Minnesota Modern: Architecture and Life at Midcentury - Hardcover

"An entertaining and beautifully illustrated stroll through an era."-Rochester Post-Bulletin "It is possible that an old house or building still stands in your neighborhood because Larry Millett influenced someone to save it. The architectural historian's work catalogs the many architectural treasures Minnesota has lost to the wrecking ball and inspires a preservation movement determined to hang on to the ones we have left. "-MinnPost "Millett has created the definitive book on the midcentury era in Minnesota, including residential, public and commercial designs."-MinnPost "I found Larry Millett's new book Minnesota Modern. . . an engrossing account of our social and cultural past. And a wonderful tour of the enviable midcentury residences around us."-Chris Lee, Midwest Home "Comprehensive and meticulously researched."-Minnesota History "Millett's book is a combination architectural guidebook and coffee table tome."-Middle West Review

From the genteel elegance of Christ Lutheran Church in Minneapolis to the lowbrow wonder of Porky's Drive-in in St. Paul, the Twin Cities and other Minnesota communities are nothing short of a living museum of midcentury modernism, the new style of architecture that swept through much of America from 1945 to the mid-1960s. Renowned Minnesota architecture critic and historian Larry Millett conducts an eye-opening, spectacularly illustrated tour of this rich and varied landscape.A history lesson as entertaining as it is enlightening, Minnesota Modern provides a close-up view of a style that penetrated the social, political, and cultural machinery of the times. Extending from modest suburban ramblers and ranch houses to the grandest public and commercial structures, midcentury modernism expressed new ways of thinking about how to live, work, and play in communities that sprang up as thousands of military members returned from World War II. Millett describes the style's sources in the work of European masters like Ludwig Mies van der Rohe and Walter Gropius, as well as the midwestern innovations of Frank Lloyd Wright, and its refinement at the University of Minnesota under the guidance of Ralph Rapson and other modernists. He shows us its applications in twelve midcentury homes in Minnesota and takes us through its many permutations in sites as different as Barry Byrne's St. Columba Catholic Church in St. Paul and Eero Saarinen's sprawling IBM complex in Rochester. This is Minnesota modern at its historic best, a firsthand, in-depth history of a singularly American sensibility and aesthetic writ large on the midwestern region.