Art and Architecture: a remnant of University Ave’s past

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Story and photos by Olivia Hanson / The Hubbard School

The Art and Architecture building has stood on the edge of Prospect Park for 106 years, and is one of the last factory buildings on University Avenue. 

It has seen a flux of businesses and undergone numerous changes, including the addition of a huge blue coffee cup affixed to one of its brick corners — a remnant from Cupcake, a café and bakery that closed in 2016. 

For years, Jim Schmitt, an antique dealer, has been the main person holding it all together — even as he has been trying to sell the building located at 3888 University Ave SE. 

Schmitt, president of Art and Architecture and owner of the building, has spent the past two decades preserving and adapting the building since buying it in 2002. He rents spaces to a sculptor, a vintage dealer, an antique store, a gallery and estate liquidators. 

But particularly since the arrival of the Green Line, the building has had tenants come and go, often leaving remnants behind.

Today, the large signs of previous tenants still hang on the outside of the brick building with large windows overlooking University Avenue. The entire fourth level, occupied by the Youth Performance Company until six years ago, is still empty and filled with debris. 

This summer, one of the building’s highest profile tenants, MLX, an expansion of Modus Locus art gallery in Powderhorn Park, said it will be closing its doors by October 2025, according to its director, Ephraim Eusebio.

Belgian-born antique dealer Claire Steyaert, 80, who has run her antique store out of Art and Architecture since 2010, said she was disappointed to hear that MLX was leaving. “I’m very disappointed and sad,” Steyaert said. “They were very lively — a heartbeat.” 

Schmitt takes the tenant movement in stride. “Things are always in transition—opening and closing,” Schmitt said. “It surprises you when you know somebody who's opening or closing, but [it] happens all the time.”

The brick-fronted building, constructed in 1919 by the Foley Brothers, originally served as a factory for Wallis Coach and Carriage Company, a carriage and automobile upholstery manufacturer, according to the St. Louis Park Historical Society. 

The Furniture Exposition Mart ran the building as a furniture manufacturer and retail space in the 1930s and 40s. Naegele, a billboard advertising company, took over and added a fourth floor with 36-foot ceilings, where full-size billboards were produced a decade later.

Schmitt has been trying to sell the building on and off since 2018 when Chicago-based Vermillion Development proposed developing the Art and Architecture building into The Wallis Prospect Park, named after the carriage company. 

The Vermillion project included additions of 134 residential apartments and 65-70 condominiums with retail and commercial space. It  was eventually canceled after Friends of Tower Hill Park filed a lawsuit against Vermillion in 2018, arguing that the planned seven-story mixed-use building would block the view of the Witch’s Hat Tower. 

The 43,000 square foot building is currently listed for $2.3 million, according to a Finance and Commerce article published in April.

Greg Donofrio, associate professor of historic preservation and public history in the School of Architecture at the University of Minnesota, said industrial buildings like the Art and Architecture building are desirable for redevelopment because of their open floor plates and many large windows.

“It’s one of the last unrehabilitated large industrial buildings on University Avenue,” Donofrio said. “Industrial buildings like this, compared to other types of buildings, are relatively easy to adaptively reuse for housing.”

But the building’s listing comes at a time when the market can be challenging.

Daniel Kurkowski, CEO of commercial real estate firm Obsidian Group, said that the asking price is high. “The market is generally fleeing the city at the fastest pace that they can,” Kurkowski said. “It’s really about coming up with a very specific thesis on how to monetize this in a way that’s predictable.”

He said it would make sense to redevelop the space into an office building, but Minneapolis is currently overflowing with vacant office space. 

Office vacancy in Minneapolis currently stands at 19.9% according to the Forte Real Estate Partners quarter one 2025 Minneapolis-St. Paul office market summary. 

“It’s not clear what this building should be,” Kurkowski said. “I think that it's small enough where the person who has the sophistication to execute on it, there’s just not (enough) profit in it for them to put that many resources into something this small.” 

Despite an unpredictable market, Schmitt said he remains optimistic about the future of his building. “I've always thought that whatever I need is going to walk through the doors of that store,” Schmitt said.