Finding Minnesota: Casket Factory Gets New Life
MINNEAPOLIS (WCCO) -- Some people get a little uneasy when they hear the word "casket." It brings up images of death and grieving.
But there's an old casket factory in northeast Minneapolis that's now brimming with life and creative inspiration.
The building at 1707 Jefferson Street Northeast went up in 1882 as the home of the Northwestern Casket Company.
Minneapolis was only in its infancy, but the company was already doing good business dealing with death. Workers toiled away there for more than 120 years, tending to the needs of the dearly departed.
The company moved out in 2006. The building has since undergone a creative revival. A new community of artists has moved in, to what is now known as the Casket Arts Building.
The building's current owners, Jennifer Young and John Kremer, bought it in 2006, deciding not to shy away from its past.
"When I walk people around the building, the very first impression they get, they'll often ask me, 'What happened here?'" Young said. "And I say, 'Well, people built caskets here.'"
"If you were to cover that up and call it Sunnyside Studios and make it all Happy Days, there'd still be people who'd ask what was here before," said Kremer.
Instead, they've left open and exposed as much of the old factory as they can: bricks and wood floors, installed more than a century ago.
Molly Barrett, an artist at Vesper Atelier, said the building's past is an attraction.
"I love that stuff," she said, "spiritual and kind of historical and, I don't know, I think it's very cool."
Eighty different artists now have studios or offices in the Casket Arts Building and others are on a waiting list to get in.
The new community that's been created is what Young and Kremer consider their form of art.
"We started in 1991 with our first building, and that was all about creating community as part of our goal," said Young. "We call it social sculpting."
They now have three buildings for artists, in what's become the Northeast Minneapolis Arts District, a district just named best in the country by USA Today.
"It's created a certain renaissance here," Kremer said. "Now it's the brewpubs, now it's all this other activity. Now the young hipsters want to live up here."
"I couldn't be more happy, more proud of what we've done," Young said, "because we really have made a difference here in this city."
On Wednesday night, April 1, the Northeast Minneapolis Arts District is celebrating that national recognition. It's hosting a party from 7 p.m. to 9 p.m. at the Solar Arts Building on 15th Avenue.
Meanwhile, several arts buildings in Northeast host "First Thursdays," where they open up to the public. The next one is this Thursday, April 2.