Picture Mary Richards tossing her beret right here on Nicollet Mall. This stretch of Nicollet Mall is where Mary Richards — played by Mary Tyler Moore — tossed her beret into the winter air at the start of The Mary Tyler Moore Show, which ran from 1970 to 1977 and quietly revolutionized television by centering a single working woman's independent life rather than a family. A bronze statue of Mary mid-toss stands at Seventh and Nicollet; look for it.
The mall itself was redesigned in 1967 as a transit-and-pedestrian street — private cars banned, buses and streetcars allowed — one of the first experiments of its kind in America. The idea was to compete with suburban shopping centers by making downtown itself more walkable and pleasant. The current serpentine design, which replaced the original mall in 2017, follows the same concept with wider sidewalks, better lighting, and year-round programming.
Minneapolis's downtown struggled in the 1990s and 2000s as retail fled to the suburbs, but Nicollet Mall has remained the central spine of the city's downtown identity for sixty years.