Brian McMahon to speak on "Concrete & the Building of Minneapolis & Saint Paul"
Brain McMahon, former MNSAH board member and David Gebhard Award winner, will speak at the opening event for the annual conference of the Society for Industrial Archeology (SIA) on Wednesday, May 15, 2024, at 6:45 p.m. in the Doty Board Room of the Minneapolis Central Library, located at 300 Nicollet Mall. His presentation is titled, "Concrete & the Building of Minneapolis & Saint Paul." The event is free and open to the public.
Society for Industrial Archeology’s 52nd Annual Conference
Minneapolis, Minnesota (May 15-19, 2024)
Point of contact: Daniel Schneider, SIA Headquarters Manager, (906) 487-1889, sia@siahq.org
Houghton, Michigan, April 26, 2024 – The Society for Industrial Archeology (SIA) will be holding its 52nd annual conference in Minneapolis, Minnesota, May 15-19, 2024.
To launch the conference, the SIA is hosting a public presentation on Wednesday evening, May 15, by architectural historian, Brian McMahon, in the Doty Boardroom at the Minneapolis Central Branch of the Hennepin County Library, 300 Nicollet Mall in Downtown Minneapolis. Title of the presentation is “Concrete & the Building of Minneapolis & Saint Paul.” McMahon’s presentation is free and open to the public, and all are welcome.
Concrete is found under buildings, in buildings, and on buildings. It can be found in grain elevators, water towers, and bridges. It can be poured for floor slabs, or into architectural forms for columns, or into molds for complete houses or decorative finishes. It can be prepared on the building site, or in the factory, where it can be made as ‘formless’ concrete block units, or as prestressed panels. It can be sprayed on surfaces as shotcrete. Concrete associations billed it as ‘the complete building material that is virtually fireproof, requires little maintenance, and liberates the architect to design completely new forms. This lecture will show the history and impact of this ubiquitous material in the Twin Cities, highlighting the important contributions of Minnesota innovators.
Trained as an architect, Brian McMahon is an independent architectural historian. His award-winning book, The Ford Century in Minnesota, was published by the University of Minnesota Press in 2016.
The SIA is a non-profit, international, interdisciplinary organization of approximately 1,000 members that brings together people of varied backgrounds who share a common interest in industrial heritage, engineering heritage, and technological history, as well as modern manufacturing processes. Headquartered at Michigan Technological University in Houghton, Michigan, the mission of the half-century-old SIA is to encourage the study, interpretation, and preservation of historically significant industrial sites, structures, artifacts, and technology. Our membership includes academics, architects, engineers, historians, archeologists, industrialists, museum specialists, planners, preservationists, teachers, students, retirees, and many non-professionals. The SIA publishes an academic journal, IA: The Journal of the Society for Industrial Archeology, and a quarterly newsletter.
