Bohemian Flats and Its Bygone Village

Article by Michael Rainville, Jr.

Nestled along the west bank between limestone bluffs and the Mississippi River once sat a small community of immigrants that garnered the name Bohemian Flats. This community popped up around the same time Minneapolis became incorporated as a town in 1867 and lasted roughly 100 years. Today, a park with the same name sits at the location of this bygone village, but what exactly happened on this strip of shoreline we call Bohemian Flats?

Photo of Bohemian Flats during the construction of the Northern Pacific Railway Bridge taken in 1880, courtesy of MNHS.

As milling continued to grow in Minneapolis and St. Anthony, so did the cities’ immigrant population. On the east side of the river in St. Anthony, many of them lived in what is now Northeast Minneapolis, but on the west side of the river, the young town of Minneapolis did not have much room for affordable residential growth at the time. This led to many immigrants from central Europe congregating at a low point along the shores of the river and created their own Old World-style village in which to raise their families.

The first major groups to call Bohemian Flats home were the Czechs and Slovaks, and soon after, immigrants from places like Austria, Hungary, Germany, Poland, Ireland, Denmark, Sweden, and Norway all came to this location. Throughout its existence, many names have been given to this village. Dane Flats, Little Ireland, Little Lithuania, and Connemara Patch, to name a few, were all used at one point or another, but “Bohemian Flats” stood the test of time.

Many of the houses built in this village were shacks at best. None had foundations, and yearly flooding made it difficult for families to truly invest in their homes. Later on, nicer homes were constructed atop the bluff, separated from the lower bluff by a flight of seventy-nine stairs. Homes on the upper bluff could be rented out for between $15 and $20 a year, while homes on the lower bluff went for $0.50 to $2 a year. Only a few families were able to find enough economic success to be able to afford moving up the bluff, and the majority of the residents of this village lived close to the river’s shores. 

Photo of boys rowing a boat down Cooper Street, next to the Immanuel Evangelical Slovak Lutheran Church during a flood in 1898, courtesy of MNHS.

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Photo of Polish immigrants searching for their belongings that floated away during a flood in 1900, courtesy of MNHS.

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Life at Bohemian Flats was quite difficult compared to the rest of the city. Fresh water was hard to come by as many of the shared wells were close to outhouses. Materials to build a house were too expensive to buy, so families waited for logs to sneak away from the log booms of the lumber mills and float over St. Anthony Falls for them to fish out of the river. Crime would also create chaos, especially on Sundays when workers at the nearby breweries would throw keggers along the bluffs. These breweries, the Heinrich Brewing Association and the F.D. Noernberg Brewing Company, would eventually merge with the Orth Brewery in 1890 to form the Minneapolis Brewing Company, later known as the Grain Belt Brewery.

Photo of Bohemian Flats taken in 1910 with the F.D. Noernberg Brewing Company in the background on the left, courtesy of MNHS.

A plat of Bohemian Flats in 1910 created by Joseph W. Zalusky in 1940, courtesy of the Hennepin History Museum.

It was also a common practice for families who resided on the lower bluff to live with family or friends during high water season in the spring, because much of the lower bluff was swallowed up by the river, flooding all the homes. For this reason, the area also was called Little Venice. As more people started living at Bohemian Flats, the small village made their own streets, Mill, Cooper, and Wood, named after the most common occupations the residents had. In 1890, things got much worse for the residents of Bohemian Flats. The City of Minneapolis was ordered to stop dumping garbage in the river, so instead, they dumped it next to the river, by the Washington Street Bridge. Their reasoning for that decision was that the location was “away from the settled city.” This lasted nine years, until the State Board of Health ordered the city to move their dump once again in 1899.

1919 painting by Samuel Chatwood Burton titled Christmas Eve on the Flats, courtesy of MNHS.

The first round of evictions started in 1915 when the city and Army Corps of Engineers was planning to build Lock & Dam No. 1, which would raise the water level of the river. In 1921, landlord C.H. Smith started buying properties at Bohemian Flats and attempted to collect rent from the residents. They claimed, “squatters’ rights,” refusing to pay rent or leave, battling eviction notices in court for ten years. One of the main reasons residents were able to fight in court for so long was because of the efforts of John Medvec. He noted,

“I bought that little house in May 1884. I paid $210 for it but never paid for the land. I'm there all the time. I move in the spring because the river rolls over my floor. I raised my family there... The land belongs to the river if anybody. That's the property of the government. We'll pay taxes, but it isn't fair to ask rent for a riverbed.”

Unfortunately for the residents, the court ended up siding with the landlord in 1931, and evictions started happening once again.

Soon after the evictions, that land was turned into a municipal barge terminal with coal and oil storage. The last resident to live at Bohemian Flats was Joseph A. Kieferle, who was eighty years old in 1963 when he was forced out of his home for the construction of the new Washington Avenue Bridge.

Photo of the barge terminal and coal storage taken in 1949, courtesy of MNHS.

With the extension of West River Parkway and the Grand Rounds in the 1980s, Bohemian Flats turned into park land. From 2007 to 2010, the park housed the wreckage from the I-35W Bridge collapse until it was moved to a warehouse in Afton, MN. The closure of the Upper St. Anthony Falls Lock & Dam was scheduled for 2015, so Paradise Charter Cruises moved their river operations, along with their boats the Paradise Lady and Minneapolis Queen, from Boom Island Park to Bohemian Flats in 2013. From 2015 to 2017, a part of the park was used as a staging area for the reconstruction of the Franklin Avenue Bridge, and in 2018, that area was turned into a nursery site for saplings that were to be planted throughout the park system.

This land that once was home to a small village of 100 homes, a variety of shops and a church has gone through many transformations in the last 150 years. It was never an ideal spot to house struggling residents, and using the land for heavy industry and storage was hardly a good idea in retrospect. But now the land is serving nearby residents once again, providing pedestrian paths, perfect picnic spots, a sandy canoe and kayak launch, and picturesque views of the Mississippi River Gorge, hopefully, for generations to come.

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