Nicollet Island: The River's Quiet Neighborhood

In the middle of the Mississippi, in the middle of Minneapolis, there is a neighborhood that feels held apart from the city on purpose. Nicollet Island's 48 acres sit between the downtown skyline and the Northeast bank, holding a few dozen Victorian-era houses, a small inn, trails under mature maples, and views of St. Anthony Falls that no penthouse can buy.

The island's anchor is the Nicollet Island Pavilion, built in 1893 as a boiler works for the William Bros company and restored after the Minneapolis Park and Recreation Board acquired it in 1976. Its brick arches now host weddings and events within sight of the falls it once served industrially — a conversion that sums up the island's whole modern history, from working riverfront to protected green room in the center of a city.

Residents here live with a pleasant anomaly: their homes stand on land leased from the city under arrangements worked out decades ago to preserve the island as parkland, which keeps the neighborhood small, stable and unlike any other in Minnesota. DeLaSalle High School has stood on the island since 1900. The Minneapolis Queen and the riverboat landing recall the excursion era, and the island's north end dissolves into trail and cottonwood along the East Channel.

November quiets the island further. The event season winds down, the falls run high and loud with autumn water, and the bridges — Hennepin Avenue to the south, the Merriam Street bridge to the Northeast bank — carry dog walkers and photographers more than traffic. From the pavilion lawn, downtown reads as a stage set across the water, close enough to walk to and far enough to feel escaped from.

Every river city keeps one place where the current slows down. Minneapolis keeps its in the middle of the river, under the maples, a five-minute walk and a whole mood away from downtown.