The Weatherball is dead!
Sad, sad news from Barbara Flanagan! In the article A ball of old and a big, blue newcomer, Barbara comments on the Weatherball's "twin", but the sad news is about the original itself:
"The Weatherball -- that is, its twin -- lives! The huge, illuminated sign gave the forecast for years atop the downtown Minneapolis headquarters of the old Northwestern National Bank, later Norwest Bank and now Wells Fargo. Sarah Hogan, assistant curator of the Wells Fargo History Museum in Minneapolis, says the original Weatherball no longer exists. 'When the 1982 Thanksgiving Day fire destroyed the downtown Northwestern National Bank building,' she said, 'the Weatherball was removed from the top of the building and put into storage at the Minnesota State Fair. Over the years, the Weatherball deteriorated, and in 2000 when it was discovered to be beyond repair, it was destroyed.'"
Just the other day, I was reading "Twin Cities: Then and Now", and Larry Millett had a quote from 1995 noting that the weatherball was in storage at the State Fair. And now I find out that "it was destroyed"?!?
That's terrible! I wonder if you can buy parts of it on eBay?
Anyway, its "twin" in the Wells Fargo museum is a sad insult to the glory-days of the weatherball; it's a lame stack of wooden dowels painted silver-grey, with a plastic "NW" tacked on.
That's not a weatherball!
"The Weatherball -- that is, its twin -- lives! The huge, illuminated sign gave the forecast for years atop the downtown Minneapolis headquarters of the old Northwestern National Bank, later Norwest Bank and now Wells Fargo. Sarah Hogan, assistant curator of the Wells Fargo History Museum in Minneapolis, says the original Weatherball no longer exists. 'When the 1982 Thanksgiving Day fire destroyed the downtown Northwestern National Bank building,' she said, 'the Weatherball was removed from the top of the building and put into storage at the Minnesota State Fair. Over the years, the Weatherball deteriorated, and in 2000 when it was discovered to be beyond repair, it was destroyed.'"
Just the other day, I was reading "Twin Cities: Then and Now", and Larry Millett had a quote from 1995 noting that the weatherball was in storage at the State Fair. And now I find out that "it was destroyed"?!?
That's terrible! I wonder if you can buy parts of it on eBay?
Anyway, its "twin" in the Wells Fargo museum is a sad insult to the glory-days of the weatherball; it's a lame stack of wooden dowels painted silver-grey, with a plastic "NW" tacked on.
That's not a weatherball!
Comments
Of course I was only 7 when it was taken down, so I might have never seen it.