Peavey Plaza

Peavey Plaza features a series of terraced concrete pools that drop toward a sunken amphitheater, creating a quiet basin below the street level of downtown Minneapolis. Architect M. Paul Friedberg designed this space in nineteen seventy-five to act as an urban living room. When the city once planned to demolish it for a more conventional park, local preservationists fought a years-long legal battle, arguing that the plaza’s specific geometry and water features were worth saving exactly as they were built.