Completed in late 1971, the I-94 tunnel carries the freeway beneath Lowry Hill and reshaped the neighborhood's edge.

The Lowry Hill Tunnel carries Interstate 94 beneath the hill near downtown Minneapolis. At 1,496 feet in length, it was completed in late 1971 and remains one of the more distinctive pieces of freeway engineering in the metro.
The tunnel's construction was part of the same wave of mid-century freeway building that reshaped the edges of the neighborhood. It was the building of I-94 and the Lowry Hill Tunnel that prompted the relocation of the Thomas Lowry memorial from the Virginia Triangle to Smith Triangle Park in 1967.
Driving through it, most motorists barely register that they are passing under one of the city's grandest residential districts.
For Lowry Hill, the tunnel and freeway form part of the neighborhood's northern boundary. The Lowry Hill Neighborhood Association describes the neighborhood as enclosed by I-394 on the north and I-94 and Hennepin Avenue on the east, with 22nd Street to the south.
Half a century on, the tunnel is simply part of the landscape, a reminder that even the most genteel neighborhood sits inside a working city.
Engineers bored an interstate through the same ridge that made Lowry Hill desirable in the first place.
The hill that gives the neighborhood its name is also, quite literally, a tunnel. Interstate 94 dives under Lowry Hill in the Lowry Hill Tunnel, a structure of just under 1,500 feet that carries the freeway between downtown and the western neighborhoods without cutting an open trench through the mansion district above.
Opened in the early 1970s as the interstate system pushed through the city, the tunnel was a compromise between the demands of high-speed traffic and the value of the historic neighborhood on top of it. The ridge that made Lowry Hill desirable — high ground above the old milling district — is the same ridge the engineers bored through.
For the neighborhood, the tunnel and the open freeway trenches around it do double duty as borders. Lowry Hill is effectively hemmed in by I-94 and I-394 and by Lake of the Isles to the west, edges that have kept its footprint stable for half a century.

The East Isles Neighborhood Association holds its annual Summer Social on Wednesday, June 14, from 6 to 8 p.m. at Joanne Levin Triangle Park, with a rain date of June 15.

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For residents on the blocks nearest the tunnel and the open freeway trenches, the interstate is a constant if largely invisible neighbor — felt in traffic noise and air quality more than seen. Sound walls, landscaping and the tunnel itself all soften the impact, but the freeway's presence is part of life on the eastern edge of the hill.
It is also a reminder of a road not taken. Mid-century freeway planning reshaped many Minneapolis neighborhoods, and the decision to tunnel rather than trench beneath Lowry Hill spared a historic district that an open cut would have gutted.
Half a century after engineers ran an interstate through the bluff, most drivers never notice they are passing beneath one of the city's grandest neighborhoods — which was rather the point.
The Lowry Hill East Neighborhood Association reviews apartment and land-use proposals in the Wedge through its Community Development Committee, the volunteer-led forum where the neighborhood weighs in before projects reach the City Council.

Land use is the recurring flashpoint in Lowry Hill, a neighborhood of Victorian and Prairie-style homes where even a modest multi-unit proposal draws scrutiny under the city's built-form rules and the 2040 comprehensive plan.