Why They Call It the Wedge

A neighborhood shaped like its nickname

Lowry Hill East is most often called the Wedge because of its shape. The neighborhood narrows to a point where its bounding avenues converge, and that roughly triangular footprint gave residents a nickname that long ago overtook the official name.

The boundaries are easy to trace: Lyndale Avenue on the east, Hennepin Avenue on the west, and Lake Street to the south, with the wedge tapering toward downtown at the north. Active commercial corridors form most of the edges, which is part of what gives the interior its dense, walkable character.

The neighborhood sits within the Bde Maka Ska-Isles community of southwest Minneapolis, a short walk from Uptown, Lake of the Isles and the Walker Art Center.

Dense, eclectic and walkable

Inside the wedge, the housing stock runs from late-nineteenth-century houses to early apartment buildings to newer infill, an eclectic mix that reflects more than a century of continuous building. Every block sits minutes from groceries, restaurants, bike shops and schools.

It is one of the more densely populated neighborhoods in Minneapolis, and residents tend to wear the Wedge name with pride.

Two converging avenues drive a wedge between them — and gave the neighborhood both its outline and its name.

A triangle by design

The Wedge gets its nickname from its shape. Lowry Hill East is bounded by Hennepin Avenue on the west, Lyndale Avenue on the east and Franklin Avenue to the north, and because Hennepin and Lyndale converge toward downtown, the neighborhood narrows to a point — a wedge driven between two of the city's busiest commercial streets.

That geometry shaped everything that followed. LHENA — the Lowry Hill East Neighborhood Association, pronounced 'Lee-Nah' — is the volunteer-led nonprofit recognized by the City of Minneapolis as the Wedge's official neighborhood organization, one of dozens across the city. Its mission is to provide a structure for neighborhood leadership and participation, to facilitate the equitable sharing of resources, and to advance a vision for the neighborhood. Its own materials note that the neighborhood is most often called the Wedge precisely because of those converging boundaries.

Dense, eclectic and walkable