Around the Park

• Cray Plaza, formerly Galtier Plaza (SE corner of Sibley and 5th) When it opened in 1986, the Plaza contained a movie theater, a YMCA, an atrium of shops and offices, restaurants and apartments. The overall design style is post-modern, but the Sibley Street side of the building incorporates parts of the brick facade of the 19th century buildings it replaced. Unfortunately, the project struggled to secure commercial and retail tenants and to attract consumers to the movie theater, shops, and restaurants. Critics quickly labeled it a boondoggle, a reputation that dogged it through subsequent reimaginings. Nonetheless, the Plaza has been successful mixed rental apartment/luxury condo/townhome residential complex and it spurred interest in in renovating Mears Park and the surrounding historic guildings in the 1980s and 1990s.

The rest of the buildings around Mears Park were erected between 1886 and 1915 but have been renovated for their current purposes in the past 25-30 years. Walking clockwise around the park from Cray Plaza:

• 400 N. Sibley:  The Renaissance Revival-style Park Square Court event center and office building (1886) with its massive arched windows was originally the largest wholesale drug company between Minnesota and the Pacific Northwest. Here pharmacists once mixed medicines in labs upstairs and clerks filled orders below.

• 235 N. Sibley: The home of Barrio restaurant was a manufacturer of harnesses and saddles and a printing company that produced tickets and menus for railroads (1893).

• 237 N. Sibley: A wholesaler once stocked "high class bar outfits and fancy groceries” in the commercial building (1891) now occupied by the Bulldog Bar and Grill.

Millett, Larry. The AIA Guide to the Twin Cities. St. Paul, MN. Minnesota Historical Society Press, 2007.

Cray Plaza, Lowertown Landing. Accessed August 3rd 2020. https://lowertownlanding.com/lowertown-historic-building-cray-plaza.