A day at Art-A-Whirl and back in time

There are few things I enjoy doing more than stepping back into history, and yesterday was all about that. I used the annual Art-A-Whirl in NE Minneapolis as the impetus and focal point to revisit a couple of places. Sometimes things happen to coincide in a way that produces rather spooky results.

In the 70’s I visited the Northwestern Casket Company briefly on insurance business, and was delighted to find a company that had been in business, in the same place, since Civil War days. I recall a 100-year-old clock in the office, still working, and office furniture that might have been as old.

In 2005, I was visiting an old friend in that part of town and sensed that the place I had visited 20 years earlier was nearby. I drove around until I found the old building, and took a couple of photos of it. It looked to me as if the casket company was gone, and I posted the photos and my regrets at the demise of the company on my website.

Not long after, I got an email from someone at the Casket Company insisting that they were NOT gone, and that they would prove it if I wanted to take a tour. A tour of a company well over 100 years old? There are few things I could want more.

I called a couple of friends I knew would be interested in joining me, plus the friend who lived near NWCC. He fixed lunch for us and we went over to the massive old brick building with the huge name painted on the bricks.

We were given a tour by the company president David Koll, and it was marvelous. Although the company was by that time small and less active by comparison with it’s earlier days, the building added great interest.

Oh, to have seen the company operation at it’s peak… hauling logs in by rail to their own sawmill and dry kiln, and watching craftsmen build caskets of all kinds, followed by the custom interiors created by the ladies on the 3rd floor. Putting interiors on purchased metal caskets had become the bulk of the company’s business.

This day, I was with another friend, and drove by my old friend Ed Contoski’s house, and saw him outside, so we stopped for a few minutes to find out Ed’s latest activities (Ed should be a whole other blog). From Ed’s, we drove up by the St. Mary’s Orthodox Cathedral you can see from Ed’s dining room. It’s an impressive old church from the outside, with a huge central dome and other smaller ones. I was surprised to see that the church was an Art-A-Whirl stop too, so we parked and went in. There was a service just finishing as we got there, and we were directed to the church’s tea room for some great tea, pleasantly sweetened with a dab of Huber’s jam.

When the service ended we entered the church proper and stood surprised at what we saw… a truly magnificent room under the huge dome, with an incredible iconostasis in the front and paintings all around. Additionally, there was an exhibit of more recent, smaller icons. Words cannot do justice to the interior of this cathedral, but they have a website with lots of photos.

From St. Mary’s, we drove to the nearby casket company building. Yes, the casket company was indeed gone, but the huge building, plus the carriage house, were filled with people touring the artist’s studios. There were many remaining vestiges of the building’s prior appearance, but I had hoped for a small historical “shrine” to the company that built the building in 1855 and occupied it for 150 years. The story of that company reveals much about the ways in which our nation has changed over that time.

It’s a little ironic that a building that was built to produce fine hand-crafted caskets now displays hand-crafted art. Another small twist of fate… one of the people I invited on that 2005 tour of the casket company was Joan Nygren, who, for several years, has done the massive Design and Production of the Art-A_Whirl catalog.

I hope someone is recording the story of Northwestern Casket Company for posterity. It’s possible that the company itself is still in business in a different location. I think I’ll try to find out. With a great deal of luck, perhaps I’ll be the one to put at least some more of their long history online to share.