Nicholas Arvanitis and his brother founded the Original Coney Island Café in 1923. Nicholas Arvanitis grew up in Greece, immigrated to the U.S. in 1908, fought in World War I, and, as a result, earned U.S. citizenship. He and his brother, Gust, opened a barber shop in what is now the tavern building, at 448 St. Peter St., in 1923 and lived upstairs. That same year or soon thereafter, they opened the Original Coney Island Café in a building next door that no longer exists at 450 St. Peter St. – where the driveway is now. It was a small, one-story frame building. In 1926 or so, Nick went back to Greece to marry Francis, and she initially raised their children upstairs. Four of their six children lived upstairs above the bar or café. Eventually, as she learned English, Francis went downstairs and helped run the café. When Nicholas died in 1963, she and her two sons ran the café and bar themselves. Two of the sons, Lucas – or Louie – and Harry, worked really their entire lives at the café with their mother. Harry worked on the café side with his mother and ran that operation and Louie ran the adjoining bar. When the Coney Island first closed in 1994, there was a sign on the door that said something like “Closed for Today.” They always said they would reopen when their mother got well and that just never happened. In recent years, the Coney Island has been open for special events and private parties.
The two Original Coney Island buildings themselves are historically significant. They’re both designated historic landmarks by the city of St. Paul. The smaller of the two, the one that houses the bar at 448 St. Peter St., was built in 1858, making it the second-oldest commercial building in the city and the oldest building in downtown St. Paul. The second, taller building, at 444 St. Peter St., was built in 1888. Both are very good examples of the small-scale masonry buildings that downtown St. Paul was full of during the latter half of the 19th century. The distinctive interiors of the Original Coney Island bar and café are like walking into an Edward Hopper painting in such a delicious, delightful way.
Source: Relishing the Original Coney Island, an interview of Aaron Rubenstein, Historic Saint Paul program director, by Dixie Treichel for KFAI Radio, date unknown (circa 2016), audio file retrieved from http://ampers.org/mn-art-culture-history/relishing-the-original-coney-island/.
]]>IIn planning for the freeway (I-94) connecting the two Twin Cities, MnDOT presented two options. One was to the north of the Rondo neighborhood along a series of mainline railroad trackage. But the decision was made to build the freeway through the heart of a lively African American neighborhood, splitting the neighborhood and destroying a cohesive and vibrant community. Rondo Avenue, the central business thoroughfare, disappeared into the trench along with hundreds of houses and businesses.
When in 2013 a social club abutting the freeway was destroyed by fire, neighbors gathered to mourn its loss and celebrate the old Rondo neighborhood. In October 2013 the Minneapolis Spokesman-Recorder published an “obituary” of the building at 820 Rondo Avenue (which also used an address on the east side of the building – 327 Fisk Avenue) before it was demolished. Written as if for a person, the obituary noted its various uses and tenants over the years. These included a grocery store, apartments above, a barbershop, tailor, and by 1958 the home of Union Local 516, and a VFW.
After the building burned a group spearheaded by Marvin Anderson determined to create a commemorative park using city grants and funds provided by partnering organizations. Architects 4RM +ULA and landscape architects TEN X TEN were hired, both of which had roots in the neighborhood, and the public plaza opened in 2018.
Set on a corner lot in the heart of the neighborhood this small site is both commemorative and restorative. The central area is formed by brick pavers, and stone/wood benches provide seating for visitors.
A permanent wall of panels with images, information, and stories tells the story of Rondo. Native prairie plantings were placed along the edges of the site and at the north end of the space is a grass-covered mound topped by granite pavers that represent the streets and curbs of the old neighborhood.
]]>Neighborhood House was established on the West Side Flats in 1897 to provide needed services to Russian Jewish immigrants. Women from the Mount Zion synagogue formed an association to found a service organization for the new immigrants who had fled persecution in Europe. These Jewish immigrants followed earlier communities who had settled on the West Side and had come from other European countries, including France, Ireland, and Germany.
Initially an industrial school, by the late 1890s the organization had expanded to provide a number of social services such as broader education opportunities and resettlement assistance among others.
As the population of the West Side expanded rapidly into the 1910s the area became a crowded neighborhood of modest frame houses without any city services such as water or sewer lines, and most of the streets weren’t paved.
Frequent flooding of the West Side flats along the Mississippi River created hazardous living and transportation situations.
By 1903 it was clear that the need for a full-service settlement house was great, and the organization became non-sectarian. As the need for services continued to expand Neighborhood House raised funds for construction of a new building in 1923.
In the early 1910s the association’s educational activities included children’s camps, a pre-kindergarten school, child care facilities, and in 1937 a nursery school. By the 1960s the need for affordable housing became acute. The city of St. Paul began to demolish the houses between Wabasha Avenue and the river as a result of the constant flood menace; the land was filled in and became a variety of industrial sites.
Given the continued need for Neighborhood House’s services, the organization moved to new site at 1979 Robie E. Robie Street, and in 2014 the current building was constructed on the same site and renamed the Paul and Sheila Wellstone Center (after the Senator and his wife’s work on behalf of social needs in the community.)
]]>Torre San Miguel, the only remaining portion of the Irish-Catholic Church of St. Michael, is located on a slight rise of land at the far north end of the Torre San Miguel Homes on Wood St. Originally the bell tower for the 1882 church, it was left standing when the church and other related buildings were sold and demolished in 1970 for the construction of the new the affordable housing development. The date shows as raised numbers in stone on the brickwork just above the foundation.
The original brick has been painted a medium tan shade, with turquoise highlights on the arches above the former windows and on the belt course above the first window. In nearly mint condition, it is a community landmark and serves to bring together two histories of the West Side. Before the neighborhood saw a rise in the Hispanic population it was settled by Irish and German immigrants.
Few structures of any kind remain from those very early settlements as the people moved away, and buildings in the lowest part of the flood plain were demolished. When the new community began to celebrate its own heritage, the renaming of the tower (from “Saint Michael” to “Torre San Miguel”) honored that transformation.
That this structure remains standing and in excellent repair is almost remarkable.
Note: For a full-ziti view of the tower image click on the link below
]]>The histories of the church, Our Lady of Guadalupe, and of Sister Giovanni (“Sister G” as she was known) are intertwined. In 1931. the Guild of Catholic women rented space in a grocery store at 123 S. Wabasha on the West Side to found a “Mexican Mission.” Incorporated in 1939 as a parish it continued to hold masses and provide educational and social services to the Hispanic immigrants in the community.
As it expanded, the mission church moved to 286 E. Fairfield. Enough congregants joined the parish to participate in Spanish-language masses to name the church in honor of its shrine to the Lady of Guadalupe. As a result of the constant flooding in that area the church purchased land further south and east to construct a new building at 401 Concord Ave., completed in 1961.
Sister Mary Giovanni Gourhan, affectionately known as “Sister G”, was born in 1914 and entered the School Sisters of Notre Dame when she was 18 years old. Sister G was sent to the Sacred Heart Mission School in St. Paul, Minnesota, where she began her career in education. She focused particularly on students who were having difficulties in a standard school environment, believing that alternatives to that standard would benefit underserved students.
She was sent in 1963 to Our Lady of Guadalupe to continue that work. In 1964 she created a summer school program that introduced children to crafts and recreation. In 1967 she founded the Guadalupe Alternative Program that remains a vibrant and successful program now called GAP, after a merger with Change.Inc, another program that was developed along the same ideas.
Sister Giovanni was a charismatic and beloved teacher and advocate. Remembered to this day, she appears in a mosaic over the doorway to the GAP School, and an image of her face is hiding in one of the West Side murals.
She seemed never to tire of facing down politicians and bureaucrats who might be reluctant to pursue change. She was a force of nature whose work radically changed the face of education and social services in the community.
]]>The Sterling Club, founded in 1918, is said to be the first African-American organization in St. Paul to have its own building. An article in the January 5, 1918 issue of The Appeal noted the establishment of a “new organization”, called the Sterling Club, for the purposes of “fostering civic pride, encouraging literary research, cultivation of sociability among our citizens…” among other goals.
At first the members met in individuals’ homes, and by early 1919 they had already begun to search for larger spaces in which to hold their meetings, lectures, and social events. Clarence “Cap” Wigington, a founding member, drafted plans for a clubhouse but it wasn’t until 1924 that their new building was constructed at 315 N. Dale Ave.
Wigington (whose nickname was drawn from his service in the Black Home Guards as a Captain, hence “Cap”) was the first African American senior architect in the city ‘s municipal office, engaged in designing a variety of public buildings from park structures to schools.
Members of the club included many if not most of the prominent African American leaders in the city alongside numbers of the porters, waiters, drivers and other Black residents of the Rondo community.
Their intent to foster civic pride was borne out especially in their efforts to bring speakers from around the country who would give lectures on activities, information, and social efforts around the country.
They held events to honor high school and college graduates, picnics, dances, “smokers”, in addition to their advocacy work when nationally-prominent Black speakers would visit St. Paul.
In 1958 they initiated an effort to move out of the Dale St. clubhouse due to plans for the I-94 freeway that would destroy nearby Rondo Ave., the central business street of the neighborhood. They turned again to Wigington to design the new space.
Members have often told the story about the city letting them know that they would not be allowed to build anything that looked like a “social club” or “clubhouse”, and that the new structure must resemble a residence. The resulting building, on N. St. Albans Street, looks just like the rest of the 1950s-60s homes in the neighborhood.
The Sterling Club remains a functioning, vibrant organization to this day, and celebrated its 100th anniversary in August, 2019.
]]>The idea for the Changsha Friendship Garden, the first phase of which was completed in 2019, was included in the 2010 Phalen-Keller Regional Park Master Plan and approved in 2011, but no action was taken until years later, when a $50,000 grant sparked funding to begin the planning process.
A Changsha-St. Paul Sister City relationship began in 1988 under the leadership of then-Mayor George Latimer, and the Garden project was initiated by the Minnesota China Friendship Garden Society,
Changsha, China is one of the ancestral homelands of the Hmong, who built a thriving culture hundreds of years ago. Gradually driven out by various Chinese dynasties, the people moved southward, eventually settling in the mountains of Laos and Thailand. As Hmong began to emigrate toward the end of the Vietnam War, many settled in St. Paul.
Chinese immigrants came to Minnesota beginning in the late 1800s. Many opened businesses such as restaurants and hotels; others worked in the mines on the Iron Range or on the railroads. Since the first Chinese students enrolled at the University of Minnesota in 1914, others have made St. Paul their home and worked in a wide variety of professions.
An exchange between the cities as a result of the garden planning included statues of some of the “Peanuts” characters (the cartoon written by St. Paulite Charles Schultz.) One of the artists, Kao Lee Thao, who is fascinated by traditional Hmong textiles, embroidery, and weaving designed a sculpture of Lucy, one of the Peanuts principal characters, dressed in traditional Hmong clothing.
The garden was designed by Chinese architects Jennifer Junfang Fan and Jon Youhua Wen in collaboration with Senior City Landscape Architect Alice Messer and the City of St. Paul Department of Parks and Recreation. Community input in the design included artists and leaders from the Chinese and Hmong communities with the assistance of noted urban planner Weiming Lu. The Payne-Phalen Community Council provided consistent support for the project.
The garden includes features from both Hmong and Chinese cultures. This 1.2-acre site includes plantings of willow and maple trees, shrubs, and winding stone paths, along with various pieces of public artwork. A traditional Chinese entrance gate is sited at the west end, and a park bridge over the channel leads visitors into the garden itself.
A double-roofed pavilion is a replica of China’s 18th century Aiwan Pavilion. Nine art stones have been placed around the garden; they comprise three types of rock with inscriptions, including one made of Dakota stone with an inscription that acknowledges this area as part of the Dakota homeland. Chinese calligraphy by Weiming Lu (1930-2022), whose urban planning concepts included the revitalization of Lowertown, embellishes one of the art stones. Behind the pavilion is a wall with traditional Hmong symbols in bas relief.
Construction of Phase II, the Hmong Plaza, began in 2023 and a Phase III is planned for future expansions to the Garden. These will include a Moon Bridge and Moon Gate, a moon-viewing area, a Chinese chess table, and additional plantings in front of the pavilion.
]]>The Hamline Hotel, at 543 N. Snelling Ave, was the site of one of the earliest sit-ins of the Civil Rights movement in St. Paul.
Bayard Rustin (1912-1987) a Black organizer and activist who supported a non-violent, pacifist approach to change, was invited to speak at a week-long series of meeting in January, 1947. He was the Secretary-Treasurer of the Congress of Racial Equality (CORE.) One of the sponsors of the events, Professor Russell Compton of Hamline University, made reservations for Rustin at the hotel where many visiting Hamline scholars stayed.
When Rustin got to the hotel around 8 pm, the young woman at the desk initially told him that there was not a reservation on file for him. Flustered, she sought the manager, who then told Rustin that there were no vacant rooms. Rustin responded by telling the manager that he, Rustin, would take a seat in the hotel lobby until a room was available.
Though asked to leave, Rustin remained in his seat and called Rev. Clarence Nelson, President of the St. Paul NAACP, to tell him of the situation. Nelson then called Compton, and both men went to the hotel to sit with Rustin. By the time midnight rolled around there were more than a half dozen people who had joined Rustin in the lobby. At 7 am the Hamline University dean, Dr. M. A. Merrill then arrived and unable to resolve the situation, agreed to remain with the others.
The situation was resolved when Rustin, who had left the hotel for a speaking engagement while the others remained in the lobby, returned to find that he had been assigned a “very nice room.” A headline in the St. Paul Recorder for 1/24/1947 reads: “New sit-down and wait technique wins; Hotel gives Rustin room.” An article in the same issue covers Rustin’s speeches regarding the non-violent approach to overcoming racial and religious discrimination. Rustin returned to the Twin Cities in 1949 and again in 1952.
Rustin frequently toured the country on behalf of CORE and the Fellowship of Reconciliation (FOR) to give speeches about the philosophy and practice of non-violent action within the Civil Rights movement. As a gay, Black activist, he was frequently asked to remain out of the public eye due to perceived animus regarding his unapologetic homosexuality. But his value, skills, knowledge, and successes as an organizer encouraged other prominent African American leaders to bring him back to work with them often.
Rustin is called “the man behind the dream” for his work in organizing, with Dr. Martin Luther King, the 1963 March on Washington.
The building that housed the Hamline Hotel still stands, very little altered, and houses a Wilder Foundation program.
]]>Gordon Parks (1912-2006) was born in Ft. Scott, KS. The accomplished African American photographer only spent about 15 years in St. Paul, but it was there his inspiration and passion was formed.
Parks was sent to St. Paul to live with a sister and brother-in-law after his mother died in 1928. Parks initially attended an African American school in Ft. Scott, but all the Black schools there were closed because the city was too small for segregated schools. He enrolled in Mechanic Arts High School after moving to St. Paul, but left the house after a confrontation with his brother-in-law. Homeless, he began to search for jobs working for anyone who would hire him. Over the years he worked in brothels, and as a singer, a piano player, a bus boy, a traveling waiter, and a semi-pro basketball player. Though he later returned to school, St. Paul Central High School, he was unable to finish.
His real career, though, began with the purchase of a camera. As a result of a random encounter in 1938 with a publication he picked up while on a North Coast Limited train on which he was working as a waiter and porter, his career was born.
On one of his working journeys from St. Paul to Seattle, in 1937, he saw a series of Farm Service Administration photographs (FSA) in a magazine. The photos inspired him to buy a camera in Seattle to see what he could make of the craft of photography. At one point he told an interviewer that he went out immediately after purchasing the camera and was photographing seagulls when he and the camera fell into the water. The camera was ruined but some of the film was salvaged and praise from others who saw the prints of his camera work inspired him to continue pursuing his passion of photography.
He began his photography career in St. Paul, joining the St. Paul Recorder as staff photographer; many of his early photos were portraits of graduates and local society women in the African American community. He once told an interviewer that he had “purchased a weapon [the camera] I hoped to use against a warped past and an uncertain future.”
One day in 1939, he walked into Frank Murphy’s department store at the corner of St. Peter and 5th Street in St. Paul, asking the owner to hire him to provide the store with fashion photographs. When told that all their photo work came out of New York and he was about to be ushered out the door, Murphy’s wife intervened by asking “how do you know he can’t do fashion work?” He was hired on the spot and soon became famous for his fashion photography; his work was later featured in Life and Vogue magazines among others, where he became the first Black photographer for both publications.
Circumstances brought Parks full circle from his first impressions of the magazine photos from the FSA. In 1941 he was awarded the Julius Rosenwald Fellowship for Photography, the first African American to win the fellowship, and he joined the FSA as a photographer.
Self-taught, he learned photography by studying the images of other photographers and began to create his own style. He focused at first, literally, on images that portrayed African American life at work and home. One photograph, of a cleaner named Ella Watson, became an image that gained him a following. His work as a documentary photographer brought a new dimension to work done by the FDR era photographers. He concentrated on the family and work lives of Black America and brought these images to the public.
His dual career as a fashion photographer and a chronicler of Black work and poverty was unique. He traveled in different worlds for each shoot and his intensity and artistry was evident in the images of both cultures.
]]>Skyline Tower, the high rise building at 1247 St. Anthony built in 1972, remains the largest and tallest public housing building in the state. Built as part of HUD’s Section 236 program it was sold soon after construction to a private company as affordable housing.
Its importance has been immeasurable in terms of housing available to new immigrants. During the first years of Vietnamese emigration from a war-torn country, in the early- to mid-1970s, the building was one of the few affordable places that these new settlers could find in which to live until they were able to secure jobs and get on their feet.
Beginning with this wave of immigrants, each new group gravitated to 1247 St. Anthony, as the building was first known. It has housed people from Vietnam, Laos, Korea, Hmong from various refugee camps in Thailand and Laos, and it now has a large population from East Africa, especially Somali.
During the years of private ownership and management, maintenance and security was allowed to deteriorate. After a series of fires in the late 1990s it became clear that radical changes to the building were needed. Purchased in 2000 by CommonBond Communities, and now owned by SewardWest a large number of upgrades, renovations, and a welcoming entrance addition provide a secure and far more pleasant living experience for the tenants.
There are community services located in the building along with space for classes, often taught by volunteers. The tenants have also created a viable and lively organization of residents.
The most recent change is the addition next to the building, in a former parking lot, of the Midway Peace Park. An effort driven by the residents with funding from many sources, the park provides both green space, sorely lacking in the neighborhood, and playground equipment for the many youth of the families living in this huge high rise.
]]>The Sibley Manor Apartments were built in 1952 as a 22-acre, 55-building group of low-income apartments with between 1,800-2,000 residents. Sibley Manor has hosted thousands of tenants who arrived as immigrants to St. Paul beginning with Korean War veterans and military families at Fort Snelling, just across the Mississippi. When the Ft. Snelling base was closed and vacancies skyrocketed the complex gradually became a first or second stop for successive groups of immigrants.
As people fled to the United States owing to trauma in their homelands, the apartments have housed people from each successive wave beginning in the 1960s with Cuban refugees, then Southeast Asians from Vietnam and Laos, Cambodian and Hmong people, the Russian Jewish immigrants fleeing the Soviet Union in the 1980s, people from Hispanic cultures and the most recent emigres from East African and other African regions. Many moved to the neighborhood for work at the MSP Airport, a short bus ride across the Mississippi River, or at nearby stores, and in other service industries.
This group of brick and stucco 2-story buildings surrounds grassy courtyards with trees and sidewalks connecting the apartment buildings to the streets, garages, and driveways. It belies its size because of the street and building plan. Two streets, Maynard Drives East and West, wind throughout the neighborhood, and the buildings are located in a pattern that eliminates the “straight line” aspect of most standard apartment groupings. Playgrounds are well-used by the hundreds of children who live there
In addition to a very well-maintained exterior, the neighborhood houses a number of sites for services. Among these are a convenience store that includes foods from the various cultures of the residents along with a tax and travel service, health clinics, food shelves, and others. Before Cooper’s Foods grocery store closed in 2017, it also served as a location where residents of the apartments could purchase food familiar to them, such as in the large Kosher section of the store, or as African tenants arrived, in that section of the store.
Former residents have included Minnesota Twins Hall of Fame star Zoilo Versalles and Manager Billy Martin, along with current Ramsey County Attorney John Choi, whose family came from Korea in 1973. He was sworn in as the first Korean-American chief prosecutor in the country in 2011. He talked about his family’s history in St. Paul in a 2011 interview for a Minnesota Historical Society oral history project.
Another former resident is Marisella Veiga, an author whose book, "We Carry our Homes with Us", includes her recollections of her family’s arrival from Cuba in 1960 only eight years after the apartments were built.
The Sibley Manor Apartment complex has recognized and respected the cultures of all residents. As the asset manager for the apartments noted in a recent interview, the residents become “family” and as in families there are sometimes conflicts, most often arising from language barriers. But the community feeling remains strong.
]]>Katie McWatt’s life as an African American organizer, educator, speaker, and political activist (among many other roles) was a path of intensely dedicated efforts in support of and drive toward equality and fairness for Black people in St. Paul. Born in Minneapolis she attended public schools there and went on to earn a BA in Speech at the University of Minnesota.
A search of articles in the St. Paul Recorder yielded more than 200 in which McWatt was mentioned or featured. By 1963 she was already Chair of the St. Paul Urban League’s Advisory Committee on Minority Housing. McWatt moved from that position to eventually become their Community Services Director. She remained in that position until 1982, when the position was eliminated as a result of budget cuts.
Community service was not McWatt’s only focus. In 1964 She began a run for City Council of St. Paul, the first Black woman to do so. Endorsed by the Ramsey County DFL, other organization supported her candidacy and she won the primary. Though she lost by only a few hundred votes, her campaign opened doors to many other African Americans to run for office in the city. She remained a lifelong DFL activist. She was a member of a number of organizations through which she strived to reach her goals.
In 1968 she threw her hat into the ring to run for statewide office as a legislator. Her focus was always fair housing, stronger opportunities for education, and in one speech she railed against the lack of Black representation in politics, blaming the restlessness of the youth on this gap. “We cannot convince our angry brothers that we are being represented adequately as long as the life chance of black people in St. Paul is exactly half that of white people,” citing the high rate of infant mortality in St. Paul.
For McWatt, advocacy was not just a matter of speaking or writing about injustice. She actively engaged in sit-ins and demonstrations. People who knew her have written about her activities in direct action, including one episode in which she jumped into a trench, wearing a hardhat, to protest the low wages being paid to the workers who were digging the trench.
Within a few years of leaving the Urban League she became the Director of the Central [High School] Community Minority Education Program, serving in that capacity for many years. Her leadership in a number of organizations such as the NAACP St. Paul Chapter, the Iota Phi Lambda, a sorority of Black professional women, the Council on Black Minnesotans, among others, provided her with opportunities to broaden her reach.
Katie McWatt is honored at two public sites: In 2010 the City named the blocks of Dayton Avenue (where she and her husband Arthur raised their children) – there is a street sign at Victoria and Lexington Streets; and at the Green Line Victoria St. Station there is a carved relief portrait of her.
]]>Many who pass the modernist synagogue at the SE corner of Summit and Hamline might assume that it is the only building the congregation has used. But Mount Zion Temple has deep roots in the city.
Mount Zion Temple, the oldest Jewish congregation in the city, was established by eight Germans Jewish families in 1856, two years before Minnesota became a state. First founded as the Mount Zion Hebrew Association, the families arrived as part of an early wave of Jewish immigrants. As with many others in St. Paul, the congregation initially held services in congregants’ homes or rented quarters; the Mount Zion members met in a building on Robert Street. Over the years as membership continued to increase they built a total of four buildings to house the congregation.
Their first building, completed in 1871, was a simple Gothic-style frame structure in downtown St. Paul. In 1881 the next, much larger new structure, at 10th and Minnesota (no longer standing) exhibited many of the Moorish-style elements that were then popular at the time.
As the need for more space became evident, another building (their third, now demolished) was completed in 1904 at the corner of Holly and Avon, designed by prominent architect Clarence Johnston in the Beaux Arts style with a tiled dome and two large columns with ionic capitals flanking the doorway at the top of a flight of stairs.
The last and current building was designed in 1953 by the internationally prominent architect Erich Mendelsohn. Located on Summit Avenue at Hamline Avenue it is an outstanding example of modern architecture, one of the few on that historic residential boulevard.
By 1878 the congregation had officially joined the Reform Judaism movement and today remains a Reform synagogue. Members of Mount Zion Temple have from the beginning been socially active in the city. The women in particular founded a number of organizations that assisted new Jewish immigrants as they arrived. Two of these, still active today, include Neighborhood House, founded in 1897, and the United Jewish Charities, now known as the Jewish Family Service.
]]>Established in 1912, the Chesed Shel Emes Cemetery was founded on the principle of Judaism that refers to a “Duty of Truth”, a phrase with many different translations, including “true loving kindness”, and “charity of truth.” Its goal was to establish a space and an organization that would assist people who identified as Jewish but were not affiliated with a congregation or synagogue. Jewish Immigrants organized a Chesed Shel Emes Society to begin the work of creating such a space near Larpenteur and Prosperity Avenues.
An open iron arch with decorative scrolling over the entrance contains the cemetery name and provides a formal entry point. The five acres of the cemetery contain gently rolling terrain; deciduous and evergreen trees provide shade for the curving paths within the property. A central memorial garden is a focal point for the layout of burial plots.
There are Chesed Shel Emes Societies in cities around the country. In addition to providing a burial place, they provide the rites and rituals surrounding death. Specific rites in the Jewish faith set out the details for serving the deceased, and if the family cannot afford to have these done or if a person has no one to provide these services, a Chevra Kaddish (a group of men and women who perform the necessary death duties) will gather to ensure proper services.
Many of the first people buried in the cemetery hailed from the West Side Flats and hadn’t allied themselves with a formal congregation. Given the constant flooding in the West Side, the Society purchased land on the East Side to create the cemetery, and it is still in use to this day.
In 2021 a number of Jewish cemeteries in the Twin Cities were vandalized during the week surrounding Rosh Hashanah, including Chesed Shel Emes. These were surprising and devastating actions in a community that had begun to settle in the area beginning in the mid- to late-19th century; religious leaders of all denominations immediately denounced the vandalism and were vocal in support of the Jewish community.
Chesed Shel Emes is a unique cemetery; no such others are located in the Twin Cities and it performs a unique and valuable service to the Jewish community.
]]>The Congregation of the Russian Brotherhood, founded in 1886, is shown on the 1904 Sanborn map at 202 E. Fairfield Ave., with “Agudas Achim” in parentheses below the building name; on the 1939 revised Sanborn map it is located at 282-84 Texas Avenue. Texas Avenue no longer exists.
It’s possible that this was the “Texas Street Shul” mentioned in some of sources. Since various sources contradict where this congregation existed over time - some say on Kentucky Street, others on Texas Avenue and late E. Fairfield Ave - exact locations and information are difficult to determine.
The map location is approximate, as the address no longer exists.
]]>The Agudas Achim Synagogue was founded by members of the Congregation of the Russian Brotherhood, though the locations and date of closure are not certain. It seems, however, that this building was in use by 1909.
There were two addresses sometimes used for each - the 202 Fairfield and an earlier address of 282-4 Texas St. In any case, the 1904 uses the 202 Fairfield address.
There is little information about the connections between the two synagogues, so the contradictions remain mysterious.
The building at 202 E. Fairfield was one of the few synagogues left standing into the 1950s. Built of brick, it had large central metal dome, with ornamentation at each end of the front gables, with two large columns flanking a central entrance door at the top of the stairs.
A survey prepared in advance of the 1960 Riverview Industrial Project notes that the building was then in excellent condition.
]]>The Congregation of the Sons of Zion, or B'nai Zion, was organized in 1883 by newer Russian Jewish immigrants who were said to not want to affiliate with the already established Orthodox Sons of Jacob , a synagogue generally known as a “Polish” congregation. The congregation dedicated its new synagogue at 150 State Street in 1895.
Interestingly, an article in the St. Paul Globe newspaper lists their establishment of a congregation at 104 State Street. The 1904 Sanborn map shows this as a "tenement", and a 1960 photo shows this address to be a 3-plex residential building. It is possible that the congregation first met in a member's home.
Clearly the Russian Brotherhood and the Sons of Zion congregations had, at least in the early years, the most lively and active congregations on the West Side. A search of the St. Paul Globe in the late 1880s and into the early 1900s reveals dozens of articles about the activities of both congregations. No articles about any other synagogues were found for that time period.
They weren’t always competitive, as a number of articles in 1896 followed their combined efforts to remove a Kosher “meat inspector” with whom they had conflicts. In the newspaper this was called “the butcher wars.”
The two congregations together may have had the largest membership of all the other synagogues in the neighborhood.
]]>The Sons of Israel Synagogue was located at 110 Robertson Street, this street no longer exists and ran between and parallel to State and Eva Streets.
The building is shown on the Hopkins 1916 map, but no other information has been located about the congregation.
Surveyed during the process of reviewing properties for the Riverview Industrial Project the assessor completed a highly detailed document that included photographs not just of the exterior but the interior as well. He described the furnishings, lighting, and condition of the building to the extent of counting the number and types of light bulbs.
None of the other surveys were as complete as this one; it is as good as any well-researched architectural description:
"The synagogue is a large rectangular frame two story structure, with a wood tap siding and composition roof. The exterior is in very poor condition, and is badly in need of paint. There are many windows which have been broken and are boarded up.
"The roof of the church extends out past the main building and is supported by four wooden pillars which rest on a concrete block portico below. This portion of the building is set back approximately five feet from the sidewalk."
]]>Beth Midrash Ha Godol Synagogue was organized some time in the late 1880s with Rabbi Isaac Lichtenberg serving as the congregation's rabbi. It is believed that the congregation worshiped at 165 State Street beginning some time later than that, perhaps around 1892.
Little is known about this congregation, and it was likely quite small. The building at this address is a storefront, one story connected to a two-story duplex next door.
As with many other smaller congregations, it is possible that this one worshiped in the rear of the store, or in one of the connected residences.
An article in the St. Paul Globe newspaper for March 18, 1898 included the information that Samuel Stollerhoff, "principal founder of the Russian Brotherhood," resided at this address.
]]>In 1888 Rabbi Herman Simon became rabbi of the West Side Congregations and proceeded to lead the effort to establish a Hebrew Institute on the West Side.
The St. Paul Hebrew Institute and Sheltering Home was completed and dedicated in 1911 at 297 Kentucky St. This Institute served as the Lower West Side's Talmud Torah, and its major function was the education of children. Neither the building nor the street still exist.
The Sheltering Home housed and fed many of the new immigrants when they first arrived on the Lower West Side address; in 1938 the Institute was still listed at 295 Kentucky.
The Institute remained in use until some time in 1958.
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