The Mary Tyler Moore Show – IAMNOTASTALKER

May 10, 2010May 9, 2010

“The Mary Tyler Moore Show” Apartment Building

In 1975, after the real-life owner of The Mary Tyler Moore Show house put a big, fat ixnay on letting the series do any more filming on her property, producers decided to move their spunky heroine to the newly-built, multi-colored apartment complex known as Cedar Square West in the Cedar-Riverside area of Minneapolis. My parents and I had actually driven by the complex, which is now called Riverside Plaza, numerous times during our stay in the North Star State – and had often commented on what an eyesore it was – but it wasn’t until stumbling upon John Weeks’ Mary Tyler Moore Show locations website while killing time at the Mayo Clinic that I realized the place was a filming location. Once I learned that the building stood in for the home of Mary Richards during the final two seasons of the iconic series, I decided I just had to write a blog post about it, which I did during the 90-minute car ride from Rochester back to Minneapolis this past Friday morning. I had planned on taking photographs of Riverside Plaza once we reached our destination, but, sadly, it rained pretty much all day on Friday, so I put it off, thinking the pictures would not come out very well. I figured I could snap a few photos the following morning while on our way to the airport to fly back home. Since we had passed Riverside Plaza on our way into town after first landing in Minneapolis the week prior, I thought it would stand to reason that we would also pass it on our way out of town while heading back to the airport, but that’s not exactly what happened. For whatever oddball reason, our GPS unit took us on an alternate route to the airport, a route which did not go past Riverside Plaza, and I therefore never got any photographs of the place! UGH! But since I had already written the content about the locale, I decided to do a post on it anyway. Which landed me in uncharted territory – a blog post with no photographs to go with it. Thankfully, though, I found a video about the Plaza on the MinnPost news website, from which I was able to make the screen captures which appear above and throughout the rest of this post. Thank you, MinnPost! 🙂 And let that be a lesson to me – never write a blog post without first taking pictures of the subject on which I am writing. 😉

[ad]

Riverside Plaza, which is comprised of six towers, was constructed in 1973 by modernist architect Ralph Rapson and was modeled after a multi-use residential housing design known as Unite d’Habitacion, which was created by the Swiss-French architect Le Corbusier, aka Charles-Edouard Jeanneret-Gris (try saying that one three times fast!). The towers were designed in the very aptly-named brutish-style and, in my never-to-be-humble opinion, stick out like a sore thumb in the otherwise beautiful skyline that makes up Downtown Minneapolis. The buildings are such an eyesore, in fact, that each time my family drove past them, one of us would comment on their not-so-aesthetic appearance. Rapson was inspired to build the complex after a vacation in Europe, during which he discovered similar style communities in which groups of different economic and cultural backgrounds lived together in close proximity. He originally envisioned Riverside Plaza to be comprised of 11 buildings with 12,500 different apartment units which would house over 30,000 people. His vision was never realized, however. The developer funding the project defaulted on his loans and only six buildings, comprised of 1,303 individual units, were completed. Supposedly, there are several “skyways” – covered walking bridges which connect buildings – on the premises which were never finished and therefore lead to nowhere. Because 50% of the units are subsidized housing, the complex is currently home to a large number of low-income residents. According to quite a bit of information online, the Plaza is rundown, infested with crime and drugs, and is colloquially called “the crack stack”, which is why I had only planned on taking pictures of the place from afar. 😉 Riverside Plaza is scheduled to undergo a $90 million renovation project in the near future in order to make the place more energy-efficient and is currently being considered for Historic Landmark status. Being that so many Minnesota residents despise the place, though, I have serious doubts that the status will be awarded. You can see a great photograph of Riverside Plaza here.

Riverside Plaza first appeared in the Season 6 episode of The Mary Tyler Moore Show which was aptly entitled “Mary Moves Out”. Mary continued to be a resident of the building throughout the remaining two seasons of the series, which ended in 1977.

Until next time, Happy Stalking! 🙂

Stalk It: Riverside Plaza, aka Mary Richards’ apartment building on The Mary Tyler Moore Show, is located at 1600 South 6th Street in the Cedar-Riverside neighborhood of Minneapolis, Minnesota.

May 7, 2010May 7, 2010

“The Mary Tyler Moore Show” House

Well, after three days and a whopping (insert sarcasm here) three tests (including a blood test, an ultra-sound, and a CAT scan, each of which my dad has undergone numerous times with his doctors at home over the past two years), we have been discharged from the Mayo Clinic sans diagnosis. The doctor’s sole recommendation was to see a pain specialist back in L.A. UGH! Would Dr. House have given up so easily? I don’t think so! Oh, if only the real world was like T.V.! Anyway, we are heading back to Minneapolis tomorrow (where I will hopefully get to do a bit more stalking) and then we are flying to Los Angeles on Saturday morning. As I said yesterday, though, our trip wasn’t a total waste – we had a blast in Minneapolis, St. Paul, and Stillwater. So, now, on with the stalking! Another Minneapolis filming location that fellow stalker Owen clued me onto was the apartment house where Mary Richards lived during the first five seasons of the iconic television series The Mary Tyler Moore Show. And, even though I have yet to watch even one episode of the show, as I mentioned yesterday, I just had to stalk the place because of its huge significance in television history. On The Mary Tyler Moore Show, Mary supposedly lived in Unit D of a large apartment house located at 119 North Weatherly Avenue in Minneapolis, Minnesota. And, while the show was filmed primarily in the Hollywood area, all of the exteriors were shot on location in the Great Lake State. The series was created by producers James L. Brooks and Allan Burns in 1970 and the two included a highly-detailed description of their leading lady’s studio apartment in the original treatment of the pilot script. As you can see on fave website Hooked on Houses, where a copy of that script is posted, Mary’s apartment was originally described as “A room. Actually an entire apartment, but a single large room. There are some – mostly of the working-girl variety – who would consider this place a “great find”: ten-foot ceilings, pegged wood floors, a wood-burning fireplace, and, most important, a fantastic ceiling-height corner window.” Location scouts found that window – and the incredibly picturesque house to which it belonged – near the Lake of the Isles on Kenwood Parkway in Minneapolis. And, although actress Mary Tyler Moore never actually set foot inside of the residence, production designers did, whereupon they painstakingly measured and photographed the now-famous third-floor window so that it could be replicated on a soundstage at CBS Studios. And, thus, one of the most well-known sets in television history was born.

As the television series grew in popularity, so did Mary’s Queen Anne-style residence. The “Mary Tyler Moore house”, as it soon came to be called, became an almost immediate tourist attraction, overwhelming and angering the then-owner. According to journalist Neal Karlen’s January 12, 1995 New York Times article about the property, actress Mary Tyler Moore stated that the woman who owned the place during the time the show was being filmed, “was overwhelmed by people showing up and asking if Mary was around.” Oh, to have such a problem! 😉 To prohibit location managers from shooting additional exterior footage of her home, the owner hung huge signs reading “Impeach Nixon” all over the property in 1973. It was at that point that producers decided to move Mary Richards to a new dwelling – a one-bedroom apartment in the Riverside Towers complex in Downtown Minneapolis. But that didn’t stop Mary’s former house from being a major tourist destination. As of 1995, it was still drawing as many as THIRTY tour buses A DAY, even though The Mary Tyler Moore Show had been off the air for close to two decades! But as Mary Tyler Moore herself said, “The outside of the house was so warm, cozy and soothing. As the nest of all these characters who invaded people’s hearts, the house was going to receive similar affection.” And it still does today, over thirty years later.

[ad]

The house, which was built in 1878 and was designed by architect Edward Stebbins, originally boasted 6 bedrooms, 6 bathrooms, and 6,461 square feet of living space. The dwelling was converted into an apartment home, much like it was portrayed to be on The Mary Tyler Moore Show, for a short time, but was transformed back into a single-family residence sometime before the year 1988, at which time the property was purchased by Evan Maurer, the then-director of the Minneapolis Art Institute. Evan and his wife, Naomi, at first regretted the purchase of the home due to the amount of attention it attracted, but in time they came to understand the appeal. Years later Evan said, “In some ways, it’s like we’re caretakers living inside a monument. Mary is a myth, but myths have great power. They answer questions, and they set up value systems. There’s something in the Mary ethos that’s very important to very many people. She’s the greatest mythic hero from this region since Paul Bunyan.” Evan also called the house “Minnesota’s version of Graceland”. Love it!

In 2005, a high school English teacher named Don Gerlach purchased the property from the Maurers for $1.1 million and gave the entire pad an extensive makeover and a significant add-on with the hopes that he would be able to flip it for a profit in a little over a year’s time. Which is exactly what he did. In August of 2007, Don sold the home, which currently boasts 8 bedrooms, 9 bathrooms, a crafts room, a billiards room, an exercise room, nanny’s quarters, and a whopping 9,161 square feet of living space, for $2.8 million. During the renovation, the size of the kitchen was quadrupled and it now features four ovens, two refrigerators, two dishwashers, and a five-foot wide stovetop! Not kidding! Honestly, who needs a kitchen with TWO refrigerators and FOUR ovens??? My parents have two ovens at their house and I must say that they do come in handy on Thanksgiving, but FOUR ovens? Really? The new owners must do a heck of a lot of entertaining! 😉 You can watch a news report about the house which was filmed in 2006 here and you can see some great interior pics of the current interior on fave website Hooked on Houses here.

On The Mary Tyler Moore Show, Mary Richards’ apartment was located behind the third-story Palladian windows pictured above. At the time the show was filmed, the area behind that window was, in actuality, just an unfinished attic. Today, it houses a media room, which the owners call the “Mary Tyler Moore Suite”. Love it!

The interior of Mary’s studio, which is pictured above, only ever existed, of course, on a soundstage in Hollywood.

The Kenwood neighborhood, where The Mary Tyler Moore house is located, is an absolutely beautiful area comprised of huge, picturesque houses with large, rolling front lawns . . .

. . . all situated around the gorgeous, tree-lined Lake of the Isles which boasts beautiful views of Downtown Minneapolis. I would LOVE to live there!

Big THANK YOU to Owen for telling me about this location! 🙂

Until next time, Happy Stalking! 🙂

Stalk It: Mary Richard’s apartment house from The Mary Tyler Moore Show is located at 2104 Kenwood Parkway, in the Kenwood area of Minneapolis, Minnesota.

May 6, 2010May 6, 2010

The Mary Tyler Moore TV Land Statue

Well, I am still here with my family at the Mayo Clinic in Rochester, Minnesota. After a bit of a battle, my dad’s doctor finally agreed to reschedule some of his tests to yesterday afternoon. The results showed nothing, though, which isn’t that big of a surprise being that the tests the doctor scheduled were tests that my dad had already taken a multitude of times back in California. I had really been expecting a team of Dr. House-style, think-outside-the-box-type doctors to consult on my dad’s case, but, sadly, that’s not really how things work at the Mayo. We flew halfway across the U.S. for him to undergo a couple of tests that he had already taken in Los Angeles. There is one more test scheduled for this morning, but the doctor is fairly certain that it won’t show anything. Ah well, at least we tried. We’re not really sure of our next step, but it might be to visit Stanford University Hospital in Northern California. We’re thankful, though, that we at least got to see quite a bit of the state of Minnesota during our trip, and I have to say that we all absolutely fell in love with the place! My dad has even suggested that following my mom’s retirement next year, the two of them spend a few months in Minneapolis/St. Paul and Stillwater – two cities that we never would have gotten to see if it weren’t for some stalking sites located there. 😉 So, all is not lost. Anyway, on with today’s post . . . One of the first things my mom did upon learning that my dad had been accepted as a patient of the Mayo Clinic in Minnesota, was research all of the famous filming that has taken place in the Great Lake State over the years. And there has actually been quite a bit of it, including that of one of my very favorite movies of all time – 1996’s Beautiful Girls, but more on that later. I also enlisted the help of fellow stalker Owen to add to my Minnesota stalking itinerary and, between the three of us, we came up with quite an extensive list comprising of roughly 22 locales in all. And, yes, my parents actually flew out to Minnesota a full day prior to my dad’s check-in date at the Mayo, just so that I could do some stalking! I know, I know – my parents are truly amazing! Anyway, one of the locations that Owen brought to my attention was the famous street corner where Mary Tyler Moore threw her hat in the air during the opening credits of the hit television series The Mary Tyler Moore Show, which ran on CBS from 1970 through 1977. And, even though I had never actually seen even one episode of the series, I, of course, knew of the iconic hat-throwing scene during which newly-single career woman Mary Tyler Moore tossed her tam o’shanter (a wool bonnet-style hat of Scottish origins) up in the air in the middle of a street in Downtown Minneapolis. The moment is so iconic in television history, in fact, that in 2002, the TV Land cable network erected an 8-foot tall bronze statue representing Mary in the exact spot where filming took place back in 1970. So, of course, I just had to stalk it!

Mary’s hat-throwing scene was actually ranked Number 2 on Entertainment Weekly’s list of “The 100 Greatest Moments in Television”. The first was the assassination and funeral of President John F. Kennedy. It’s odd to me that two such diametrically opposing moments in TV history – one joyous, the other incredibly tragic – would be ranked as number 1 and number 2 on EW’s list, but I digress.

I cannot express how incredibly cool I think it is that the TV Land network created a statue to commemorate such an iconic moment in television history. Oh, how I wish things like this were done more often! Apparently, TV Land has even developed something called the Landmarks Initiative, an organization whose sole goal is to recognize legendary television characters by placing commemorative statues in the locations in which those characters are most closely associated. How fabulous is that? Hopefully it’s only a matter of time before there are bronze renderings of Ross, Rachel, Phoebe, Joey, Monica, and Chandler out in front of the Friends building in New York. 😉 Ironically, when Mary’s statue was first announced, it stirred up quite a bit of controversy among certain individuals (who obviously had their underwear on too tight!) who complained that the City of Minneapolis should not be honoring a fictional television character. But as Larry W. Jones, the General Manager and Executive Vice President of the TV Land network, stated, “The indelible impression of Mary releasing the tam is one of the most celebrated symbols of freedom in modern society. By placing a statue in the original location where this image was captured, TV Land hopes this statue will remind passers-by of the freedom and optimism that Mary has come to represent.” So, take that, all of you naysayers! 😉 Despite the protests, the statue was finally erected on May 8, 2002 and both Mary Tyler Moore and the Mayor of Minneapolis were on hand for the unveiling.

The TV Land statue was designed by a sculptor named Gwendolyn Gillen and was chosen out of nineteen other designs by a panel of artists, which included Mary Tyler Moore herself.

Amazingly enough, before the unveiling there was actually quite a bit of debate as to where the hat-throwing scene had taken place. While The Mary Tyler Moore Show producers knew that the scene had been filmed somewhere on Nicollet Mall in Downtown Minneapolis, no one could seem to remember the exact spot where Mary stood, and because the area had changed so significantly in the almost four decades since filming took place, it was virtually impossible to determine. Further complicating the matter was the fact that the department store which appeared in the background of the scene had been completely destroyed in the Minneapolis Thanksgiving Day Fire of 1982. If only I had been blogging back in 2002, the TV Land executives could have called upon me and my fellow stalkers to determine Mary’s hat-throwing location. 😉 The correct spot was finally found thanks to Rodney Homstad, an eagle-eyed former police officer who had worked on the production back in 1970. You can read more about the search for the hat-throwing location here.

I honestly can’t recommend stalking this location enough! Even though I was not a fan of The Mary Tyler Moore Show, I could NOT have been more excited to see the TV Land statue in person and to pose for a few photographs with it. 🙂

You can watch The Mary Tyler Moore Show opening credits, which feature the famous hat-throwing scene, by clicking above.

A big THANK YOU to Owen for telling me about this location and to all of my fellow stalkers for all of the well-wishes and prayers you’ve been sending. They have meant so much to me during these difficult past few days. I will keep you all posted on what happens.

Until next time, Happy Stalking! 🙂

Stalk It: The Mary Tyler Moore Show hat-throwing statue is located near the corner of 7th Street and Nicolette Mall, in front of Macy’s department store, in Downtown Minneapolis, Minnesota.