Above: Photo of the shelter in Minnetonka (taken by Rose Arends of the Minnesota Streetcar Museum)
Our story recently about the last streetcar shelter in the Twin Cities unearthed another vestige of the system still standing in Minnetonka.
One of the wood waiting shelters built in 1905 in conjunction with the system's expansion to Excelsior has been remodeled into a detached porch on a nearby farm.
The owner of the shelter contacted the Minnesota Streetcar Museum after reading about the Theodore Wirth Park shelter in the Star Tribune.
A wooden waiting bench has been removed and screens have been added to previously windowless walls.
The shelter originally served the Clear Springs stop of a line that ran roughly parallel to Excelsior Boulevard, said Aaron Isaacs, co-founder of the Minnesota Streetcar Museum. It was moved to a farm to the south after the line was nixed in 1932.
"It's an unlikely survivor," Isaacs wrote in an e-mail.
No original photo of the shelter could be found, Isaacs said, but the photo below documents an identical one located on 9th Avenue in Hopkins.
