Twin City Lines

When we think about good public transit today, we think of places like New York, or Chicago, or Boston. Not Indianapolis, or Detroit, or Minneapolis & St. Paul. Getting around the Twin Cities today is actually pretty painful - yes, even with the light rail - without a car.

Just 70 years ago, the Twin Cities were ending an 80 year history with one of the finest, most complete public transit systems in the US. From 1873 through June of 1954, the streetcar ruled the roadways of our two great cities.

It began in 1865, when Minneapolis mayor and businessman Dorilus Morrison began building rails though downtown Minneapolis. He joined forces soon after with Colonel William S. King, and other local businessmen to create the Minneapolis Street Railway Co. However, the lines didn’t go far, and the railway sat collecting dust for a time.

In 1873 the first horse-drawn streetcar line opened in Saint Paul. at just 2.5 miles, it was very short, and didn’t go too far. Minneapolis opened its first horsecar line in 1875 - at an even shorter length of two and one tenth miles.

It was in 1875 that the Minneapolis Street Railway recruited local burgeoning real estate mogul Thomas Lowry. He was a driven young man from Logan, Illinois, who had come to Minneapolis in 1867 to practice law. After several failed ventures, Lowry found a knack for himself in real estate.

When the Minneapolis Street Railway came to him in 1875, he saw an opportunity to invest in something that the growing cities would certainly need. Howeverm ge also saw an opportunity to grow his own interests by building streetcar lines out to growing parts of town, where he happened to own land. In September 1875, the first line linking Minneapolis and Saint Paul, going down University Avenue, was completed.

In 1890, the Saint Paul City Railroad and Minneapolis Street Railway Company merged to form the Twin City Rapid Transit Company. The company acquired many of its competitors over the next 40 years, and grew to be one of the largest, most comprehensive streetcar systems in the country.

TCRT built their own streetcars from the late 1890s through the rest of its existence. That all started with Thomas Lowry. The first cars that they purchased just couldn’t cut it in the brutal, cold, and snowy Minnesota winters. So, Lowry ordered a number of new streetcars designed and built by the company. TCRT cars were some of the biggest ever made. They were taller, longer, and wider - all to equip them for battle against the depths of winter. The interiors didn’t leave anything to be desired, either.

They were spacious, with wood floors, wicker benches, and electric lighting. They were enclosed, and early on had Baker heater woodstovers on board for heating before being equipped with electric floorboard heaters later on. The wood running the length of the car's interior were continuous lengths of cherrywood, and the passenger call buttons were all Mother of Pearl. Thomas Lowry even had a custom streetcar made for himself - mostly used for special events and new line openings. It was even used by President William McKinley on a visit to the Twin Cities.

By the 1920s, the company had 1500 custom built streetcars, a massive main shop on Snelling and University in Saint Paul, and over 500 miles of track. At its peak, track reached from Excelsior on the south shore of Lake Minnetonka, all the way to White Bear Lake in the northeast, Stillwater in the east, and South Saint Paul to the south. It’s said that you could catch a streetcar by walking no more than a quarter mile anywhere in Minneapolis or Saint Paul.

By the mid 1940s, the system was losing money, and ridership. Riders had surged during the war due to fuel and rubber restrictions, but had begun a swift decline.

The company had a long standing policy of investing any profits back into the system, for car and track maintenance, and to pay off loans. Therefore, they rarely paid out dividends on stocks. New York-based Wall Street investor Charles Green bought 6,000 shares in the company, expecting to make quick money. It so happened that as he bought the stock, the company had just begun some major construction projects.

At this, Green was angry. He worked with several other investors and business partners to vote out company President DJ Strouse, and take over the company. Green took over as President in 1949, announcing that by 1958, the entire system would be switched over to buses.

The new leadership team started dismantling the system immediately. A transit system that once was known for its grandeur, that took pride in the maintenance and the beauty of its cars and lines, quickly became something that was almost unrecognizable. A long standing policy of no ads on the exterior of the cars was quickly lifted, budget for streetcar maintenance was cut to nearly zero, and fares were hiked. All to milk a few extra dollars out of the system.

The cars were covered in sheet metal to keep from having to maintain the original wooden sides. The metal rusted quickly. The cars started to fall apart. They also started scaling back the system almost immediately. Line closure announcements would pop up overnight, and just as quickly, folks would wake up one morning to find that the line on their street had been switched to buses while they were sleeping.

In 1950, Green sold his shares to local Minneapolis lawyer Fred Ossanna, who himself had some shady friends in universe. Ossanna took over as president, and for a (short) time, paused the destruction of the system before picking it back up with gusto. Local crime leader and head of the Jewish mob the Minneapolis Combination, Isadore “Kid Cann” Blumenfeld became involved in the dismantling of the system. It was a cash cow for the underbelly of Twin Cities society. In the end, Ossanna and a number of other local business leaders went to prison for corruption and backroom dealings in destroying the streetcar system. The only one to escape that fate? Kid Cann.

By the beginning of 1954, the once mighty Twin City Lines streetcar system was a shell of itself. Abandoned tracks lay embedded in streets across the cities, waiting to be covered up by city crews to be forgotten as an unused, unseen relic of the past, or simply torn up and tossed away as useless scrap.

On June 19th, 1954, the day after Twin City Lines officially ceased streetcar operations, two cars took the last run, going over every inch of track that still remained. The event took nearly an entire day. The Minnesota Railfans Association, which gave birth to both the Minnesota Transportation and Streetcar museums, hosted the excursion.

After the abandonment of the system, TCRT continued operating bus service all throughout the Twin Cities. By the early  1970s, the company was struggling to stay afloat, and was bought out by the State of Minnesota.

Today the legacy of Twin City Lines lives on. Metro Transit, the government-run public transportation authority in the Twin Cities, is what TCRT became when it was bought out in 1970. Many of the bus lines today run the same routes as former streetcar lines did.

It also lives on through the Minnesota Streetcar museum at 42nd & Queen in Minneapolis. The museum keeps alive the stories and history of our streetcar past with 3 original Twin City Lines streetcars running on the original right of way of the longest and most famous of the TCRT lines, the Como-Harriet. You can ride the line April through October for just $3.

So, next time you’re on the bus or the light rail, just think - at one point in time, we boasted one of the best transit systems in the country. A shame it is one of the tragedies lost to “progress”.