Minneapolis Simplified, 1975

Photo via Old Minneapolis

Minneapolis from Above, 1973

Photo via National Archives

IDS Crystal Court, 1973 (by Robert Glenn McCall, Jr.)

Minneapolis Skyline, 1973 (by Kent Mitchell)

Photo via Old Minneapolis

IDS Tower Window Washers, Early 1970s

From the Minneapolis Star, January 5, 1974:

Men who wash the windows for the the IDS tower says that it’s not unusual for them to urinate over the street below.

The window washers say that they think that because the urine must fall 30 or 40 stories, it dissipates before it hits the ground.

“We usually did it when we got to an empty floor,” said one window washer who cleaned the windows for several weeks. “That way people (in the building) couldn’t see us.” …

Jerry Finkelstein, president of Sanitas Services of Minnesota said “he knew his employees were doing it,” but that it was contrary to “what the company believes in and what the company provides them.” …

One window washer remembers the first time he had to urinate and was told by another man “to do it over the side.”

“At first I was taken aback,” the window washer said. He said that sometimes he’d urinate on the building, and then throw some water on it to wash it away.

Image from George Moses, Minnesota in Focus (Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press, 1974).

Lake of the Isles, Minneapolis, June 1973

During the early 1970s, the newly created Environmental Protection Agency hired freelance photographers from around the country to document the condition of America’s environment. Many of the best known photos from the EPA’s Docuamerica Project show the United States at its 1970s worst, but the images of Minneapolis—taken in the summer of 1973—are almost bucolic in comparison.

Image via National Archives