June 26, 2004
Just northwest of downtown Minneapolis, operations began for a light rail station built in the city’s Warehouse District – a longtime neighborhood – on 5th Street North (between 1st Avenue North and Hennepin Avenue). The Warehouse District/Hennepin Avenue station was constructed as part of the first segment of the Blue Line of Metro, the transit network serving the Minneapolis-Saint Paul metropolitan area.
The Warehouse District/Hennepin Avenue station was originally the northern terminus of the Blue Line, and the inaugural ceremony for that line took place at the station. The first train at this station departed from there at eleven o’clock that morning.
As a tribute to the neighborhood’s industrial legacy and particularly the historic brick warehouses in this section of Minneapolis, the station was built with both brickwork and metal columns. The public art on display at this station has been collectively called Untilted and was created in a joint effort by Penny Rakoff and Bill McCullam. Their work consists of tiles installed on the station’s brick walls. These tiles feature vintage photos depicting everything from daily life long ago in the Warehouse District to historic labor disputes – notably the Minneapolis Teamsters Strike of 1934 – that once rocked this now venerable and even trendy neighborhood.
Photo Credit: Bobak Ha’Eri (https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/User:Bobak) – licensed under the Creative Commons Attribution 3.0 Unported license at https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/3.0/deed.en
For more information on the light rail stations in the Minnesota-based transit network Metro, please check out https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_Metro_(Minnesota)_light_rail_stations
Transportation History 
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