1/10 In the 1940's Northwestern National Bank advertisers hired designer Douglas Leigh, famous for iconic signs in Times Square and "the man who lit up Broadway." He had developed an idea for a color-changing beacon atop the Empire State Building in 1941, but WWII intervened.
2/10 Leigh brought his invention to Minneapolis. Unveiled with great fanfare on October 7, 1949, the Weatherball was the first of its kind. Standing 367 feet above Marquette Avenue, it was both the tallest and largest lighted sign between Chicago and the West Coast.
3/10 Each day at 4:14pm an employee at the bank called the National Weather Service and manually set the Weatherball to one of 4 indications based on the next day's forecast.
4/10 In 1977, the phone system was replaced by a direct line to the National Weather Service at Minneapolis-St Paul International Airport. The Weatherball could be updated four times a day via remote keypad and the color change verified by using binoculars.
5/10 Smaller versions were installed at NW Bank branches across Minnesota. The weatherball idea was then copied in places like Salt Lake City and Flint Michigan.
6/10 The Weatherball became a cultural icon. Weatherball Dining Room on the top floor of the bank had themed silverware, placemats, and matchbooks. A radio jingle developed by Campbell-Mithun was everywhere on the airwaves. There was Weatherball man and Weatherball merch.
Nice!
Genuine question: Does the entire MSP social media community have this sort of unrivalled access to regional history?? Archival memory seems to be a embedded feature
I've wondered that too! There seem to be more real and armchair historians per capita here than anywhere else, lots of really good ones. My theory is the high education levels + a unusually deep history that can be newly mined for interesting stuff all the time.
My theory (because it applies to me) is that people who move here from somewhere else try harder to "catch up" on local history in order to fit in, (doesn't work.) I don't know squat about my home state.
I can see that. I wonder if it is mostly linked to the ex-birdplace crowd?
My spouse is from up north and the hobbyist community seems to be more about building/dabbling in eccentric stuff at a fairly high technical level.
(Apologies btw if I screwed up the threading)
