Down And Out Format: Paperback

Hirschoff, Edwin C.

ISBN 10: 0816640548 / ISBN 13: 9780816640546

Published by University of Chicago press, 2002

About this Item

Brand New.

Seller Inventory # 9780816640546

Bibliographic Details

• Title: Down And Out Format: Paperback
• Publisher: University of Chicago press
• Publication Date: 2002
• Language: English
• ISBN 10: 0816640548
• ISBN 13: 9780816640546
• Binding: Soft cover
• Condition: New

About this title

Synopsis

An elegiac look at a lost piece of Minneapolis’s past.

Minneapolis’s skid row, known as the Gateway district, was a lively area consisting of dozens of bars, flophouses, pawnshops, burlesque houses, charity missions, and office buildings that had aged past their prime. Encompassing some twenty-five blocks centering on the intersection of Hennepin, Washington, and Nicollet Avenues, the neighborhood was demolished between 1959 and 1963 as part of the first federally funded urban renewal project in America. Gathered here for the first time, Edwin C. Hirschoff’s stark and moving images of the Gateway district’s final days-its streets, buildings, and parks, the rubble, smoke, and heavy equipment of its destruction-eloquently capture its demise. Down and Out provides a unique historical perspective and the most extensive photographic record available of the Gateway demolition project.

Joseph Hart’s engaging and comprehensive essay complements Hirschoff’s photographs by detailing the district’s social and economic evolution and the political decision making that led to its destruction. Hart presents a popular history of Minneapolis’s skid row and the people who lived there, migrant workers who learned that changes in the local economy could quickly degrade their status from valued laborer to societal menace (vagrant, tramp, or bum). By capturing the texture of life on skid row, Hart reveals the lost American culture of a bygone community.

A creative photographer, entrepreneur, and inventor, Edwin C. Hirschoff (19??-2002) had a successful career in public relations before founding Art-o-graph, a Minneapolis business that has prospered for more than half a century. Born in Zurich, Switzerland, in 1905, he lived in Minneapolis for almost ninety years.

About the Author

A creative photographer, entrepreneur, and inventor, Edwin C. Hirschoff (1905–2002) had a successful public relations career in Minneapolis before founding Art-O-Graph, a business that prospered for more than half a century.