becoming a rooming house catering to Black residents. Shortly after moving in, Dave was on that third floor, and he noted a small, about 3×3 foot, access door on one wall where the slope of the roof descended to less than full height. Opening the door, he crawled inside. It’s been decades, but Dave is pretty sure that the scrapbook was found there. “Anything else in there?” I asked him. “I remember an old carpet sweeper.”

The house still had furniture when Dave decided to buy it. By the time he took ownership the real-estate firm had taken all of that out, emptied the house — so for the scrapbook to have survived, it was lucky to have been secreted in a crawl space. Did its owner or creator hide it there? Who could that person have been? Today I’ll give you my best guess, and in following days you’ll get to look inside the scrapbook to see the clues that led me to that guess. In looking at what the scrapbook includes, you’ll get to look inside a particular document of what had the attention of a 1940s American Black person.

My initial guess, back when Dave gave me the scrapbook in the ‘70s: I figured it was made by a fan of Jazz music, then the popular music of the 1940s. Noting the movie and performing stars pictures clipped from entertainment magazines and newspapers — and that it was after all a scrapbook — I thought the greater probability was that it was a woman. Scrapbooking is not something that many grown men engage in, and so I imagined a young woman entranced by performers.

Later as I found out more about the Jazz-vocal-quartet The Cats and the Fiddle who figure prominently in what was chosen for inclusion in the scrapbook, I changed my theory. I learned that a man named Lawrence Hazlett (who professionally went by the name Hank Hazlett, and whose last name has been misspelled as Haslett and Hazelett) had been, during the 1940s, a member of the Cats and the Fiddle. I’d overlooked personal items pasted in the scrapbook connected to Lawrence Hazlett that a mere music fan wouldn’t have: his 1944 pay stub from MGM, a Department of Labor ID card. Hazlett was born in 1911 in St. Louis according to Marv Goldberg’s info. He may have lived at times in Indianapolis, Chicago, Minneapolis, and Los Angeles.* I changed my mind. This was a musician who was scrapbooking his career, and Hank Hazlett was that musician. At the start of the month, that’s what I thought I’d attribute the “authorship” of the compiled material in the scrapbook to.

I’ve now changed my mind again, due to this month’s research and closer re-examination of particular items included in the scrapbook, and my plan is that you’ll be looking over my shoulder at items in the scrapbook as I examine them in the next posts. These items engendered feelings, hunches — my attempts, however imperfectly but empathically, to think of why certain things were chosen to be saved and pasted on pages.

My current theory is that the scrapbook was made by a wife of Hank Hazlett, likely a woman named Edith I. Hazlett, with his collaboration.**  If, instead, it’s my previous working theory that it was Hank himself documenting his life, the choices made in collating the material in the scrapbook would make him even more fascinating to me. The author (or collaborating authors) are more deeply and widely concerned with Black artistic expression than I would think most musicians were in the 1940s. There’s an undercurrent of feminist thought that can be extracted from some items in the scrapbook,*** though that may be a reflection of the decade of the 1940s when so many men were mobilized and out of the country. And dare I say it, at times there’s the slightest hint of gender non-conformity there too.****

Inside the front cover of the scrapbook 800

It looks like the maker of the scrapbook altered the brand name of the now tattered scrapbook to Hazlett. The TV Troubleshooter booklet won’t tell you how to block annoying YouTube ads, nor offer fool-proof password sharing schemes. The torn photo may be a South Minneapolis snapshot of Hank Hazlett. Someone has to take snapshots (no selfies then) so it could be a clue that Hank isn’t the sole creator of the scrapbook.

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Guitarist and singer Lawrence “Hank” Hazlett lived in the South Minneapolis neighborhood that the scrapbook was found in from 1953 to at least 1963. He worked steadily there as a musician, leading his own Hank Hazlett Trio for most of that time, and at least occasionally playing with other groups. Minneapolis city directories and some online histories of the Minnesota music scene document this information. But there’s a strikingly absent bit of data there: he’s never shown as living at 3132 Park Ave where the scrapbook was found.   Instead, he was consistently recorded in city directories as living six blocks away at 3648 Portland Ave. Starting in 1953 and 1955 Lawrence Hazlett is listed as a musician at that address, and his wife is named as Edith. In the 1957 directory Lawrence Hazlett is missing from the directory listing, but a Mrs, Marian M. Hazlett is listed as living at that address. This continues in 1958 with Lawrence listed as the head of household and Marian as his wife onward to the last Minneapolis city directory in the Minnesota Historical Society collection, Marian is also identified in one directory of this era as working at the Minneapolis Public Library. So somewhere in the mid-‘50s, it appears that Lawrence has a different wife. There are no firmly dateable items in the scrapbook that can be fixed after the middle-50s. There are a couple photographs that could be estimated (from woman’s clothing styles) as early 1960s, so I can’t eliminate Marian the Librarian as the collaborating collator, but the masses of things from Los Angeles including current events clippings from the ‘40s indicate the book may have started before Hazlett or his wife were known to be in Minneapolis. In my ranking, Marian would be third on the list after Edith and then Lawrence/Hank himself. In this theory, Edith may have stopped using Hazlett as her last name and ended up at the 3132 Park address in its Black rooming house phase, carrying with her the scrapbook of her days in Hollywood and the following years in the musical scene in Minneapolis with Lawrence/Hank.

In the next few posts we’re going to take a ride through the crumbling pages of this scrapbook in detail. The details will go a lot of places. If you haven’t figured this out about me yet, I love that about details.

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*The scrapbook has material listing addresses in LA and the Portland Ave. address in Minneapolis, and no other cities are explicitly listed as residences for Hazlett there.

**One surmise: Lawrence/Hank had off-handily collected stuff during his career, and his wife, seeing the value of what her husband did, decided to use a scrapbook to organize and present it, melding him in with other national entertainers. This might explain why things like publicity photos for line-ups of the Cats and the Fiddle dating from before Hank Hazlett was a member of the group are in there. That could be read as expressing symbolically “Here’s my husband, he’s good enough that they asked him to join this nationally-touring Jazz vocal group.

***There are also elements of laddish/Benny Hill-type sexual stereotypes in some cartoons — items that led my switch of maker-attribution to Lawrence/Hank — but the history of the cartoons broadened my understanding of them.

****Better scholars than this amateur, Afro-Americans who know by living things I’m ignorant of, or anyone who may have known the now dead people in the scrapbook may know better. I’m just an open-hearted person looking at this stuff and writing of my experience of it. I’m going to share an opportunity for you to do the same as the series next continues.

The people before in the place the scrapbook was left, Part Five

~ Frank Hudson ~ 2 Comments

One of the things about writing this series surrounding a scrapbook connected with a 1930-‘50s Afro-American Jazz combo is to observe the risk of writing here as an old white guy in the 21st century about a bunch of young Black Chicago musicians and what I might suppose about their lives. The Cats and the Fiddle in the scrapbook took their shot in the world of art and entertainment, but they’re not famous guys. They lived their lives, as I’ve lived mine, as you likely will live yours, with few persisting details or indelible marks. Perhaps I’m overly fixated with looking for those marks.

In today’s piece I’m going to look at the house where that scrapbook was found. It still exists: 3132 Park Ave South in Minneapolis. I’ve looked to see what I could find out about that inanimate place and the people who passed through it. I hoped any details might help me figure out who collated and left that scrapbook. I found what preceded the scrapbook’s discovery sustained my interest.

Back in the first part of the series I recounted that I lived there briefly in 1976 while helping a friend whose words, voice, and keyboard playing has appeared here over the years, Dave Moore. Dave and his then wife had purchased the somewhat rundown house at an attractive price for their planned little family and their small business. I helped a bit with their work in fixing it up and getting the business going.

The house had character, and this young couple, my friends, hoped to honor part of it by making it look a little more like it did in the house’s youthful years at the beginning of the century, looking for clues in old style books and in the “bones” of the house. Similarly, today’s post is going to start as far back as I can find information.

As Minneapolis started to grow as an upper-Midwest business hub, Park Avenue was a broad, tree-lined boulevard that ran north-south through the middle of the city from the southern neighborhoods to the rail depot and centers of government, business, and milling which were fast being established in Minneapolis’ downtown. Park Avenue became a prime site for the commerce titans to build their mansions. In the mid-70s you could still sort of squint and image that era: the trees were still there, elder elm branches arched much of the way over the wide street, and a handful of the mansions still remained.*

3132 was not one of the mansions. In 1902 it was built by an A. E. Rydlum (or Rydlun) who was a builder, and it was complete and offered for sale in the Spring of 1903 by Thorpe Brothers, who were an active real estate sales firm in this era of rapid growth and building of new housing in Minneapolis. Here’s how Thorpe listed it:

For Sale-Modern house, ten rooms, hardwood finish throughout; full basement, nickel open plumbing, hot water heating plant, sideboard, china closet, mantels, bookcase. Location 3132 Park Av; easy terms; will be sold soon.”

The next notice of the house I found was a birth announcement later that year. A Mr. and Mrs A. J. MacDougall were listed as living there in that announcement. Next year, 1903, they place an ad seeking “a nurse girl, 12 to 15 years old” for service at 3132. In 1904 they place another, similar, ad: “A nurse girl from 14 to 16 years old for 3-year-old boy.”

When I was working on the house, an attic servant’s quarters and separate stairway were part of the house. There was still a bell in the pantry off the kitchen that had a ringer button on the floor of the dining room. How many servants eventually lived there? How long did a 12 or 14 year old childcare worker likely stay an employee? The McDougall child had a theater birthday party at the downtown Orpheum Theater in 1908. The original Minneapolis Orpheum was a 1500 seat, ornate vaudeville house that had been built in 1904.

3132 Park Ave South Streetview

A recent Streetview picture of 3132 Park Ave S, servants quarters behind the three dormered windows at top.

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I pictured a somewhat prosperous young family, that kind that the house seemed to be built for in this location. So, I thought Mr. MacDougall, the first owner of a fine large house with its attic servant’s quarters, was perhaps a middle-manager, a businessman, or the like. Then earlier this year I began to look at the city directories that are available from the Minnesota Historical Society. It might be helpful to my generation to say that these Directories were like the phone books of their time, a combination Yellow and White Pages of a city’s residents, businesses, and organizations — but younger readers will find that obsolete image useless. So let me reset: they were large books issued yearly, or near so, listing alphabetically by name the head of each household in a city, followed sometimes by the name of their spouse, sometimes by the name of their company or employer, and almost always by a general classification of their job.

No one is just their job, but as a shortcut to figuring out, however roughly, where someone and their family was in the class structure, city directories are a data source for everyday people in the past. Here’s what a series of annual Minneapolis city directories say about our MacDougall (whose first name was Allan or Allen — the first spelling used in earlier entries, and then the other):

1903 not in the directory. Likely the directory’s data predates his moving into 3132 Park
1904 he’s listed as “miller” living at our 3132 Park Ave. house
1905 his occupation is “lab,” short for laborer, living at 3132
1906 the “lab” adds that he works at “Washburn C” — Washburn Crosby was a large milling firm in Minneapolis that is now the corporation General Mills
1907 laborer again, no mention of what company, still living at 3132 Park
1908 job now changed to “foreman,” continues living at 3132 Park
1909 looks like he, still a foreman, (and likely his family, though none of these listings mentions his wife) now live at 3436 Columbus Ave, about three blocks away

This scant info tells me little and makes me wonder. Does a miller or an ordinary laborer afford this large new house — much less, live-in help, and theater birthday parties for his kid? Does the later classification as foreman tell us he wasn’t just a line worker? Was there a blip in the market that caused Thorpe to sell under normal market prices, or would they possibly rent an unsold house? Mortgage terms were shorter then, but moving a young family from a fine house in a great location after only 5 years could mean it turned out to be only aspirationally affordable to MacDougall.

The next residents appear in 1910 from the records I’ve found. A Mr. and Mrs. Peter W. Campbell — leaving a gap, 1909 is unaccounted for. The 1910 city directory lists him living at 3132 Park, and his daughter Elizabeth is married at the home that year. The newspaper account lists 25 guests at the wedding. The house I later knew had a big dining room and parlor joinable by opening a large set of pocket doors. I imagined that many guests, the bride and groom, the officiant. It’d be a cozy affair, but they’d probably all fit.

Peter Campbell is confirmed to be living at 3132 Park in the 1910 directory, but there’s no Peter Campbell in the 1911 Minneapolis directory at all, and he’s a boarder elsewhere in the city in 1912. These listings don’t list his job. This short-term occupancy for someone that doesn’t seem clearly homeowner class testifies against his ownership.

In 1910, during the same summer as the Campbell wedding, 3132 Park is listed for sale again: “”Elegant 8 room all modern home, fine lot, reduced price $6,250.” The house isn’t yet a decade old. It’s a fine upper middle class home in a desirable location in a growing city, and in this time servants-wanted ads were placed, and then placed again, curious residents arrive and leave. If this was a Stephen King novel, I could see the haunted story potential, but I don’t really know the story, just these little points.

I can’t say when the house sold but by 1913 we have yet another servants wanted ad, “girl for general housework.” This ad is likely announcing the family that would be the home’s longest occupants, The McLeods: husband John, wife Elizabeth. I note there have been three Scottish names in the house’s history: MacDougall, Campbell, McLeod. John McLeod was certainly Scottish, born on the Island of Lewis, a very northwestern part of the Outer Hebrides. McLeod was said to have built several grain elevators in North Dakota, but his job now in Minneapolis’ downtown was as an “independent grain trader.”**  The McLeod’s were a middle-aged couple when they lived there, and Mrs. McLeod was an active clubwoman, holding regular meetings for the Columbian Club and her Presbyterian church at 3132. In 1921 the Columbian Club agenda was a talk on “Greece, the Reign of Pericles, the Glory of Phidias.”   Rather than thinking of cursed winds crying “Heathcliff” around 3132 Park, the next 21 years record the kind of stable middle-class life the house’s builders might have expected.

In 1934 Mrs. McLeod dies. Then five years later, in April 1939. this headline appears in the local paper “Trader Collapses at Grain Exchange.” John McLeod was 77, still apparently working as a grain trader. He died the next day in an oxygen tent at the Swedish Hospital in South Minneapolis.

This more-or-less ends the upper middle-class phase of the fine house on 3132 Park. In May 1941 it’s listed for sale as a “very livable home” and “interior in excellent condition….must be sold to close an estate.” I think of all the hardwood trim, doors, built-ins — much of which Dave and I were chemically stripping of layers of paint in 1976. It was likely still pristine then, and still echoing with talk of Phidias and perhaps John McLeod’s mumbles about the Non-Partisan League’s pressures on his trading margins.

Two years past McLeod’s death to settle an estate? You got me on that, but there are indications that the Great Depression isn’t the best time to be selling a big house. The house is listed again in August and September of ’41, this time in the for rental ads. Rent? $50.

Yet in 1942 someone else is having social club meetings at 3132 Park: a Mrs. Jewell Bliss is holding a meeting there for the Juline Burr Tent, DUV to be followed by a social hour and cards. DUV is probably Daughters of Union Veterans and Mrs. Juline Gales Burr (who died in 1906) was a Minneapolis resident and the first state president of the Minnesota Grand Army of the Republic (another Union Civil War veterans organization). Also that year a luncheon for “past president of D. of H.” hosted by Jewell again. D of H is likely “Degree of Honor” a Catholic female fraternal benefit society.

Yet the house on 3132 remains in a murky state in 1942 as I look for mentions. I’ve found records for Jewell Bliss, who was married to a Norland (who went by Noel) Eldred Bliss. Since city directories are alphabetical by head of household (often husband) I looked for Noel Bliss. Throughout the entire US WWII years he lived on Penn Ave North, not Park Ave, and Jewell is listed as his wife, same address in 1942, ’44, and ’45 in the city directory. Noel’s occupation is listed as “beverages” and his business address seems to be 2501 Marshall in Minneapolis.***  Bliss was in the news in 1936 for being a liquor dealer indicted for perjury in Minneapolis. He pled not guilty — but alas, I have no more information on this case.

Noel Bliss perjury charge

Noel Bliss: liquor dealer three years after the end of Prohibition, but facing charges.

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But the situation at 3132 Park remains unclear. Jewell is holding meetings there, though she apparently doesn’t live there. In post-WWII years larger houses on Park Ave were used for offices of various organizations. Was 3132 Park being used at least temporarily in this way, or was Jewell an organizer using someone else’s home or apartment? Again, I think of the home’s two large main rooms, a good place to hold your social gathering.

1943, a short newspaper story about one of our house’s residents links to some fascinating details. A 14-year-old boy named Bruce Dybvig who lives at 3132 Park Ave stumbles on the shores of one of Minneapolis’ urban chain of lakes. He breaks his foot falling into Lake Nakomis where his injury inhibits his ability to swim. OK. I’m not trying to stress a 3132 Park Ave curse theme — and look, the newspaper story I found says a boy lifeguard, only 16 himself in these wartime years of military mobilization, pulls Dybvig out of the lake. Bruce is treated and released from a hospital, and surviving he soon goes on to become another teenage Jazz musician with a story comparable to our Cats and the Fiddle main thread this February.

A year after his accident, Dybvig takes up alto sax, and by 1946 he’s organizing Minneapolis high school students into a 16-piece Jazz orchestra to play the “books” of the hippest white Jazz big bands of that year: Stan Kenton and Woody Herman. What happens to Bruce and those kids? If I haven’t exhausted you with this thread about a house, you may be the kind to enjoy the Jazz-in-Minnesota side-trip to be found at this link.

Bruce Dybvig and his teenage Jazz band

Boy saved from drowning, the teenager then starts playing modern Big Band Jazz. Bruce Dybvig at the left of each picture. What’s with the Carnegie Hall sign behind him? I’ll tell you again, you might want to read that above link.

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By 1953 the Park Avenue house is on the market listed again as “Lge. Inc. home, full basmt, gas heat, partly furnished, in excel repair, Ideal for rest home.” Two elderly men with different last names died in 1950 with 3132 Park as their address. This indicated to me that sometime in the early Fifties it may have become a “rest home,” a midcentury type nursing home/elder care facility.

In 1956 another for sale listing: “3132 Park Av S. See this lg, well kept home, 8 BRs, 2 1/2 baths, completely furnished for income, has gas HW heat, nice yard & gar.” It appears that sometime in the mid-50s the house’s rooms were subdivided or areas in attic and possibly the basement became living areas. In the mid ‘70s Dave was told the place had been a Black-owned rooming house.

In 1963 a teenager, Roosevelt Gains, likely a son living with his mother, a hotel maid, at 3132 Park, gets convicted of robbery.

In 1973 I found one more appearance of a 3132 Park resident in the newspapers, Bill Wilson, a house painter doing a little frozen lake winter fishing. In Minnesota this sometimes involves big trucks and semi-elaborate shacks pulled out on sledge runners, but Wilson is equipped with just regional hardiness and a hand-auger. Dave Moore, and then I, will be arriving soon to the Park Avenue house. The scrapbook that’s the idée fixe of this series will be uncovered there. Did 3132 Park Ave have a curse, or is the nature of the place simply the nature of the struggles and reprieves of life? I will be returning to the Black History focus of this series next, but leaving today’s stories of inconclusive fates and historical lacunae of largely white residents who lived at 3132 Park Ave, I’ll summarize. I don’t know even the names of everyone who lived in that house: those teenage servants advertised for (likely newly arrived European immigrants), other old people who may have lived in a midcentury rest home, the transient renters. I’ll leave you tonight as I go to sleep, saying these clippings of life collected here, outside the scrapbook that started things off, are exhibits of working class people in my South Minneapolis — Black, white, Asian, Latin and Native American — saying that our histories have commonalities of dreams (and yes, blunted dreams) passing under all our shades of eyelids, closed in our place across time.

Bill Wilson is ready to go ice fishing

Bill Wilson, one of the last tenants at 3132 Park Ave S. in its rooming house days.

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If you want a short poem performed with original music after these decades, here’s the young Langston Hughes preparing to close his dark lids amidst his neighborhood in the last decade called the Twenties. Backup link in case you can’t see the audio player the rest of you will see below.

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*Rather shortly after I arrived, nearly all of the remaining mansions were torn down, as they had no clear commercial or residential usage by then. We’ll discuss South Minneapolis in the later 20th century later in this series, but in 1976 as it is now, this Park Ave area is a series of varied working class to under and unemployed ethnic mix neighborhoods. Over in the other twin city in the 1960s and ‘70s, St. Paul’s similar Summit Ave, was preserving their grand pre-WWI houses which became once again homes to upper middle-class owners.

A surviving Park Avenue mansion is now the Swedish Institute. It was built by a Swedish immigrant businessman in 1908. It’s five blocks from where 3132 went up a few years earlier.

As to the tree canopy, most of the old trees were elms, and Dutch Elm disease wiped most of them out after I arrived. The city’s urban foresters have tried to replant, but it’s trees, and old trees take time.

**Noting McLeod’s North Dakota and Minneapolis connections, I think of the history of the successful organization of the Non-Partisan League in the Dakotas. Farmers there rankled at the low prices they got for their crops, and high markup profits by traders and middlemen who owned the grain elevators, the railroads, and the grain processing mills. Those latter folks often worked out of Minneapolis, but the eventual NPL elected governing majorities in state government, built their own elevators, and pressed with more leverage and bargaining power to improve the farmer’s lot.

***As late as 2022 Bliss’ old business address was the location of Betty Danger’s Country Club, a hip and eccentric restaurant. The owner listed it for sale that year, citing the reason for the sale in this report: her mental health. However many levels this is removed from 3132 Park, it’s another reason for Stephen King to contact me about that gothic novel.