Brutalist towers with primary colored panels rise off a plaza on Cedar Avenue, the same towers The Mary Tyler Moore Show used as Mary Richards's apartment building.
What Cedar-Riverside looks like
Six concrete towers of different heights rise off a raised deck at , from the tallest at thirty nine storeys down to lower garden apartment blocks. Red, yellow and blue panels the size of a door break up the grey concrete on every face. The deck holds a fountain, a clock tower and stepped seating, with parking underneath and skyways linking the towers above street level.
Interstate 94 runs along the south side and Interstate 35W and Hiawatha Avenue mark the west side, so the towers sit close against the freeway. The Mississippi River forms the boundary to the north and east.
Storefronts painted in bright colors line below the towers, among them Wadajir Grocery in green and red. The 's marquee sign faces the street a few doors down, in a one storey brick building.
Riverside Avenue runs east past , its painted lettering covering the front of a two storey brick building. The street continues toward 's campus and the University of Minnesota's West Bank campus, including . on the Green Line light rail sits at the plaza's edge, with a screened glass shelter over the platform.
Shot in Cedar-Riverside
The colored panel towers of Riverside Plaza carried the exterior of Mary Richards's apartment building through the final two seasons of the CBS series The Mary Tyler Moore Show. The show used the real complex on screen rather than a redressed stand in.
The Mary Tyler Moore Show
Riverside Plaza
Played Mary Richards's apartment building, 1975 to 1977
Exterior shots of the complex appeared on screen as the outside of Mary Richards's apartment building, filmed from the plaza and the surrounding streets. The towers keep the same primary colored panels and concrete face today that the show recorded in the 1970s. Street View
What Cedar-Riverside can double for
Byker Wall in Newcastle upon Tyne, England
Byker Wall breaks up its brick and concrete with bright colored panels, as Riverside Plaza does with red, yellow and blue. Both were built across the 1970s to soften a large systems built housing scheme. Byker Wall is a low unbroken block rather than a cluster of towers. A shot that includes its full height gives away the difference, so a tighter panel level frame holds the match better. Try searching colored panel housing block now.
Golden Lane Estate in London, England
Great Arthur House is the tower at Golden Lane Estate, built between 1957 and 1962. Yellow panels cover the tower and red and blue panels cover the maisonette blocks below it, the same primary color idea as Riverside Plaza. The tower stands alone rather than in a cluster of six, and the City of London skyline behind it gives away a British setting in any wide shot. Try searching primary color tower now.
.jpg)
