Wiry New Sculpture Echoes Landmark SLP Grain Silo

A new towering artwork rising at the southeast corner of 36th Street and Wooddale salutes another nearby St. Louis Park landmark: the historic Peavey-Haglin grain elevator (now with Nordic Ware logo) built at the turn of the last century.

"The Dream Elevator," the Star Tribune reported, is a work in progress just outside the new TowerLight on Wooddale Avenue senior-housing development.

Artist Randy Walker told the newspaper:

"This one form changed the entire Midwestern landscape and beyond. ... I thought it was pretty rich material, showing that St. Louis Park has a history of wanting to dream, innovate and build. ... It's also a beautiful form."

Read the full Star Tribune article on Randy Walker's St. Louis Park sculpture The Dream Elevator. 

Walker has experience transforming existing community landmarks into art. Another Walker work repurposed a beloved playground rocket at Brackett Field in south Minneapolis as a neighborhood sculpture, with cables tethering the streamlined 1960s Space Age icon to Earth.

Dreams for the area go beyond The Dream Elevator. In addition to TowerLight on Wooddale Avenue is the City of St. Louis Park's effort to revitalize 36th Street and plans for light rail transit service and stations.

The Peavey-Haglin elevator was the first cylindrical concrete silo for storing grain—an 1899-1900 experiment so wildly successful it spawned thousands of imitations the world over. It is one of three National Engineering Landmarks in Minnesota.

The Peavey-Haglin experiment also influenced the course of modern architecture more broadly: European architects in the early 20th century drew on utilitarian industrial structures by American engineers for the so-called International Style that still holds sway today in skyscraper design. (See, for example, the semi-cylindrical Capella Tower in downtown Minneapolis.)