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Victory Memorial Drive, Minneapolis

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Flag pole on Victory Memorial Drive

Flag pole on Victory Memorial Drive. The Lake Superior green granite flagpole base was part of the 2009 parkway renovation. The photographer is facing northwest and standing on the sidewalk that connects the flagpole to the Grand Army of the Republic statue of Abraham Lincoln. Photo by Flickr user Paul Rosemeyer, November 11, 2016. CC BY-NC-ND 2.0

Dedicated in 1921, the 3.8-mile Victory Memorial Drive in North Minneapolis is part of the Minneapolis Park System’s Grand Rounds, a fifty-mile circuit of the city’s parks and parkways. It features over 500 memorial trees and markers as well as a central monument and flagpole. This parkway section was named in honor of the Allied victory in Europe and in memory of the 568 Hennepin County residents who died while serving in the armed forces during World War I.

After the creation of the Minneapolis Park Board in 1883, board president Charles M. Loring hired well-known landscape architect Horace W. S. Cleveland. Cleveland called for the construction of a system of large city parks connected by parkways—a recommendation that became a guiding principle for the Park Board.

Plans for Glenwood-Camden Parkway began in 1909 when the Park Board expanded Glenwood Park (now Theodore Wirth Park) at the western edge of the city and purchased land for Camden Park (now Webber Park) in North Minneapolis. Board superintendent Theodore Wirth planned a parkway through the northwest corner of Minneapolis, connecting the two parks. Between 1910 and 1911, the Park Board acquired 170 acres of land. Construction began in 1913.

Crews working south to north built the parkway from Sixteenth Avenue North to Lowry Avenue between 1913 and 1916. In 1917, when the US entered World War I, construction stopped. Construction resumed after the war ended on November 11, 1918, a date known as the Armistice. The parkway to Lowry Avenue was completed and opened for traffic in 1920. This portion of the Glenwood-Camden parkway was named Theodore Wirth Parkway in 1938.

The Armistice also meant that construction north of Lowry Avenue could finally begin. The war, however, had changed the Park Board’s plans. Retired Board president Charles Loring wanted to create a memorial to servicemen and women killed during the war. He donated money for trees to be planted and maintained along the parkway north of Lowry Avenue.

The Park Board planted 568 Moline elm trees as memorials to the 568 Hennepin County servicemen and women who died during the war. Workers arranged them in parallel rows in a wide, grassy median between the north and southbound lanes of the parkway. A wooden cross or Star of David was placed next to each tree. Where the roadway turns to the east at Forty-Fifth Avenue North, the Park Board installed a wooden flagpole. The newly named Victory Memorial Drive was officially dedicated in June of 1921 during a ceremony attended by over 30,000 spectators.

The northwest corner of Minneapolis was mostly farmland in the 1920s, allowing the Park Board to construct a wide, flat, straight roadway. The design created a solemn space for the memorial trees but also catered to the growing popularity of the automobile. Earlier parkways, like those at Minnehaha Falls and around the chain of lakes, were built for horse-drawn carriages. These earlier roads were much narrower and generally conformed to the contours of the landscape.

Shortly after the 1921 dedication, the Park Board began to make updates. In 1923 the wooden flagpole was replaced with a bronze one atop a red granite base. By 1928, Minnesota winters had claimed most of the 568 Moline Elm trees, and they were replaced with hardier elms. At the same time, the wooden crosses and Stars of David were replaced with bronze markers. These were embedded in concrete in 1953.

A new monument was added to Victory Memorial Drive in 1930 when the Grand Army of the Republic dedicated a statue of Abraham Lincoln to their Civil War comrades. The statue, a replica of an Augustus Saint-Gaudens original in Chicago’s Lincoln Park, was installed directly across the parkway from the flagpole.

As the Twin Cities grew rapidly after World War II, increased automobile traffic became a concern of regional planners. In 1959, planners suggested converting Victory Memorial Drive into a county highway. With opposition from the Park Board and the Veterans of Foreign Wars, the plan was scrapped. Victory Memorial Drive could not escape biological threats, however. In the 1970s most of the stately elms along the parkway succumbed to Dutch Elm Disease and were replaced by hackberry trees.

In 2009 Victory Memorial Drive underwent a major renovation when the red granite flagpole base was replaced with a monument of Lake Superior green granite. The Park Board also added flower beds and new trees: a mix of spruce, maples, cedars, birch, and crab apples. The new features were rededicated in 2011. In November of 2018 Victory Memorial Drive was the site of a ceremony marking the 100-year anniversary of the Armistice.

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City of Minneapolis Heritage Preservation Commission. “Victory Memorial Drive Historic District.” City of Minneapolis, July 28, 2020.
http://www2.minneapolismn.gov/hpc/landmarks/hpc_landmarks_victory_memorial_drive

Duchschere, Kevin. “Victory Memorial Drive to be Rededicated Saturday.” Minneapolis Star Tribune, June 7, 2011.
http://www.startribune.com/victory-memorial-drive-to-be-rededicated-saturday/123222033

Johnson, Sarah. “Victory Memorial Drive.” Hennepin History 63, no. 1 (Winter 2004): 24–34.

Smith, David C. “Victory Park.” Minneapolis Park and Recreation Board.
https://www.minneapolisparks.org/parks__destinations/parks__lakes/victory_park

Sturdevant, Andy. “Victory Memorial Drive, with its Remarkable Sightlines, Is a Well-named Parkway.” MinnPost, April 3, 2013.
https://www.minnpost.com/stroll/2013/04/victory-memorial-drive-its-remarkable-sightlines-well-named-parkway

Related Images

Flag pole on Victory Memorial Drive
Flag pole on Victory Memorial Drive
1920 Minneapolis Park Board plans for the north end of Victory Memorial Drive
1920 Minneapolis Park Board plans for the north end of Victory Memorial Drive
Glenwood-Camden Parkway (now Victory Memorial Parkway), June, 23, 1920
Glenwood-Camden Parkway (now Victory Memorial Parkway), June, 23, 1920
Map of Victory Memorial Parkway
Map of Victory Memorial Parkway
Victory Memorial Drive dedication ceremony
Victory Memorial Drive dedication ceremony
Procession during Victory Memorial Drive dedication ceremony
Procession during Victory Memorial Drive dedication ceremony
Group next to memorial tree planted on Victory Memorial Drive
Group next to memorial tree planted on Victory Memorial Drive
Unveiling the Abraham Lincoln statue at Victory Memorial Drive
Unveiling the Abraham Lincoln statue at Victory Memorial Drive
Statue of Abraham Lincoln on Victory Memorial Drive
Statue of Abraham Lincoln on Victory Memorial Drive
Victory Memorial Drive
Victory Memorial Drive
Victory Memorial Parkway monument
Victory Memorial Parkway monument
Overhead view of Victory Memorial Drive
Overhead view of Victory Memorial Drive

Turning Point

At the eleventh hour on the eleventh day of the eleventh month of 1918 (11:00 am, November 11, 1918), the combatants of World War I lay down their weapons. This moment marks the end of the war, a date known as the Armistice. With the war over, construction on the parkway in north Minneapolis resumes. The goal of its construction, however, shifts from creating a simply beautiful park and parkland to providing a somber memorial for Hennepin County men and women killed while serving in the war.

Chronology

1883

Landscape architect Horace Cleveland suggests building a system of parks and parkways for the city of Minneapolis.

1910–1911

The Minneapolis Park Board begins acquiring land for a parkway north of Glenwood (now Theodore Wirth) Park, connecting it with Camden (now Webber Park) in North Minneapolis.

1913

Construction of the then-named Glenwood-Camden Parkway begins.

1918

Construction of the parkway halts as resources are shifted to World War I mobilization.

1920

With World War I over, the parkway is completed to Lowry Avenue and opened to traffic.

1921

The parkway north of Lowry Avenue is dedicated as Victory Memorial Drive. It features over 500 Moline Elm trees and corresponding memorials, one each for every Hennepin County resident who died in service during World War I.

1923

The American Legion of Hennepin County replaces the wooden flagpole originally installed in the parkway’s central monument at its northwest corner.

1925

The original Moline Elm trees succumb to Minnesota winters and are replaced with sturdier, more generic elm trees.

1928

On the tenth anniversary of World War I, the wooden memorials in front of each tree (crosses for Christian servicemen and women, Stars of David for Jewish individuals) are replaced with bronze memorials.

1930

The Grand Army of the Republic sponsors the construction and installation of a statue of Abraham Lincoln at the northwest corner of the parkway to commemorate Minnesota’s fallen Civil War soldiers.

1959–1960

Hennepin County recommends that the parkway be converted into a county highway; the City of Minneapolis and the Veterans of Foreign Wars oppose the conversion, and the parkway is spared.

1970s

Dutch elm disease infects the replacement 1925 elm trees, which are removed and replaced by Hackberry trees.

2003

Victory Memorial Drive is designated a local historic district by the city of Minneapolis and, by an act of the state legislature, designated a state historic district and added to the state register of historic properties.

2009

The red granite flagpole base and cenotaph are replaced by Lake Superior green granite monuments. Additional trees, flower beds, and entrance gates are added to the parkway.

2018

A memorial gathering at the parkway marks the one-hundredth anniversary of the Armistice.