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Prospect Park – Minneapolis, Minnesota
The Witch's Hat Water TOWER
Note: the Witch's Hat Water Tower is owned by the city of Minneapolis. Tower Hill Park is managed by the Minneapolis Park Board.
Our neighborhood receives many requests for permission to use the Tower or the Park as an event venue. But these requests must be made to the Park Board.
Update April 2026: The Witch's Hat Tower is still CLOSED for repairs. Hopefully repairs will be complete in time to open the Tower for “City of Minneapolis Doors Open Event” in May of 2027, but it might not reopen until late 2027 or even 2028 (see more below).
The Tower can’t reopen to the public until the City of Minneapolis completes repairs to the iron stairs in the circular staircase, electrical system, the roof, the observation deck, and to apply a Weather-Resistant Coating to the cement exterior to retard cracking and flaking.. City funds were allocated a couple years ago for the work, but so far only the forensic study required to assess exactly what repairs are required is complete. The City is currently in the process of contracting the work — they have obtained bids, but contracting can take several months to complete. Renovations have not started. (There was a long delay obtaining sufficient bids to do the work, but thankfully the City solved that problem.) City of Minneapolis Facilities gave an update on the Tower repair project at the most recent PPA meeting.
The last time the Tower was open to the public was for Doors Open in 2019 when about 5,000 people visited the tower over two days. Here’s a link to the annual Doors Open event. www.doorsopenminneapolis.org/
Update Spring 2024: Thanks to the work by our Minneapolis City Council Member Robin Wonsley, $350,000 was secured to begin repair of the Tower interior stairs and exterior entryway to ensure safety of future visitors. Plans in 2025 are to begin repair work after a forensic engineer thoroughly assesses what is needed.
The PPA Tower Hill Park Committee led by Prospect Park resident Joe Ring, has been meeting monthly since September 21, 2024 and to discuss Tower repairs and remediation of buckthorn in the park.
In April, 15, 2023, the Friends of Tower Hill Park (FOTHP), held a community meeting to initiate action to work with the City of Minneapolis that owns the Tower to repair the entry door and interior steps and begin the process to re-open the Tower. FOTHP is a non-profit organized to protect the views of and from the Prospect Park Neighborhood's Witch's Hat Tower, and to protect, preserve and maintain the beauty and character of the surrounding park, known as Tower Hill Park.
Like all parks in Minneapolis, Tower Hill Park is managed by the Minneapolis Park and Recreation Board. Visit their website www.minneapolisparks.org to reserve the park for a special occasion.
The "Witch's Hat" water tower is in Prospect Park, (known as Tower Hill Park), the highest natural land area in the city of Minneapolis. Along with the Kenwood and Washburn water towers in Minneapolis, the Prospect Park water tower is one of the few original water towers standing today in the Twin Cities area. The Tower itself is owned by the City of Minneapolis and is located at 55 SE Malcolm Avenue 55414.
The 110-foot Prospect Park Water Tower was built in 1913 with a holding capacity of 150,000 gallons. It was also built to be a bandstand; however, there was only one concert in the band shell because the musicians experienced difficulty in carrying their instruments up the inside spiral staircase of 101+16 steps. Before Minneapolis Wi-Fi was deployed in 2010, it housed active city first-responder telecommunications equipment in the roof.
Up until the COVID-19 pandemic, the tower observation deck was open one time per year only, during the annual Pratt School Ice Cream Social. This event occurs on the Friday evening after Memorial Day Weekend - either the last Friday in May or first Friday in June), 5:30 - 8:30 p.m. In recent years we typically served nearly 2000 visitors (up from 600 - 800 before 2014), limiting the number of people in the tower to 80 at a time by means of a fixed number of passcards (not tickets).
recent history of the Tower
In 1986 the tower underwent major renovation for its preservation. An article in Southeast Newspaper, November, 1986, Volume 12, Number 8 by Bob Dull, described the project slated for completion in December. Much of the wooden roof underneath the tiles had rotted. The deteriorating roof would be repaired, and 10% of the roof tiles would be replaced; new ceramic green tiles would be manufactured in the original patterns. At the time, each new tile cost $13.85. The result was an estimated new life of another 100 years.
As part of the NRP process begun in 1994, a systematic effort on a weekly basis was made by neighborhood volunteers, particularly Joe Ring, to obliterate graffiti on the tower's base. Further restoration of the base was performed as part of the process to list the Tower on the National Register of Historic places.
In 1997 the Tower and Tower Hill Park were placed on the National Register of Historic Places. A historic plaque was added in 1997 to the base of the Tower, which has helped reduce graffiti. See a small gallery of tower pictures.
In 2013 & 2014 our neighborhood celebrated Tower centennials.