Nicollet Avenue

View of Nicollet Mall from the skyway

Nicollet Avenue (also called the Nicollet Mall) forms, along with Hennepin Avenue, the cultural and commercial heart of downtown Minneapolis, Minnesota, USA. The Nicollet Mall is an upscale shopping and dining district designed to appeal to the white-collar workers who form much of downtown Minneapolis's daytime community. Office buildings, most notably the IDS Center, and department stores such as Marshall Fields, are located on Nicollet Mall, and the area also includes Orchestra Hall and is conveniently close to the Warehouse District, the Hubert H. Humphrey Metrodome, the Minneapolis Convention Center, and the Minneapolis Public Library.

Nicollet Avenue extends well south of downtown Minneapolis into residential districts of the city, but its most noteworthy stretch is in the commercial district downtown.

In the early 1990s, the City of Minneapolis criminalized panhandling, which was then an epidemic problem, on the Nicollet Mall.

Nicollet Avenue is named for early 19th-century French explorer and mapmaker Joseph Nicollet. Nicollet led three expiditions in what is now Minnesota.