Sometimes you just want to get into the skyway fast and you have to know where the nearest entrance is located. That entrance just might be through a parking or loading dock. St Paul's skyway system is convenient for getting around in downtown when you want to avoid the heat or the cold, although you might not be able to get to your final destination without going outside at some point. Too bad we can't tunnel our way to some of the buildings that are not connected to the system. Last week while continuing my read of John Dillinger Slept Here, I found myself wanting to know the exact location of Nina Clifford's brothel (1880s to the 1920's) and the supposed tunnel that ran from her backyard to the basement of the Minnesota Club on Washington Street. M and I walked over to one of the upper levels of the parking ramp that fits into the hill and looked over the side. The loading entrance for the Excel Center is tucked into the cliff and nearby are patched up tunnel entrances to who knows where. The remains of a street and sidewalk hangs in the air over the cliff. Is this the old Hill Street? If you want a better understanding of the complexity of the tunnels and caves under St Paul, read the adventures of the ActionSquad and in particular their adventures in the tunnels of St Paul at http://www.actionsquad.org/labyrinth.htm. Maybe they know about the Minnesota Club tunnel?
Saturday, October 16, 2010
Hidden Entrance
Sometimes you just want to get into the skyway fast and you have to know where the nearest entrance is located. That entrance just might be through a parking or loading dock. St Paul's skyway system is convenient for getting around in downtown when you want to avoid the heat or the cold, although you might not be able to get to your final destination without going outside at some point. Too bad we can't tunnel our way to some of the buildings that are not connected to the system. Last week while continuing my read of John Dillinger Slept Here, I found myself wanting to know the exact location of Nina Clifford's brothel (1880s to the 1920's) and the supposed tunnel that ran from her backyard to the basement of the Minnesota Club on Washington Street. M and I walked over to one of the upper levels of the parking ramp that fits into the hill and looked over the side. The loading entrance for the Excel Center is tucked into the cliff and nearby are patched up tunnel entrances to who knows where. The remains of a street and sidewalk hangs in the air over the cliff. Is this the old Hill Street? If you want a better understanding of the complexity of the tunnels and caves under St Paul, read the adventures of the ActionSquad and in particular their adventures in the tunnels of St Paul at http://www.actionsquad.org/labyrinth.htm. Maybe they know about the Minnesota Club tunnel?
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In my undergrad, I was inducted into a Mystery Squad made up of me and a few other bored Honors program colleagues. My secret identity was "Toomuchus Technologus" because of how I techno-savvy I always was compared to everyone else. Actually, your son would have made a worth foe had I known him back then. (We inducted foes, too!) We'd sneak down the hallways between our classes and solve "mysteries" we more or less just made up out of whatever we could find (pieces of trash, open classroom doors, campus ghost stories...etc.) Finding secret passages sounds right up our alley, though. I'll bet our Mystery Squad could have totally rivaled this so-called "ActionSquad" if we hadn't all graduated :)
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