Hat Trick

Once a year the Prospect Park neighborhood opens the doors of the Witch’s Hat Tower. This 1912 landmark is visible from many vantage points in the Twin Cities owing to the fact that it sits atop one of the highest points within city limits. It was built because the homes perched in the immediate vicinity lacked water pressure at the turn of the last century. Whatever else may go on there in the way of witches’ covens and warlock’s circles, the tower’s interior is occupied mostly by a 155,000-gallon water tank that is no longer in use.

When it was decommissioned as a water tower in 1952, and struck by lightening a few years later, the city proposed tearing it down. By then, the community had come to view it as an irreplaceable icon that lent the neighborhood much of its charm. In a rare case of preservation defeating the urge to demolish, the city relented. The Tower was restored to its present state of glory. Before long, it bristled with radio antennae and cell-phone relays discretely positioned on, in, and under the hat.

Of course the tower’s main attraction is to children and childish adults who view it as a castle garret for the witch who lives there. (Only the most pedantic parent will insist that the tower is, in fact, named for the witch’s hat.) And the opening of the tower—which is secured by three doors and six locks—is accompanied by an impressive street fair that draws Twin Citizens from as far as you can see. This year, revelers stood in long lines not only to file up the narrow spiral staircase inside the tower, but to buy brats and upscale focaccia sandwiches, to watch a startling belly-dancing exhibition, and to commission face-paintings.

The Minneapolis Police dutifully manned a bike registration table. It was the only vacant attraction, and across the way, next to a moon-walk fully inflated in the middle of Malcolm Avenue, rowdy teenagers horsed around with an unregistered unicycle. Another small group of beltless boys tumbled head-over-heels through the steep underbrush below Tower Hill Park, screaming as if they were actually falling, or as if they were in a Jackass video. Heads turned.

Not all the horror was an act. Inside the tower, on the dark and dank and not entirely safe approach to the viewing platform, small children clutched at their parents. The narrow stairway would not admit two large adults passing, and many were disheartened at how hard the climb turned out to be. One woman failed to heed warning signs about low clearance, and she burst a wall-mounted light bulb with her forehead. There was a loud pop, glass fell, and children screamed. The bouncer at the door, a kindly retiree representing Prospect Park’s neighborhood association, speculated that admitting the public once a year may be too frequent.