Great Escapes 2008: Red Wing

Civic leaders were thrilled when Red Wing landed on the National Trust for Historic Preservation’s 2008 list of America’s Dozen Distinctive Destinations. Joining the likes of Crested Butte, Colorado, and Portsmouth, New Hampshire, Red Wing long deserved recognition for its painstaking preservation efforts.

But the national spotlight also underscored what many Minnesotans already knew: Charming Red Wing is perfect for a quick historic-small-town fix—a peek into quaint downtown stores, a nostalgic drive down the Mississippi River to Lake Pepin.

Today’s Red Wing, however, isn’t lost in history. It’s embracing its past with new approaches to the arts, with restaurants balancing comfort and the cutting-edge, with 100-plus-year-old shops selling wares made for modern times. The best place to get your first taste of this is at the Red Wing Visitors & Convention Bureau, housed in the handsomely repurposed 1905 Milwaukee Road Depot. Although Amtrak still makes daily stops here, the ticket window is long gone, replaced with staffers handing out maps and photo guidebooks to historic walking tours and sculpture crawls. Also at the depot is the Red Wing Art Gallery, where you can view and purchase pieces by members of the local arts association, from small ceramics to dramatic canvases. On tap for this summer is an exhibit of plein air art—art painted in the open air instead of a studio.

ART IS IN THE AIR Sightseeing takes to the skies June 20–22 when daily flights of twenty-five hot air balloons kick off Red Wing’s Art Is in the Air festival. Back on the ground, plein air artists will set up easels on streets and parks around town throughout the week in conjunction with the festival, which culminates June 29 with a reception, special exhibit, and sale of plein air paintings at the Red Wing Art Gallery. GETTING THERE Highway 61 traveling southeast from the Twin Cities through Hastings is the most direct and scenic route to Red Wing. For a fresh—or many would say old-fashioned—approach, consider booking a passage on Amtrak’s Empire Builder from St. Paul. Trains depart St. Paul at 7:50 a.m. for a journey of slightly more than an hour, pulling into Red Wing at 8:54 a.m. The return trip leaves Red Wing at 8:52 p.m. and arrives in St. Paul at 10:31 p.m. Tickets cost about $20 per person each way, with discounts for AAA members, military adults, veterans, children, students, and seniors. Amtrak, 800-872-7245 For more information, contact the Red Wing Visitors & Convention Bureau, 420 Levee St., 651-385-5934

Architecture and performing arts fans will appreciate the 1904 Sheldon Theatre two blocks away. The jewel-box Renaissance revival–style interior of gilded plasterwork and plush red velvet seats and draperies is a regal setting for live performances nearly every weekend this summer, including Oklahoma! by Red Wing’s Phoenix Theatre. More unusual must-sees are the retro-cool organ-accompanied silent film shorts occasionally screened here.

To see where artists from around the world join those in Red Wing to study and work, check out the Anderson Center, off Highway 61 just north of town. A cylindrical red-brick water tower dominates the campus of Georgian revival structures originally built by Alexander P. Anderson, the inventor of puffed-wheat and -rice breakfast cereals. Now joined by more contemporary buildings, it’s home to Minnesota’s largest artist retreat (drawing artists, writers, and scholars from May to October) as well as studios, an alternative high school, and the Sheldon Theatre Scene Shop. The center also hosts a slate of special exhibits and boasts a permanent collection that includes works by Pablo Picasso, Marc Chagall, Alexander Calder, and Jasper Johns.

Browsing at a Red Wing art fair.

Red Wing’s most famous art form, of course, is its pottery. Although large clay deposits nearby helped make the town the top producer of pottery in the United States around the turn of the twentieth century, the pottery business has now evolved into small-scale craft. Red Wing Pottery produces pieces with the rough-texture “salt glaze” that characterized crocks from the 1870s to 1900. Its original pottery plant has been transformed into Pottery Place Historic Center, a mall of antiques dealers, specialty shops, and small eateries. A respectable display of historical stoneware remains on display in the building’s Red Wing Pottery Museum, but the potting tradition continues at a newer factory and show room next door. Farther out of town, just off Highway 61, is the Red Wing Stoneware Company, where pieces sport the newer and smoother “Bristol glaze” that graced Red Wing crocks from 1900 to 1930. Here you can take factory tours three times a day or watch potters at work through a window.

Not to be overshadowed is world-famous Red Wing Shoe Company and its sprawling series of shops within a downtown block of Italianate buildings, now renovated as Riverfront Centre. Check out the history display documenting footwear through the decades.

For history buffs, Minnesota’s oldest county historical society, the Goodhue County Historical Society, boasts an impressive set of displays. Housed in the former Baptist Old People’s Home, the facility was expanded in 1989 and covers all things Red Wing, from natural history to immigration, sports, and leisure.

Red Wing’s shopping scene offers plenty of options as well. Perhaps the most intriguing is Hobgoblin Music, on the outskirts of town, where Gary Stone and fellow artisans handcraft more than 500 harps each year. You can watch them work from a window on the lower level of a quirky ninety-year-old barn; on the two floors upstairs, a show room and a concert space nestle beneath exposed rafters and roof boards. In the summertime, check out performances, including a bluegrass festival, in the outdoor amphitheater behind the barn.

Inspired Home and Flower Studio

Home-décor and housewares shops dominate the downtown scene. One of the most popular is the Uffda Shop, where a variety of artistic interpretations of the Swedish Dala horse join mod Marimekko table linens imported from Finland. A more extensive range of housewares and kitchen gadgets, including Wüsthof cutlery and Le Creuset cookware, fill shelves at The Galley Room. For home accessories and gifts, check out the pretty Moments on Main and Cut Above Home as well as Red Wing’s newest décor shop, Inspired Home & Flower Studio, where you’ll find elegant designer product lines. Antiques from the city’s rich past (including Red Wing crocks and dinnerware) abound at a number of shops and malls, including two-level Memory Maker Antiques, downtown.