housing along the Hastings and Dakota tracks of the Milwaukee Road rail line along 29th Street which shipped grain from southern Minnesota. Blaisdell Road became Blaisdell Avenue, extending past the neighborhood to the southern boundaries. In 1882, Blaisdell built his manor at Nicollet and 24th Street West. The family moved out of Blaisdell School. A year later, Blaisdell, Longfellow and Irving Schools across the southern prairie were annexed to the Minneapolis school system from Hennepin County. In naming tradition with the other schools, the board renamed the school Whittier after the 19th century poet and abolitionist, John Greenleaf Whittier. Like other areas of the city, families would soon call their neighborhoods after the primary school. Called the "millionaire pioneer of the city" by the New York Times, John T. Blaisdell died in 1898. Into the 20th century, Thomas Lowry and his partners assumed control of the insolvent McCrory's Motor Line. Whittier filled along Lowry's new Nicollet Ave. and 4th Ave. streetcar routes. The increasingly residential nature of southern Minneapolis brought contention with the Milwaukee Road as neighbors petitioned the City Council from 1905 to 1909 to alleviate the effects of the crossings which was blamed for several deaths. The Milwaukee Road offered a failed proposal to elevate the tracks and returned with a $1.3 million plan to depress the tracks and construct a dozen road bridges. After a legal battle with the businesses affected by loss of rail access, the project was upheld and completed in 1916. Post-War Decline The neighborhood maintained a dense population and high rental occupancy up towards the city's population peak in the 1950s. The latter 20th century followed with other inner core neighborhoods as the postwar boom of the 1960s depleted Whittier's population. The routing of Interstate 35W was modified following city concerns over expensive land acquisition of apartments and mansions including the Minneapolis Institute of Arts. In November 1967, Interstate 35W was built around the neighborhood to spare the Mansion District which was later preserved in its current historic district. Whittier experienced decline as middle-class residents moved out. The demolition of Nicollet Ball Park in Lyndale neighborhood led to retail failure on the neighborhood's south end. Abandoned buildings and adult bookstores prompted the city to establish the Nicollet/Lake Economic Development District in 1972. Several years passed without activity as Target and Herberger's refused to build. K-Mart finally agreed to become a tenant on the