A Victory Lap on the Drive
from Robbinsdale Revisited Hosted by robbinsdalehistoricalsociety
Episode 46: Buckle up for a ride down Victory Memorial Drive, a striking piece of Twin Cities history parked along our border with the big city! Born after WWI as Theodore Wirth’s grand vision for a "living memorial," the parkway originally featured 568 regimental elms—funded by park patriarch Charles Loring—to honor fallen local service members. Over the decades, this storied corridor became a backdrop for everything from Civil War monuments and suburban real estate booms shadowed by restrictive racial covenants to the chaotic, seven-spoked Victory Circle and the scrappy beginnings of North Memorial Hospital. Even after Dutch Elm Disease wiped out the original canopy in the 1970s, community grit prevailed: the Drive earned State Historic District status in 2003 and underwent a massive makeover to ensure this iconic ribbon of local memory keeps standing strong.
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