The North Side of Minneapolis often seems to be a village within the city, forced to fend for itself far from the better-known downtown bustle and leafy lake district. The institutions that arose in north Minneapolis to serve generations of working-class people are little known to outsiders, and that gives them special resonance for North Siders, past and present.

On Sunday, Twin Cities Public Television will broadcast "Cornerstones," a documentary two years in the making that examines the history of this neighborhood through the memories of people who grew up there. Written and directed by TPT's Daniel Pierce Bergin, the film tells the story of the North Side by focusing on the institutions – the library, community centers, housing project, synagogues and churches - some vanished, others relocated, a few remaining in their original buildings.

The University of Minnesota, which co-produced the film with TPT, gave me a DVD in advance of the broadcast, and I was relieved to see that it did not drown in sepia-toned nostalgia. That's the pitfall of too many documentaries about the old neighborhood, and while Cornerstones features North Siders reminiscencing about such lost pleasures as Plitman's deli on Plymouth Avenue and skating in Sumner Field, less sanguine memories emerge.

The Sumner-Olson public housing complex separated blacks from "mixed whites." Soldiers occupied Plymouth Avenue in the summers of 1966 and 1967 as the wave of urban unrest among blacks targeted the mostly Jewish-owned businesses. While Minnehaha Creek was preserved as a green corridor in south Minneapolis, its counterpart in the north – Bassett Creek – was turned into a sewer and then paved over.

But it wasn't Bergin's goal to focus on the North Side's well-publicized pathologies. Bergin, who grew up on the South Side, said he hopes that "all of Minnesota will have a more nuanced view of the North Side" after seeing the film.
While some may see the neighborhood as "a concentration of murders on a murder map," it's really about "people and families and institutions and schools," he said. The film also grew out of the university's mission to reach out to the neighborhood through its Urban Research and Outreach-Engagement Center (UROC) – its subjects were chosen through conversations with elders and other residents, and their home movies and photos were included in the film, Bergin said.

The documentary opens with perhaps its most hopeful story – the Sumner Library, a beacon for learning and community that was spared from demolition during the construction of Olson Highway and lovingly restored. A theme running through the film is the North Side's deep Jewish roots, which continues to have a strong hold on people even though the community relocated to St. Louis Park, Golden Valley and other nearby towns with the post-World War II suburban migration.

Sumner Library

"As an African-American, I was surprised and really learned a lot about the complexity of the Jewish experience in north Minneapolis," Bergin said.

Something else surprised him: rather than a collection of discrete histories, as one group replaced another, Bergin said the elders interviewed described how blacks, Jews, Asians, Latinos and others were often side-by-side in institutions such as the Phyllis Wheatley Community Center. He heeded the warning to avoid producing a "just us and just them" history.

"Cornerstones" will be broadcast at 8 p.m. Sunday on TPT's Minnesota Channel, and rebroadcast at 2 a.m., 8 a.m. and 2 p.m. Nov. 14 and noon Nov. 20 on TPT's Life Channel.