Mary Tyler Moore and the City That Became a Character
Near Minneapolis St Paul, Minnesota
At the intersection of Nicollet Mall and Seventh Street in downtown Minneapolis, there is a bronze statue of a woman in a winter coat, hat in mid-toss above her head, caught at the top of a spin. The pose comes from the opening credits of The Mary Tyler Moore Show, which ran on CBS from nineteen seventy to nineteen seventy-seven and which used Minneapolis as both backdrop and character.
The show centered on Mary Richards, a single woman in her thirties who had moved to Minneapolis after a broken engagement and taken a job as an associate producer at a fictional television news station. She was not rescued by a love interest and did not end the series married. She was competent and professionally ambitious. The show was groundbreaking in that specific way, and Minneapolis, with its cold winters and corporate civic culture and unpretentious character, fit the premise exactly.
The actual filming was done in Hollywood. But the establishing shots were real: Lake of the Isles and Nicollet Mall. Viewers across the country formed a picture of Minneapolis from those images over seven seasons.
The show won twenty-nine Emmy Awards. Mary Tyler Moore won three of them herself.
The bronze statue was installed in the early two thousands. It has become one of the most photographed public artworks in the Twin Cities.
