Expert Essay: Architectural historian Larry Millett, author of Lost Twin Cities and numerous other books, offers a colorful tour of notable Minnesota buildings and building styles, from American Indian burial mounds to Beaux Arts monuments and suburban big boxes.
Venerable Vicheth Chum (left) with Yav Socchea, the architect Watt Munisotaram, inside the temple with one of Socchea's designs on April 7, 2017. Photo by Will Yetvin.
Watt Munisotaram—the only Cambodian Buddhist temple in Minnesota and the largest in the US—sits on a forty-acre rural site about thirty minutes south of St. Paul. Although its founding organization, the Minnesota Cambodian Buddhist Society, was established in 1982, it was not until 2007 that members consecrated a temple on forty acres of their own land.
The Red Building at Watt Munisotaram. Originally used as the temple's social hall, in 2017 it reopened as a community center. Photo by Colin MacArthur, March 18, 2012.
Watt Munisotaram's original temple building and housing, used after construction of the larger temple (2007) primarily as housing for monks living on the site full time. Photo by Will Yetvin, April 17, 2016.