Long before Wadaag Commons became home to dozens of families, a modest building stood on one of the sites on this corner of Minneapolis. Archaeologists discovered that, over the course of fifty years, this building at 2119 Snelling Ave. South transformed again and again to meet the needs of a changing neighborhood.

It was a hotel, boarding house, saloon, a grocery store, bakery, brewery, confectionery … even a rabbitry.

Each new use reflected the people who lived, worked, and built community here.

A Neighborhood Takes Shape

In 1883, German immigrant Peter G. Harff constructed the building at 2119 Snelling Avenue. Unlike most of the surrounding homes, it was built as a business.

Harff was an experienced hotel proprietor who had previously operated similar businesses in St. Peter, Minnesota. When he arrived in Minneapolis, he saw opportunity in a rapidly developing neighborhood filled with railroad workers, factory laborers, and newly-arrived immigrants.

He described his new establishment as a hotel and “gentleman’s sample room,” even telling newspapers that profits from the business would help support Democratic political candidates and events. City directories, however, consistently listed the address as a saloon.

That difference is telling.

Archaeologists note that while Harff promoted the building as an upscale establishment, it likely blurred the line between hospitality and vice. Whatever Harff or the City called it, 2119 was a neighborhood gathering place where workers found food, drink, lodging, and companionship, and where the boundaries between commerce, leisure, and vice were often difficult to separate.

Reinvention Is The Name of the Game

After facing legal trouble related to liquor sales in the late 1880s, Harff reinvented the saloon as a restaurant in 1888. Two years later, it became a grocery. Then a confectionery the following year.

Harff and his wife, Katherine, eventually moved into the building themselves, living upstairs in the former hotel space while continuing to operate businesses below until his death in 1892.

Commercial Endeavors

From 1885 to 1895, Norwegian immigrant Ditman O. Anderson operated a cigar business from the property while sharing the building with residents including cooper Henry Schmutz and German immigrant Christina Blohm and her son August, a machine operator.

Following a brief vacancy and sale after fire damage in the late 1890s, the storefront welcomed a steady stream of entrepreneurs.

In 1901, Swedish immigrant Charles W. Ekroth operated an artisan bakery.

From 1903 to 1904, Norwegian immigrant John P. Holden ran an express and drayage business, hauling freight throughout the growing city.

Then, from 1905 to 1906, Swedish brothers Alfred and John Youngstrom opened the Youngstrom Brothers Brewery. Construction permits even suggest the brothers may have briefly owned the property itself. Their brewery disappeared from city directories almost as quickly as it appeared.

When a Store Became a Home

In 1907, the property was advertised for sale as “one large building containing a six-room flat on the second floor and store on the first floor,” noting that the storefront could easily be converted into another apartment.

Within just a few years, that’s exactly what happened.

By 1909, city directories listed 2119 Snelling Avenue as a boarding house operated by Serepta M. Bothum, who served as its resident “keeper.” The storefront had given way to additional living space, reflecting growing demand for affordable housing in a neighborhood filled with laborers and recent immigrants.

Next door, 2121 Snelling Avenue also evolved. Originally built as a single-family home, it increasingly welcomed boarders working as conductors, carpenters, meat market employees, laundry workers, clerks, and laborers. Renting rooms wasn’t unusual. For many working-class families, taking in boarders helped pay the bills while providing affordable housing for newcomers building lives in Minneapolis.

Fire Brings Another Change

Between 1912 and 1914, a structural fire left 2119 vacant while repairs were completed. Historical records suggest the neighboring house at 2121 Snelling Avenue may have temporarily absorbed displaced boarders.

When 2119 reopened, a new chapter began.

From 1914-1919, widowed auto mechanic Albert Mansfield lived here with his widowed mother Bertha and his young daughter Charlotte. Archaeologists recovered household goods reflecting the Mansfields’s German heritage (including a Hoyt’s German Cologne bottle and a P.K. Silesia plate) alongside artifacts connected to Albert’s work and daily life including a nickel-plated brass grease gun.

The archaeological record indicates a major house cleanout around the time of the Mansfields’s departure. Refuse that had accumulated up until this point was disposed of in the backyard outhouse which had recently been abandoned due to the introduction of plumbing.

The address continued welcoming new arrivals. In 1921, Italian immigrants Francesca DeBerardo and Enrico Cassagrande, both employed in the marble trade, briefly lived at the property, representing another wave of immigration that helped shape the neighborhood.

Always Looking for the Next Opportunity

The building’s final sustained chapter belonged to Greek immigrant Thomas G. Angelos.

Between 1924 and 1929, city directories listed Angelos under an ever-changing series of occupations: confectioner, shoe repairer, popcorn vendor, and finally salesman.

His in-laws, George, Nicholas, and Theodore Boosalis, lived with him while working as popcorn vendors and fruit sellers. Later records show members of the Boosalis family operating confectioneries and fruit stands elsewhere in Minneapolis, suggesting they were building businesses of their own. Archaeologists believe it’s possible Angelos once again used part of 2119 as retail space, returning the building to the mixed residential and commercial use it had known decades earlier.

One Final Chapter

After Angelos left, the building stood vacant for a number of years. In 1931, Charles H. Davis briefly operated a rabbitry from the property. By 1933, 2119 was demolished.

For half a century, this building changed almost as often as the city around it.

They welcomed immigrants from Germany, Norway, Sweden, Greece, and Italy. They housed workers, entrepreneurs, boarders, widows, and growing families. They shifted from businesses to homes and back again as the neighborhood’s needs changed.

Today, Wadaag Commons represents the latest chapter in that long history of adaptation. While the buildings are gone, archaeology preserved the evidence of how generations of Minneapolis residents continually reinvented this corner of the neighborhood, leaving behind a story far richer than any single address could tell.

See the Story for Yourself

Many of the artifacts uncovered from the site are now on display at Redesign’s office in the Historic Coliseum Building. Stop by to explore the objects that helped archaeologists reconstruct the many lives of these remarkable buildings and the people who kept them changing for more than fifty years.