Father Louis Hennepin, the Belgian Franciscan friar who reached St. Anthony Falls in 1680 and wrote the first European descriptions of this landscape, gave Hennepin Avenue its name. The avenue bearing his name has been the commercial and entertainment spine of Minneapolis for over a century. At the turn of the twentieth century this stretch was lined with saloons, theaters, hotels, and the offices that ran the city.
By the mid-twentieth century most theaters had closed and the street declined. Beginning in the 1980s, historic preservation — the theater district restoration — and new investment reversed that. Upper Hennepin today, from the theater district north to the river, mixes the old entertainment strip with newer restaurants and the connecting tissue between downtown and the North Loop.
Lower Hennepin in Uptown is different entirely — the commercial strip of a walkable neighborhood rather than a downtown spine. The avenue connects those two versions of Minneapolis: the formal urban core and the neighborhood city to the south, reminding you that this is both a genuine city and a place where residents mostly live in neighborhoods that feel like towns.