10 reasons we must embrace the Northwestern Life Insurance building in Minneapolis

James Lileks, Star TribuneThe Minneapolis Star Tribune

To the list of buildings in downtown Minneapolis in need of a new purpose, add the one on 20 Washington Av. S.

Initially built as a seven-story headquarters for the Northwestern National Life Insurance company, Minneapolis/St. Paul Business Journal reports that it’s currently empty and up for sale. Considering the fire-sale prices that downtown buildings are fetching these days, it’s a bitter fate for a delightful structure that was once the centerpiece of urban revival. One hopes it’s repositioned for a new use.

Here are 10 tales that might make you take another look at the building:

It’s a Roman temple. You could call it an homage, an updated re-creation or a straight-up ripoff, if you were feeling uncharitable. But the building’s distant relative is the Maison Carrée in Nimes, France, a temple that hails from circa 7 A.D. That might be why it’s the best building to come from the Gateway District’s urban renewal program, which leveled vast tracts of downtown for parking lots or undistinguished modern structures.

It permanently sutured the connection between Hennepin and Nicollet. The streets used to merge at Bridge Square, a historic locale where the City Hall — and the Tribune newspaper — stood. The commercial life of the city marched west, and the intersection became old and shabby. In the 1910s, Gateway Park filled the spot, a triangular expanse of grass with a colonnade that opened its arms to people debarking from nearby train stations.

The Nicollet Mall put an end to that. The building was oriented so the view down Nicollet Avenue toward the river would be light and bright, with the marble columns of the portico standing like alabaster trees. Nice idea, but it provided a terminus without actually terminating anything.

Its columns were a trademark of its famous architect, Minoru Yamasaki, who called his creation as “monumental and dignified, yet graceful.” The flared tops were new in the 1960s, and would spread nationwide in the ‘70s. They often applied to small-town banks. An influential modernist architect, Yamasaki would apply his flared columns in a more subdued form in the building for which he will be most remembered — the World Trade Center towers.

The building next door, 100 Washington Square,was also designed by Yamasaki. But the 22-story office tower has none of the grace or winky kitsch as the NWML building.

It has 63 columns, according to a 1963 story in the Minneapolis Tribune. The columns are 80 feet tall and built with white quartz concrete.

Furthermore, Yamasakidesigned five buildings for Carleton College, where his daughter went to school, including the delicately detailed Olin Hall of Science (1961) and the swoop-roofed West Gymnasium (1964).

The building had a medical lab when it opened, with X-ray machines and heart-evaluating equipment. Why? Remember, it was originally an insurance company. They could see if you were worth the risk right on the spot.

The interior once had a sculpture called “Sunlit Straw” by Harry Bertoia. According to Revere Auctions that handled a recent sale of the work, “Bertoia gave up all other work for a year to concentrate on the sculpture, which in appearance suggests the gold grain of harvest time. This referenced directly to [president] John Pillsbury [who had an] office on the top floor.”

The building marked a return to Nicollet for Northwestern National Life, which built an office at Nicollet and 11th in 1905. It moved to Loring Park in 1924. The building was converted into offices, including a space where Prince recorded the “Loring Park sessions” at his manager’s office in 1977.

It’s had many names. Northwestern National Life Insurance company became ReliaStar, then ING, then Voya. And the building has gone through several incarnations. What’s next? We’ll have to wait and see. Music hall, wedding venue, restaurant — there are many possibilities. But here’s a suggestion: How about a museum of the old Gateway district, showing all the things we traded for the shiny new buildings?