PEAVEY AND FRIEDBERG

The plaza was an early component in an urban-renewal plan that connected Loring Greenway, Orchestra Hall and an extension of Nicollet Mall past its original 10th Street terminus. Ground was broken on Aug. 1, 1974, and a dignitary-packed dedication ceremony followed on June 10, 1975.

Its name honors the flour-milling Peavey Co., founded in Sioux City, Iowa, in 1874 by Frank Peavey and relocated to Minneapolis a decade later. In 1974, in recognition of its centennial year, the company donated $600,000 (about $2.8 million in today's dollars) toward the plaza's $3.2 million ($15.3 million in 2014 dollars) cost. If the Peavey name is less familiar today, it's because the company disappeared under the ConAgra corporate umbrella in 1982.

Architect M. Paul Friedberg's footprint can be seen elsewhere in the Twin Cities. Loring Greenway, a pedestrian-only urban connective tissue, meanders the length of five football fields between Loring Park and Nicollet Mall and dates to 1979. Thirty-five years later, much of Friedberg's original design intent remains, thanks to a six-year-old, $2.8 million refurbishment and the watchful ministrations of the Loring Greenway Association, a private nonprofit organization.

Less familiar is the well-tended private park at the confluence of E. 28th Street, 4th Avenue S. and Interstate 35W in Minneapolis, part of the corporate campus for Wells Fargo's home-mortgage division. In 1978, Friedberg converted a 5-acre parking lot into a popular greensward — with more subdued versions of Peavey's waterworks — for what was then Honeywell's headquarters.

RICK NELSON