After nearly a century on the hillside overlooking Loring Park, The Woman’s Club of Minneapolis had some reckoning to do. Despite efforts to raise money, increase membership and reimagine its mission — all of which were successful, just not successful enough — the cost of maintaining the historic building was simply too high.
On April 22 club members gathered to vote on the board’s recommendation to sell the building, and on whether or not the Woman’s Club should regroup and continue at a new location.
Members voted to approve both the sale of the historic property at 410 Oak Grove Street to continue the club in a new location, if needed.
With 77% voting in favor of the sale and a similar margin supporting the club’s future elsewhere, the real estate team will now evaluate offers — including those that allow for a lease-back option — while a separate team explores how best to continue the club’s mission.
The Woman’s Club of Minneapolis is not alone in falling on hard times. (And yes, it is woman, singular, as the club’s founders wanted it to be a place for every woman.)
At one time there were over 3,000 women’s clubs in the United States with over a million members. Given the huge changes in women’s lives — and in the culture — only a handful of clubs exist today.
Women’s clubs were originally started by progressive women advocating against slavery and societal inequities, and for women’s suffrage.
According to the National Women’s History Museum, “[these] women decided to ignore customary restrictions and insisted on developing their minds and communities by meeting regularly in order to learn about the great ideas of the past and contemporary urban problems together.
“In particular, they came to target limitations on the lives of women and children and sought to do something about them. They valued education and called for women’s admittance to institutions of higher learning, but they also addressed the abysmal conditions of working girls in factories and appealed for the amelioration of workplace abuses.”
It was that history that drew me in. When women had so few opportunities for education or careers outside the home, they came together to change that — and to change an unjust world. They were the activists of their day. It’s that history that still holds me.
Over the years women’s clubs became more social, exclusive and yes, stodgy.
As someone who was kicked out of Brownies for not carving my pumpkin the Brownie way, I’ve had a lifelong aversion to joining clubs of any sort. But I had this one wrong. This a club you join to support an important part of women’s history in Minneapolis, not to get a pickleball court.
In recent years the club changed gears to be less “clubby,” in part by opening membership to all and reducing dues, but also by deepening engagement with the local community in numerous ways, including opening its kitchens to Involve MN, a nonprofit founded by Melanie Snyder and Grant Snyder, a former MPD commander. Involve MN produces over 12,000 meals a week that are distributed to shelters and drop-in centers across the Minneapolis-St. Paul area.
The club also opened its doors to the community, hosting concerts in the lower-level theater, world class speakers in the mid-level ballroom, intimate jazz nights in the upper-level lounge, and great parties on the rooftop — one of the most beautiful views in town.
No one wants to lose this extraordinary piece of our past and valued partner in the present.
The hope is that a buyer will be found who will honor the history of the building and find a creative way to preserve it. And soon.
Memo to MacKenzie Scott: Have your people get in touch with our people!
