From the Minneapolis Tribune:

Police Chief in Pajamas
Chases Thief on Streets

A rebuilt but still grimy-looking motorcar carried traffic on Blaisdell Avenue at 35th Street in about 1904. (Photo courtesy mnhs.org)

I should really save this piece for Valentine’s Day. But I’ll be speaking to a group of 50-plus singles at St. Joan of Arc next week and I need fresh material.

 

From the Minneapolis Tribune:

Court of Cupid Takes Up Task of
Finding Mates for 2,000 Lovelorn

	A match made near Echo, Minn.: Some men put their wives on a pedestal. Olai Homme put his beloved, Josephine, on a wheelbarrow for this photo by Ole Mattiason Aarseth, taken in about 1915. (Courtesy mnhs.org)

Epilogue: The court was in session exactly one day, wilting under newspaper coverage belittling the concept. The total number of successful matches: zero. The chief justice, Mrs. Rodgers, resigned, as did the jury. “I just went into it as a joke,” said one juror, Mrs. Clyde Smith. “The Lovers’ Co-operative Union” turned out to be the brainchild of a newspaperman, Thomas Delker, editor of the South Jersey Star, who is identified as “Dekler” in the story above. In spite of the negative publicity, he vowed that the good work would go on: “Why, men, think! Think of all the sorrow, desolation and suffering to thousands of lonely hearts which would ensue if this whole thing were called off!” Henry J. Culshaw, unmoved, decided the Lovers’ Co-operative Union could no longer use his Palace Motion Picture Theater, and that was the end of it.

Christine Frederick was a distinguished home economist of the early 1900s. A Phi Beta Kappa graduate of Northwestern University, she founded a laboratory that analyzed many of the products and processes used in American homes. Her goal was to identify and promote more efficient ways of keeping house. She was the driving force, for example, behind the standardization of kitchen counter heights. She served as a consulting editor of a number of publications, wrote several books and penned a series of articles on "The New Housekeeping" for the Ladies' Home Journal. This piece, originally written for the American Weekly, a  Sunday newspaper supplement, appeared in the Minneapolis Tribune.

Mrs. Christine Frederick, Efficiency Expert, Holds the Stop Watch on Women to Find Out Just How Much Time They Can Save in Lacing Their Corsets, Buttoning Their Shoes and Hooking Up Their Gowns.

	Christine Frederick

By Mrs. Christine Frederick

For some women, squeezing into a corset took more than one pair of hands. (Photo courtesy mnhs.org)

	A 1918 ad in the Minneapolis Tribune showed what women were up against in the shoe department: A pair of these boots -- available for just $4.45 at the Leader, "the Great Economy Store" at Third and Nicollet -- featured more than five dozen eyelets.

Shoes have from 10 to 25 buttons or eyelets.

This helpful illustration accompanied "How long does it take your wife to dress?" Nearly a century later, the bath time looks suspect. Have you ever gotten in and out of the tub in four minutes or less?

Known as the “slum of all slums” in the city’s early days, Fish Alley was a crime-ridden warren of decrepit structures and narrow paths on the northeastern edge of downtown Minneapolis. The block was bounded by Washington Avenue, S. Third Street and what are now known as Park and Portland Avenues S. The crumbling “fish building” for which it was named was condemned as unsafe on May 2, 1906, and ground was broken for the J.I. Case warehouse a few weeks later. The Case building, about a block from the Metrodome, is now home to an Old Spaghetti Factory restaurant and other businesses.

Brace yourself, dear reader. The Tribune reporter did not paint a pretty picture of this blot on the city’s escutcheon.

DOWN IN FISH ALLEY

Detail of C. Wright Davison's 1884 Pocket Map of Minneapolis shows the location of Fish Alley: Block 45, just south of the Chicago Milwaukee & St. Paul Railway's "Car House."