Multi-hued Avenue

It’s hard to tell for sure, but the trend may have started with bright tangerine five years ago. That’s the color that the then-newly arrived owners of Two 12 Pottery, a potters’ studio-cum-gift-shop, painted their building on Northeast’s Thirteenth Avenue. Since then, art and color have swept into Minneapolis’s old Polish quarter: storefronts along this stretch of street are embellished with cheerful balloons and cherry-topped metal art signage; some homeowners have splashed their porches with golds and teals. The vacant Ritz Theater, anticipating its rebirth as home to the flamboyant Ballet of the Dolls, is now cloaked in hot pink particleboard. And most recently, the once-inconspicuous 331 building at University and Thirteenth was transformed with a coat of fluorescent yellow-orange, signaling the imminent arrival of the neighborhood’s newest restaurant-bar.

The 331 Liquor Bar will join a thriving scene of galleries—ArTrujillo, Easel Street, and Rogue Buddha, among them—along with fine restaurants, an upscale spectacle shop, and the Minnesota Center for Photography,. It seems almost contagious—even the chiropractor and prosthodontist are embracing an artsy identity.

But this is no simple tale of gentrification. Thirteenth Avenue, known as “New Boston” in the early twentieth century, has long been a popular destination for fun-seekers. Until 1956, two streetcar lines crossed here, delivering hordes of diners to Robotins, the restaurant that preceded the Modern Café (two Modern regulars, an elderly couple, used to come in way back when for cherry Cokes) and enough moviegoers to form lines around the block at the Ritz.

According to the new wave of enthusiasts and red house painters, the Polish immigrants who founded this quarter laid a foundation of irreverence and open-mindedness, thus paving the way for today’s artists and offbeat businesses like the Match Box Coffee cooperative. Ethnic and religious diversity was welcomed, too—both a Hindu temple and the metropolitan area’s largest Spanish-language Catholic church service are a stone’s throw away. Polish heritage is firmly rooted, however, at Europol Delicatessen, which stocks Slavic provisions and magazines, and the Polish White Eagle Association building, which presently serves no practical purpose other than as a venue for chess tournaments. But the Polish immigrants’ friendly yet tight-knit sensibility is best embodied by the longtime characters along this tree-lined street—most notably, vintage queen Madame Dora and Art the barber, who has been buzz-cutting at Boike’s Barber Shop for forty-seven years.—Christy DeSmith