Old News: Rex Hardware at 2601 Lyndale

The vacant lot at 2601 Lyndale could soon get a grocery store and 75 apartments, but ten years ago it was a single story brick hardware store. Here’s how the store’s 2005 closing and the 2010 demolition was covered in the Wedge newspaper (all this old news was pirated without permission, as usual).

2007 plan that didn’t happen.
The long-vacant building was demolished in 2010.

2013 parking lot proposal for French Meadow.

A 2013 proposal to turn the vacant lot into a parking lot was supported by the Whittier Alliance. LHENA rejected it on the grounds that it would have required upzoning the parcel from C1 to C4 (to match the business using the parking lot), raising the unwelcome possibility of a large number of non-motorized residents

Great Moments in “Oops, I Missed My Turn”

Sometimes buildings get in the way.
No helmet, no reflective clothing. smh. https://t.co/1kC6Z4GLoM

— § (@section_sign) November 1, 2015


A driver crashed a vehicle into the dry cleaner at 2500 Hennepin early Sunday morning. It’s happened before, in far more spectacular fashion, just one block north. In 2005, the driver of a van nearly demolished the building at 2400 Hennepin (which still houses Sudz Salon, as well as newer occupant Spyhouse Coffee). 

News coverage of the 2005 crash reprinted below—as always, without permission.

Wedge newspaper, April 2005

Photos below from Garrick Van Buren.

Full story from the March 14, 2005 Star Tribune:

A van crashed into a hair salon at 24th St. and Hennepin Av. S. in Minneapolis on Sunday morning, leaving a gaping hole in the storefront and causing the second floor to partly collapse. 

Emergency crews responded to the Sudz Salon at 2400 Hennepin about 8 a.m. and extracted the van’s driver from the wreckage. A medical condition likely caused the man to veer off Hennepin, hit a traffic light and then smash into the salon lobby, said Paul Nemes, a captain with the Minneapolis Fire Department. 

The driver was taken to Hennepin County Medical Center with non- life-threatening injuries. No one was in the salon or neighboring businesses when the accident occurred. An upstairs apartment was severely damaged, but salon employees said no one lived there. 

“Oh my god,” said salon manager Krysta Schrader. “I’m just worried about my employees’ livelihood. It’s devastating.” 

Although much of the salon’s rear half remained untouched, Nemes said that most of the building is a total loss because its structural integrity was compromised; it will be demolished. 

Schrader said the salon will try to lease a temporary space as soon as possible.

2400 Hennepin was stitched back together.

The Historic Wedge Newspaper

Two of the early hand-drawn front pages.

Last fall, the @WedgeLIVE news team spent an insane number of hours in the remarkably luxurious and well-equipped Special Collections room of the Minneapolis Central Library, doing what no one else thought possible or necessary: scanning nearly 40 years of the Wedge neighborhood newspaper going back to 1970.

Now that I’ve mined it for all the blog material it was worth (and used up all the old unredeemed coupons for Tuthill’s General Store), we’re releasing it to the neighborhood. Check out the archive. It’s more historic than a Healy house.

Print it out. Denny may still be legally bound to honor this coupon.

Many talented and dedicated people put a lot of work into this paper over the last 45 years. It’s an amazing resource. But if you’re too lazy to lift a finger to browse the full archive (I’m looking at you, renters), I’ve condensed decades of accumulated neighborhood knowledge to a manageable number of bullet points.

Alright “Ken”–you say your last name ends in a chant of “USA”? We’re not buying it.

  • “The Wedgies” was a cartoon featuring a Wedge-shaped married couple (unfortunately, not a continuing series).
Next panel: “That’s not a hotel, it’s a former boarding house you converted to single-family. You owe me $200 for historic repairs.”

  • This old political ad fills me with transient pride. Who needs a wife and kids when you can tout your amazing “roommate”? This goes both for euphemistic and platonic roommates. 

Recycle this into a historic Christmas card.

The Wedge newspaper archive is brought to you by Homemade Soups™.