Our Community
The heart of Nicollet Island is its people.
We are artists and musicians, social workers and teachers, caregivers, healers, service providers, and neighbors. We are people of different ages, incomes, backgrounds, and experiences who share something important: a deep connection to this island and to one another.
Artists have been part of the residential life of Nicollet Island for generations.
Beginning in the 1970s, artists and other Minneapolis residents moved into the island’s deteriorating historic homes and joined the movement to preserve them. Many stayed for decades, creating music, art, performance, gardens, friendships, and a culture of creativity that remains very much alive today. That spirit continues in the members of the Nicollet Island Cooperative.
We are also part of a larger island community.
We live alongside longtime homeowners, DeLaSalle High School, and within one of Minneapolis’s most remarkable public park settings. Our homes exist among the trees, trails, gardens, riverfront, wildlife, and changing seasons of Nicollet Island. That gives us a natural connection to the island's ecology and to those who care for and steward its parkland.
That relationship between nature and creativity has deep roots here. When poet and naturalist Henry David Thoreau visited Nicollet Island in 1861, near the end of his life, he explored the island’s natural environment and recorded observations of its remarkable plant and animal life and tall, steep bluffs. The landscape that captured Thoreau’s attention more than 160 years ago continues to inspire the artists, musicians, gardeners, and neighbors who live here today.
Communities matter.
Over this past year, Minneapolis has reminded us what that means as neighbors across the city have shown up for one another with generosity, care, and a shared sense of responsibility. That same spirit lives here. As Minneapolis has grown and changed, Nicollet Island has remained a place where artists and people of different economic circumstances can live together in the heart of the city. Preserving this community means keeping people connected to place—allowing artists to continue creating, neighbors to continue caring for one another, and people of different incomes to continue belonging.