American Rug Laundry, Lake Street, Minneapolis, Minnesota, June 2009, all photos © 2009 by QuoinMonkey. All rights reserved.
I’ve always wanted to photograph the American Rug Laundry building on Lake Street in Minneapolis. At the end of June, I had a chance to photograph the building before and after dining at a nearby Lake Street restaurant to celebrate a friend’s birthday.
I decided to do a photographic study from different angles, at dusk and by night. I’m a long-time fan of vintage neon signs and couldn’t decide which photographs to post, so I left most of them in my Flickr set. The graphic elements make the sign come alive: the rusted screen, angled chains, and black-tipped pins that looks like a larger version of pins a seamstress might use. I am also drawn to the vintage typography. Do you have a favorite shot?
The American Rug Laundry was established in 1895 and is the largest and oldest rug cleaning and carpet repair facility in the Upper Midwest. Large floor rugs used to be hand-delivered and there are some wonderful historic black and white photographs from the 1920’s all the way up to 1954 on their site.
There is also a FAQs page where you can learn some of the differences between handmade and machine made rugs. One of the most obvious differences is that in a hand knotted rug, the fringe is part of the rug and not sewn on as an extension. Another difference is that tufted rugs are almost always covered with a cotton/canvas backing, while the pattern is clearly visible on the backside of hand knotted rugs.
Since our current home has wall-to-wall carpet, we have a handmade rug from Liz’s childhood (last cleaned at the American Rug Laundry) stored in our attic. But I think our next house will have hardwood floors. Which do you prefer?
Lake Street At Night, American Rug Laundry Chains, American Rug Laundry Clearance, Dusk At American Rug Laundry, Cash & Carry, Sign Study – Rug Laundry, Lake Street, Minneapolis, Minnesota, June 2009, all photos © 2009 by QuoinMonkey. All rights reserved.
-posted on red Ravine, Saturday, August 22nd, 2009
I especially like the energy in the shot you chose, though I admire all of them. What a fascinating topic. I’m a sucker for tours of places that make or do things, and I’d love to visit this rug laundry, behind the scenes. I’m glad you followed through on your determination to photograph this place, and then share the results with us.
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I prefer hardwood floors, QM, and tile or other types of natural stone floors. And then I like to put beautiful area rugs in different spots for warmth.
I love the shot of the American Rug Laundry. It is fabulous. I was thinking that a rug laundry company should still be doing well today just as in the past. Rugs, and especially area rugs, seem to be as fashionable as ever, if not moreso these days, what with all the wonderful types of flooring that owners seem to put into their homes. Lots of granites and flagstone, wood, poured cement, tiles. You name it, and then how much fun to use rugs for warmth, design, color.
I get my throw rugs cleaned at the local laundry. I’ve never gotten any of my “oriental”-type area rugs cleaned. I have several hand-knotted rugs, one I bought in Agra, India; a few from auctions. I almost bought a very expensive rug from Turkey, but I couldn’t get the colors right, and it was so expensive that I finally backed out after an order I’d had put in was almost two years old.
Now I’m kind of into these rug “tiles,” made by a company called Flor. Here’s the website. Check them out. They seem to make the right kind of flooring for us at this stage in our lives.
Flor – Modular Carpet Tiles
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I’ve always been fascinated by neon signs and have wanted to photograph them. I remember taking my kids to photograph them in the older parts of Pasadena and there abouts when they needed to for their photography classes but I never had my own camera so I didn’t join in. Now I have one so I should take myself to try capture some of them.
Very nice work. I especially like the one from what I assume to be the front of the building where we can see (mostly) the word LAUNDRY only. But they are all great!
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Isn’t neon just wonderful to shoot QM. I like all the photos but I actually prefer the one you shot (top right horizontal) in the collage. I like just that hint of the building showing. More mystery. It’s a neat old building. We have a tiny little museum in LA called the MONA. (Museum of Neon Art). It’s very cool. Their sign is the Mona Lisa in neon.
http://www.neonmona.org/flash/
I’m with yb. I prefer hardwood or tile. I put beautiful blond hardwood throughout my house, but with us being close to the beach, sadly it didn’t work out. I don’t think the newer floors are as thick and durable as the one’s in the beautiful old homes. I now have big 18″ porcelain tile that looks like stone. It’s easy to maintain and good for our allergies.
I think it’s wonderful Liz has a handmade rug from her childhood. Did someone in her family make it?
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Heather, that’s a great link to the MONA Musuem of Neon Art. I love the Lumens Project where they are going around and relighting old neon signs in LA. Pretty cool. I have always been drawn to vintage neon signs and really have no idea why. Something magical about them. I also like how your link explains how neon works. Maybe I’ll get to visit that museum one day. So many museums I want to see, so little time!
I posted a bunch of the sign shots on my Flickr account because I couldn’t really choose. I usually just bite the bullet and choose 3 or 4. But this time, it was hard. I do like the graphic elements in the one at the top of this post. My second favorite is the one on the first low, bottom right of this post. I like all the angles and the way the light is glowing off the wall in that shot. That’s the one I almost put at the top of this post.
Corina, thanks for stopping by. I wonder if your kids still have those old photographs of the neon signs in Pasadena. Were they on film or digital? The photo with the word LAUNDRY, I wish I had taken more from that angle. They were kind of blurry. Something cool though. When I looked at the old American Rug Laundry black and white photos on their site, that particular location was where one of their original signs was. I like thinking that we are walking on the original site.
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ybonesy, that’s an interesting link to the Flor Modular Carpet Tiles. I had not heard of them. I’m going to show the link to Liz. We’ve been looking for a runner for our kitchen that doesn’t slide around and that might be a good solution. I also like the eco-friendly aspect of Flor. No glues or adhesives since the tiles are made to stick to one another. Where do you have them in your home? Or are you just thinking about adding them?
I like hardwood floors but not so much the upkeep. I love the way they look. Heather mentions that maybe the newer hardwood floors don’t hold up as well as the old ones our moms used to wax and buff, sometimes with paste wax on hands and knees. A lot of people I know have Pergo or something like that. I don’t know. In winter, I like having all this carpeting. But other times, I wish we had wood floors. I know Liz would like wood, too. I also like stone tiles and heated floors. Nice.
Sharon, thanks for stopping by. I was wishing, too, that I could take a look inside the American Rug Laundry again. Behind the scenes would be the way to see it and get more history. Food for thought. I wasn’t clear if it was still family owned or not. But I bet it is still doing a brisk business, as yb mentions, because of all the people in need of specialized rug laundering.
Heather, I’m not sure what the origin of Liz’s rug is. I’ll have to ask more about it. So did you take up all the hardwood floor and add the tiles later after it didn’t work out with the hardwood? That must have been quite a project.
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QM, when we moved to this home in 92 it had wall to wall, brand spankin new, tan carpet and off white walls. One look at my daily “costume” (as my fellow workers call it)…and you’d know tan and “off” white are not in my color pallet. We ripped it up to find very old, really stuck, asbestos tiles. We peeled them up (OMG) and disposed them carefully. Then we had a friend (a pro) come in with the wood. Most of the old, good stuff is about about 1/4″ to 1/2″ thick. The new stuff is 1/8″ (if your lucky) and it doesn’t sand well. Moisture from the ocean took it’s toll in about 5 years and sadly, it had to go. I love the tile so much because it makes the house look bigger and it’s so easy to keep clean. Of course, the grout color is super important. You mentioned Pergo and I had that at the gallery. It too was easy to maintain with a little steam cleaner thing I had…I spent allot of time cleaning wine spills after openings…but if you ever scratch it, you can’t sand it.
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QM,
I prefer hardwood floors, and when I planned our home, I knew I wanted them in the living, dining and family rooms. I chose a parquet design with a dark stain, and had area rugs in the living and family room. The rug I gave to Liz was bought at the time we were building, 1972. I went to Dayton’s in Mpls. and ordered it. While most Oriental rugs have dark reds as their background color, that would not have worked in my color scheme. Blue and gold for me; that has always been the colors in my living room; taken from the paintings we had.
Neon lights are fun, I love their reflections on rainy nights.
You did a great job, as usual!
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QM, I guess we’re lucky with our hardwood floors because they’re the easiest of all our floors to maintain. They’re a 1950s wide oak shaver, which means they’re not the full plank but rather a top of it. They’re closely fitted, with no gap between each piece, unlike the more rustic plank floors. They were the color of a dark maple when we bought the house, and they had been waxed and oiled so much that when you walked across them your footprints would be left behind in the surface.
We hired a team of brothers and uncles from Sandia Pueblo to do a light sanding. We have these floors in both the great room and our bedroom, btw. So for over a week they did a very careful sanding. The thing about these wood floors is that you can’t go too deep with the sanding machine. But, they had to go deep enough to get through all the gunk that had built up on them. It was a hard job because their sanding machine kept getting gunked up. But they took it slowly, and man, once they got through, we saw a beautiful blond oak floor. It was an AMAZING transformation.
Once the floors were sanded and buffed, which they hadn’t been for 50 years, we sealed them. The Pueblo Indian wood floor experts advised that we never wash them with liquid, never use oils or waxes, but rather use an almost dry flat mop moistened with vinegar and water. The key is the word “moistened.” It’s the kind of wet that wouldn’t even leave a streak. So after a once over with a janitor’s sort of flat wood-floor “broom,” you take this other flat mop that’s been wet and then wrung almost completely dry, and wa-la, it’s clean. In 3 years, have never had a single problem with it. Easiest floor ever to clean and maintain.
Now, the quarry tile is another story.
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On the FLOR tiles, QM, I’ve ordered a box of samples and am considering them for the kitchen (which requires two runner sizes), the laundry room, the hallway (again, two runner sizes) and the area by the sliding glass doors leading to the patio. I need to measure and decide on the type. I like several. I might also get a large one for the great room. Not sure, but I like the one that’s a sort of light gray shag.
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oliverowl, I’ve been meaning to get back to this post to respond to your last comment all week. Welcome back home. And we had such a great time when you were here. I look forward to your visit next year!
And I just read your comment about the rug. That it was ordered in 1972 and in your color schemes, blue and gold. She was just a young one then. I think it’s cool she wanted to hang on to it. I hope we have hardwood floors someday and a bigger place so we can spread out a little more.
We are heading out to photograph today and I’d like to take some more vintage signs. Maybe head over to Lake Street where there are some great signs. And one place I haven’t photographed vintage signs is St. Paul. I’d like to get over that way some day.
Always happy when you leave your comments and haiku on red Ravine. Look forward to when you stop by again!
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heather, that’s quite a process with the hardwood floors and the asbestos tiles. Wow. Then having to take up the new flooring 5 years later and go to tile….you put a lot of work into that.
ybonesy, sounds like you’ve got a system down for taking care of your floors. This section of your comment has so much detail about caring for the wood floors:
Once the floors were sanded and buffed, which they hadn’t been for 50 years, we sealed them. The Pueblo Indian wood floor experts advised that we never wash them with liquid, never use oils or waxes, but rather use an almost dry flat mop moistened with vinegar and water. The key is the word “moistened.” It’s the kind of wet that wouldn’t even leave a streak. So after a once over with a janitor’s sort of flat wood-floor “broom,” you take this other flat mop that’s been wet and then wrung almost completely dry, and wa-la, it’s clean.
Why do you think we aren’t supposed to use waxes on wood floors anymore? So is it the original seal that protects the wood?
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