Interesting how certain things lead you to certain other things. For example, a desire for pork buns can lead you to a vacant lot and a meditation on Twin Cities history, real estate, and community.

On Saturdays at breakfast time I usually indulge in pork buns (banh bao) and Vietnamese iced coffee at the wonderful Trung Nam bakery on University Avenue in Saint Paul. A couple of Saturdays ago, however, Trung Nam was closed because proprietor Tony Le and family were celebrating the lunar new year—I believe they went to Las Vegas to usher in the Year of the Snake.

So I was banh-baoless but not optionless. There are splendid Chinese-style baked pork buns available at the venerable Keefer Court bakery-café on the West Bank in Minneapolis, and since I was in no mood to give up my Saturday habit, I drove there. With two of these delicious and still-warm Sino-sandwiches in a bag I then headed over to Mapps Coffee, right at the corner of Cedar and Riverside. I'm ethical about not eating "outside food" in coffee shops, so I wolfed down both buns before actually arriving at Mapps.

Mapps is a big, sunny café with (what else?) maps on the wall and various handmade retail items to  pore over—mugs, pots, greeting cards.

There was one rack of cards that particularly caught my attention: colorful photo cards of Twin Cities buildings and places by Allen Zumach. Amid his images of bridges, restaurants, and bike shops, there was one that stood out for its density and complexity—fifteen arcane-looking symbols, obviously done in mosaic (see the photo above). The only ones I recognized were the South Korean flag, with its red-and-blue "Supreme Ultimate" (yin-yang) symbol and four trigrams from the I Ching, and a black cat with its back arched, a logo that originated with the Industrial Workers of the World--the Wobblies--and has become a general symbol of anarchism and radical unionism.

What could this be? Well, a little checking on my Ipad revealed that it was a composite photo of the four sides of a monument marking a vanished building, Dania Hall, which stood for 113 years at 427 Cedar, on the now-vacant lot across an alleyway from Nomad World Pub. It celebrates the Hall, and also the vivid diversity of the many cultures that have called, and call, the West Bank home. I walked over to 427 Cedar to take a look at this intriguing work of public art.

From Folk Dancing to Fire

Dania Hall had a lively biography. It was built in 1886 as a social hall for Danish immigrants, with a theater and dance floor for folk dancing and the Scandinavian vaudeville that flourished in the neighborhood around the turn of the last century. In the 1960s it became a general headquarters for the hippie counterculture on the West Bank; its theater hosted rock shows and there was a coop store on the ground floor. In 1988 it was boarded up, and what to do about it became a perennial neighborhood  issue.

In the 90s it looked like Dania Hall might rise again and anchor redevelopment in the area. A fire in 1991 prompted  a consortium of neighborhood groups to get together to envision a restored Hall and to seek city money. But it wasn't till 1999 that a funding package came together—Neighborhood Revitalization Program (NRP) money plus federal and state funds and the contributions of the Dania Hall Group, the local redevelopers. There was support from the Somali community, and there were visions of a ground-floor restaurant. Repairs to the theater began.

And then, in early March of 2000, a fire—probably caused, said fire officials, by a discarded cigarette—torched the whole building and all bets were off. A community memorial service gathered immigrants and the descendants of immigrants from Asia, Africa, and Europe. The Hall's lot was paved and has stood vacant since.

A Monument to a Monument

In  2001, the memorial column that Allen Zumach photographed was erected. Titled "Honor the Spirit," it was a project of the West Bank Community Development Corporation. John Pitman Weber, a muralist and specialist in community art projects from Chicago, was hired by the WBCDC to oversee the project, along with local artist  Marilyn Lindstrom. They helped local people design and execute the mosaic.

Neighborhood resident Chong Shin chose, and made, the flag--to stand for her Korean heritage. Jeanette Duprey, a native of Puerto Rico, created the yellow pictograph frog (third column, second from the top) to stand for the Latino presence—it's a rock carving from the indigenous Taino culture of her homeland. The tower of the Hall itself is depicted at top left, and below it there's a nod to the Bank's rich musical heritage, from Scandinavian fiddle music to 60s blues icons like Lazy Bill Lucas and Spider John Koerner to today's bands at places like the Nomad.

There's a white-star Somali crest, a camel to honor the Eritreans, and that black cat—well, that's about the never-quite-smothered spark of collective rebellion and mutual aid that's been nurtured in many ways in our towns. As for the rest, I'd have you visit the monument, look at the key (first column, third panel), and figure them out for yourself.

And what about the site? Is it likely to host anything besides a modest memorial any time soon? In 2010 Minneapolis issued a request for proposals for redevelopment. Senior Minneapolis city planner Joseph Bernard tells me that none of the proposals received were deemed viable by the city, and "at this time the city is not actively marketing the site. Any proposals the city receives in the future will have to go through a competitive open-bid process."

Ideas, anyone?