About the Mankato Walking Tour

By Dr. Janet Cherrington

January 2005

 

 

Many college campuses are inherently self-contained communities.  This phenomenon inadvertently stifles the desire for students to learn more about the cultural, historical and social aspects of the college or university's host city.  Because most students arrive at their university knowing little, if anything, about the town that will become their home-away-from-home for the next four years, "Minnesota State University, Mankato (MSU) students have the opportunity to actually take a class that will help them learn [about their host] city."[1]  This is done through a walking tour that helps students appreciate Mankato's history, Victorian architecture, and the 1960 urban renewal projects that reshaped its development.

 

Originally the walking tour project emerged when Dr. H. Roger Smith came to the university in 1965, during Mankato’s urban renewal.  As he watched many of the buildings representing a significant part of Mankato's history demolished, Smith became an advocate for architectural preservation through adaptive reuse.  In his urban studies classes, students learned about Mankato's historical buildings and the important resources that made the city flourish.  Smith wanted students to understand that architecture was an important reflection of the past so he developed a two-hour walking tour through the older neighborhoods of Mankato. 

 

In 1999 I moved to the Mankato area and joined Smith as a faculty member in the Urban and Regional Studies Institute (URSI) at MSU.  I was anxious to incorporate the walking tour into my undergraduate urban studies Introduction to the City class.  An Eastern transplant, I not only wanted to learn more about the Midwest, but especially about the university’s host city.  I remember thinking that the walking tour was a wonderful way to accomplish several things: 1) to educate myself about Mankato’s historical past and significant examples of Victorian architecture and 2) to make sense of the winding tour route and to learn how to navigate the city’s confusing street pattern.

 

Initially I used Dr. Smith's typewritten tour directions as the means for my Introduction to the City students to take a self-guided tour of the city.  After the first semester, I recognized that students needed a more visual way to navigate the tour route.  So I developed a street map with a tour overlay.  At the same time, I felt it was important for students to have specific information about the significance of various sites on the tour.  This led to my creating a walking tour booklet, complete with photos, historical narratives, and community trivia with the help of several students. For example, Josh Casper researched trivia on Mankato from old newspapers which were added as sidebars to the booklet pages.  John Jenness captured much of the photography that was used in the tour booklet.  Jason Hamilton lent his artistic talents to designing a cover that featured pencil sketches of an old trolley, the Blue Earth County Courthouse and the original bridge between Mankato and North Mankato.  The tour continued to follow Smith’s original route, however, by the end of the spring 2000 semester, the typewritten directions were replaced by a tour booklet which became a standard part of the Intro class packet. 

 

The booklet not only provided students with a map along with significant historical information, but it was also made available to Mankato visitors at the Blue Earth County Historical Society’s headquarters.  Today the booklet can be ordered through MSU’s Morris Hall copy shop.[2]  Even though the students now had much more background about the tour, the self-guided approach still left much to be desired.  As a case in point, many of the interesting nuances, such as the “barmuda triangle”—one of the town’s “funky places” was difficult to locate.  So in the fall of 2000, the tour became a group class field project for Introduction to the City students.  Yes, with the help of a graduate assistant, I have led the two-hour walking tour with as many as 44 students in tow. 

 

In 2005, five years later, I continue to ask students to venture beyond the confines of Minnesota State University’s hilltop campus, down the city streets of their host city, Mankato.  In essence, the walking tour has provided the means for me to take learning about cities outside of the traditional classroom and into the community. 

 

After taking the walking tour, class curriculum has included writing essays and working collaboratively on group multimedia presentations.  Students have also been asked to incorporate visual technology into their essays and class presentations.  Many have turned out to be no less than "awesome."  Walking tour class presentations have ranged from using slides to PowerPoint to actual music and video productions.  More importantly, the students admit they actually find the walking tour fun and many report having a changed perspective of the city of Mankato.  It has been particularly helpful to international students because it promotes a greater understanding of American cities and the university’s host city.

 

Class multi-media projects are presented at the end of the semester and the audience often includes more than the instructor and students.  Mankato's Public Information Officer has been one and has even asked permission to borrow some of the students’ presentations.  It was this type of outside interest that spurred me on to creating the web-based walking tour.  Later the city of Mankato linked the web version of the tour to its visitor's page.  In the virtual version of the walking tour, you can click on the “Forward” or “Back” buttons at the bottom of each page and wind your way through the streets of Mankato via the World Wide Web.  

 

Designed and published during the summer and fall 2000 semesters, this virtual tour provides a historical overview of the university, describing how Minnesota State University, evolved from the valley campus of Mankato Normal School (1866), to Mankato State Teachers College (1921), to Mankato State College (1957) to Mankato State University (1975) and its present highland campus location.  Descriptive links present actual local history such as the Dakota Massacre, an event that portrayed the struggle between white settlers and Native Americans in southern Minnesota during the late 1800's.  A tour map provides a compass to guide you through the various city streets and shows the relationship of the Minnesota River to the city's spatial orientation.  Other digital imagery in the virtual tour is used to help explain the complex ideas of adaptive reuse, decentralization and city planning.  You are also prompted to explore the city's once prominent Lincoln Park called the Silk Stocking District.  This is a neighborhood on the historical register where well-to-do women wore silk stockings and had wealthy husbands who built ornate houses in unique architectural styles.  Designed to provide students an anchored instruction about the city of Mankato, the online tour also allows them to navigate to places of interest within the city.

 

There have been several other outcomes from the walking tour project.  For example, during the fall semester of 2000, the students and I put together a bulletin board across from the MSU Morris Hall copy shop.  Using a large laminated map of Mankato, called a "culture map,” it showed the major highways coming into Mankato, railroad routes, the Minnesota and Blue Earth Rivers, and other unusual topographical features, such as Mankato's bluffs.  The display stirred up lots of interest and people regularly stopped by my office to talk about it.  When I was ready to disassemble the bulletin board, the Blue Earth Historical Society expressed interest in using the exhibit.  It is still on display at their Mankato Summit Center location.  In the spring of 2001, I began conducting research with another professor in the social work department.  Together we studied and compared students who took the real walking tour with those that took the virtual walking tour.  A formal paper titled, "Taking Learning from the Classroom to the Community Using Online Technology[3]" about the research was featured in a MnSCU[4] conference.  Later I applied for and received a $5,000 Bush Foundation “Learn-By-Doing[5]" grant to expand the walking tour pedagogy.  The grant funded the purchase of digital cameras and video equipment for students to use in their multimedia projects.  It also supported workshop sessions to teach students technology skills. 

 

The premise of the grant was two-fold.  First that as partners, rather than rivals, a city can benefit from having college or university located in or near it.  Second, that there are real and measurable benefits to training students to perceive their urban surroundings in ways that incorporate various forms of simulation and digital technology.  I have also presented my research at two international conferences: the International Conference on Intelligent Multimedia and Distance Education in June 2001 and at the International Conference on Simulation in Engineering Education, in January 2003.  In the fall of 2003, I participated in a MSU Learning Community project, which formed cohorts of freshman students.  The cohort that took my Introduction to the City class researched the social histories of several prominent Mankato homes.  With the student’s permission, I later edited these essays and they were incorporated into a color brochure printed by the South Central Technical College graphics students.  The booklet was distributed as part of the Historical Homes Tour, a YMCA youth leadership fund raiser held on April 24, 2004.[6]

 

One student described the walking tour this way. "The walking tour ... here at Minnesota State University has helped me get to know the city better.  It has been difficult for me to learn the streets because I do not drive.  Now, because of the walking tour, I have become more acquainted with the town and I'm beginning to appreciate the process of city planning as well as Mankato's history.  I especially like the area that is now referred to as old downtown.  The adaptive reuse of that area has saved so many buildings in Mankato, and the look and feel of it is very unique to this town ….  Students get a first hand experience of the town and are no longer stuck in the rut of the average "town and gown" isolated college life.  The city of Mankato also appreciates the tours and has become involved by displaying exhibits put together by students and linking to Dr. Cherrington's virtual walking tour.  All in all, the walking tour has been a wonderful experience for me and it will continue being a valuable resource for incoming students here at Minnesota State University, Mankato."¹