Directly below the Yoerg residences, nestled into the bluff at Ohio Street, was his brewery, which was lost to a fire in 1958. Follow Isabel Street west to Ohio; there you will see an outcropping of the limestone upon which much of St. Paul is built. Follow Ohio, then, down to the flats, and look back at the bluffside; somewhere there, stood the Yoerg brewery. No trace of it remains.
By 1958, Yoerg's ”cave-aged” beer, had already disappeared. Prohibition of course devastated the brewing industry, but Yoerg's found a way to survive that, with soft drinks, milk, and near-beer. It could not, however, survive the post-World War II competition, and closed in 1952. Hamm's and Schmidt prospered on into the 1970s; then, as the national brewing industry consolidated, came a series of increasingly desperate changes of ownership, until both sputtered out in the 1990s. The brewery buildings remain, still waiting for new life.
Despite the closing of most of the early breweries, some brewing continues to thrive in St. Paul. Summit Brewing began in 1986 as a craft label. It is now the biggest brewer in the state, with a new brewery not far down Fort Road from the empty Schmidt complex. It is a worthy successor to Yoerg, Stahlman, Banholzer, and the rest – except that the founder's surname, Stutrud, is anything but German.
]]>Francesco and Dora Yarusso were the founders of today’s Yarusso Brothers Restaurant at 635 Payne avenue. They arrived in St. Paul in 1904 and headed for Swede Hollow, where they started to raise their fourteen children. They soon moved up the hill and Frank, as he was listed in the 1919 city directory, was a laborer living at 562 Decatur Street. In 1932 he and Dora opened a tavern that sold soft drinks and prohibition-allowed near beer.
The following year the couple opened the "Square Deal Café." They put in the first Bocce alleys in Saint Paul and the Italian sport quickly became a popular event outside the restaurant. Many area residents gathered on Sunday afternoons to smoke cigars and play the traditional game.
Francesco and Dora retired in 1947 and some of their children took over the restaurant, renaming it "Yarusso Brothers." The restaurant was enlarged and remodeled, but the food remained much the same and the original sauce recipe is still used.
Now a third generation of Italian-Americans are in charge. David, Fred, and Michael Yarusso have worked hard to keep their grandfather and father’s traditions alive, and the walls are covered with old photos and artwork that have family and neighborhood images. Yarusso’s continues to be a popular destination for Saint Paul diners. Spaghetti and meatballs are still the signature dish and the menu is stocked with familiar Italian fare like eggplant parmesan and, as they call them, “hot dago” sandwiches.
]]>“In the legal profession, Labor found a friend,
A lawyer on whom the toilers could depend.
A fearless advocate of truth and right,
And foe to every wrong upheld by might.
This man was Erwin, dauntless, bold and free,
Whose name shall live in glorious memory.
Whenever workingmen, who toil for bread,
Remember July 6th at brave Homestead.”
(A tribute to WW Erwin by an anonymous worker-poet in 1893.)
WW Erwin’s parents must have intended him to be a battler for justice. They named him “William Wallace,” after the legendary fighter for Scottish independence who stood at the Stirling Bridge against the forces of English King Edward I. History does not disclose whether Wallace looked like Mel Gibson, who played him in the 1995 film, “Braveheart,” but in St Paul he was known as "a tall man with the body of a giant,” as a medieval Scottish historian described Wallace. Pseudonymous columnist Benjamin Backnumber of the St Paul Daily News remembered Erwin as a “six-foot frame of sinew, tireless strength and panther suppleness. The working people of St Paul and beyond knew him as “The Tall Pine,” and honored him for his defense of labor’s rights. Erwin was arguably THE outstanding defense attorneys here. He was, the St. Paul Dispatch wrote on the occasion of his death, “the greatest criminal lawyer the Northwest ever knew.”
At the peak of his powers and success, Erwin embraced the labor movement that erupted in the last two decades of the nineteenth century. Perhaps because his legal career had been devoted to defense of the underdog, he offered his forensic talents freely to insurgent workers brought before the courts. Erwin was the outstanding defense attorney for participants in two of the three biggest labor battles of the nineteenth century, the Pullman railroad strike and boycott of 1894 and the strike against Andrew Carnegie’s Steel Works at Homestead, Pennsylvania, in 1892. These strikes were met with heavy military and judicial repression—and with unprecedented enthusiasm and solidarity from the ranks of labor.
On July 6, 1892, an armed force of about 300 men from the Pinkerton Detective Agency that industrialist Andrew Carnegie had procured battled over 1,000 striking steel workers, family members, and supporters who had massed on the banks of the Allegheny River to confront Carnegie’s men. The violence that followed left nine workers and three Pinkertons dead. Mass protest meetings, sponsored by city central bodies of the American Federation of Labor (AFL), were held all across the country in support of the steel workers. When strikers at Homestead were indicted for murder, riot, conspiracy and even treason, the St Paul Trades and Labor Assembly, some 900 miles removed, took a remarkable initiative procuring the services of Erwin to serve as lead counsel for the defendants. Erwin quickly secured the acquittal of the first two defendants; the prosecution of the remaining defendants was abandoned.
In 1894, Erwin went to Chicago to join the defense team, which included Clarence Darrow, representing American Railway Union leaders including Eugene V Debs, and Minneapolis railroad worker Sylvester Keliher, who were charged with contempt of court for failing to heed a Federal Court injunction instructing them to terminate the nationwide boycott by the ARU in support of striking Pullman workers. Denied a trial by jury, the defendants were convicted and sentenced to six months in prison. Nonetheless, Erwin’s performance in the courtroom was celebrated far and wide.
“Bill Irwin’s Oratory,” the New York Sun reported, “is the wonder of the bar and the admiration of the Northwest . . . . His voice now cracks into ice, now boils into geysers, is now thrown at the jury like a hammer . . . now leaps like thunder . . . now stops with the guttural protest of a Third avenue cable car kicking against the brake. The plaster drops, the nails are drawn out, the ceiling topples, the floor sags, even the janitor trembles in his slippers.”
Erwin’s home at 481 Iglehart was unfortunately torn down in the 1960’s.
]]>One of the remaining walls runs from the scenic overlook and heads west along the bluff line behind the Indian Mounds. The second of the WPA work is a more dramatic curved limestone wall that follows the turn of Mounds Boulevard as it leaves the playground area.
The Works Progress Administration (WPA) was a federal jobs initiative that employed people during the Great Depression of the 1930’s. They created local projects including public buildings, roads, sidewalks and these walls.
The WPA was a centerpiece of Franklin Roosevelt’s economic stimulation programs and was aimed at smaller-scale projects that could be quickly undertaken and completed. WPA dollars began to reach Minnesota in late 1935. At its height in 1938, 68,000 Minnesotans were enrolled. The program lasted for eight years, ending in 1943.
]]>A century ago the Rice Street area, especially between Atwater and Front, was a new and densely populated neighborhood. There were lots of rooming houses and many big families. Lyton Place today is a quiet, two-block street running east from Rice to Oakland Cemetery. In good weather you can find a few kids on bicycles or pausing in the park. Census takers in 1905 found 141 people living in just 23 households on those two blocks - 68 of them were 18 years of age or younger. Their names were Mulligan, Taack, Stinsky, Miller, Hollman, Guindon, Woods, Woodburn, Hancock, Leuzinger, Comer, Best, Martin, Douglas, Peterson, Johnson, Ordmann, and Howe -- mostly individuals from the British Isles with seasonings of Scandinavia, Germany, and Eastern Europe. Some of these houses (on the first block) are still there.
But on the next block east you will find something interestingly different. There, and around the corner on Sycamore, in the early 1990s the city took down three rows of degraded houses and replaced them with these that reflect, without re-creating, the styles of the era. After more than twenty years these houses remain attractive, an admirable feat of blending new housing with old.
Just a little roaming in this precinct pays off for this with the interest and imagination to see, in the mind’s eye, the neighborhood of a century ago. Cross Rice Street and try the adjacent streets of Woodbridge and Marion between Atwater and Milford. Strip away the new(er) siding and additions, and populate the streets with five of six kids per house. Add the occasional clatter of the streetcars on Rice Street, and you have the North End of 1910, when a street laborer could own a house and raise a family on his wages.
Nearby on Marion Street it is easy to see where clear-cutting of the old houses has taken place. This was the neighborhood where civil rights leader Roy Wilkins grew up, in the 1910s. His house is gone, replaced by the public housing across the street from Lewis Park.
]]>Women working outside the home for wages were a small minority of the wage-working class at least until the post World War I era. There were virtually no women employed in the brewing industry until the 1930’s. Industries that employed a substantial number of women in St Paul around the turn of the last century were garment manufacturers, especially producers of men’s work clothing, and the printing industry, which employed women as bindery workers. There were a few predominantly female unions, notably the United Garment Workers and the Bindery Girls (sic) Union. These industries were located in the downtown manufacturing district.
One business enterprise that employed women almost entirely was the laundry industry. Men were employed as delivery drivers, but women were the inside workers, doing hot and heavy labor. There were scores of laundries throughout the city, including some substantial ones on West Seventh Street. Records of the women working in these places are hard to find, however, Mattie Dahl, a Swedish immigrant, was employed in 1890 by the Globe Laundry, and lived at 412 Smith Avenue, a residence long since displaced by United Hospital. Lizzie Mara worked at the Minnesota Steam Laundry and lived, probably boarded, at 117 Smith Avenue, likewise long gone.
In this bygone era, there were probably at least 20 Chinese owned, operated and staffed laundries. Unlike the big steam laundries owned by Caucasians, Chinese laundries catered to individuals, especially single men who did not have access to laundromats, or unpaid female labor.
]]>Before there was the “DFL” there was the “FL.” The Minnesota Farmer-Labor party existed as an independent party of workers and farmers from 1918 to 1944, essentially from World War I to World War II. The core of its support was the trade union movement and organizations of working farmers. It elected three governors, Floyd B Olson, Elmer Benson and Hjalmar Peterson, and innumerable state and local officials, including William Mahoney as Mayor of St Paul in 1932.
William Mahoney was a printing pressman by trade and a socialist and labor politician by avocation. He was born in Chicago in 1869 and died in St Paul in 1952 at the age of 83. In his long and active life, Mahoney was President of the St Paul Trades and Labor Assembly and editor of the St Paul Union Advocate, newspaper and the prime mover of the organization of the Minnesota Farmer-Labor party. At his death he was still a delegate to the Trades and Labor Assembly, representing Pressmens Local 29.
Mahoney had many friends across the political spectrum, including legendary newspaper columnist and former Mayor Larry (“Larry Ho”) Hodgson, who wrote to Mahoney in 1934 that “I think of you as a friend that would stand by me in any personal calamity.” Reflecting on Mahoney's defeat in the 1934 election, Hodgson said, “in the last week I have been wondering if the great moneyed concerns can ever be dethroned except by Revolution.”
Mahoney had called for municipalizing Northern States Power Company, the predecessor of Xcel Energy as a city-owned utility, provoking ferocious opposition from the city's business and banking establishment. St Paul residents, he said, were “paying the highest electric rates in the nation and 10,000 unemployed and destitute families were accorded an inadequate subsistence by public and private charities.” Mahoney wrote and circulated a proposal for legislation “to Establish a State-Wide System of Public Industries for the Employment of Out-of-Work and Needy Citizens.”
Mahoney's former home is at 1852 Dayton Avenue. Main Street, on which the St Paul Labor Center is located, is co-named “William Mahoney Street.
]]>After growing out of their house next door at 322 Summit Avenue, William and Carrie Lightner built a new home at 318 Summit Avenue in 1893 for $24,000. Constructed of light Sioux Falls jasper and dark Bayfield brownstone, the mansion was designed by architect Cass Gilbert in the Romanesque style. Inside features a central hall with a grand staircase, library, large kitchen, music room, and a dining room, all furbished with ornate oak and mahogany woodwork.
William H. Lightner, a prominent attorney, was born in 1856 in Pennsylvania. He married Carrie Drake on October 29th, 1885, the daughter of Elias F. Drake who built the first railroad in Minnesota. William died in 1936 and Carrie stayed in the home until her death in 1945. Their three children then sold the mansion, and it was divided into apartments shortly after. It recently underwent a massive restoration and today it is used as a private residence.
]]>This large house was built in 1882 for William and Mary Dean. Costing around $15,000 to build, the home is Queen Anne in style, although the architect is unknown. After a drastic remodeling in the early 20th century, the house was almost unrecognizable, but today is completely restored to its original
condition.
William Blake Dean was born on September 26th, 1838 in Pittsburg, Pennsylvania. He received his education in the public schools, and later at Washington and Jefferson College in Pennsylvania. He came to Saint Paul in 1856 and started work as a bookkeeper for a wholesale iron and hardware company, and eventually became a partner in the business. He married the daughter of his business partner, Mary Katherine Nicols, on October 18th, 1860, and raised eight children with her. William branched out to many business ventures, including railroads, banking, and insurance.
William Dean was very active in his community, serving as a member of the Saint Paul Public School Board, Minnesota Historical Society, Saint Paul Library Board, Saint Paul Institute of Arts, Saint Paul Chamber of Commerce, and much more. His wife Mary died on August 31st, 1920 in Saint Paul, and he stayed in his home on Summit Avenue. After a long and illustrious life, William died in Saint Paul on December 5th, 1922, and was buried two days later in Oakland Cemetery.
]]>Three splendid houses grace the eastern side of Greenbrier--once called Cable Street. All of them were connected with the extended Hamm family who decided to remain close to their company instead of moving to more prestigious areas. All three of the houses, along with the mansion across the street were heated by steam piped up from the brewery. There was a stairway that led from the end of Greenbrier to the brewery below that they walked to and from work.
One of the most startling Hamm family events occurred on this well-travelled route. On June 15, 1933 William Hamm Jr., then president of the brewery, was walking home for lunch around 12:45 in the afternoon. He was grabbed by what papers described as “four shadowy figures” and put in a car that had been sitting on the corner of Minnehaha and Greenbrier. He had been kidnapped by the infamous Barker-Karpis gang, was driven to a hideout in Illinois and held for ransom. A large sum on money was paid and William was returned, unhurt but shaken up by the experience.
The first of three Hamm residences at 668 Greenbrier, on the northeast corner of Margaret Street, was built in 1892 by William Hamm Sr. who, it is said, gave it as a wedding gift for his bride Marie Scheffer. They married in October 1893. The designer of the Georgian Revival house was the locally prominent team of Reed and Stem. It was neo-classical inspirit, and showed Stem's love of monumental exteriors and finely crafted interiors. One of the features that has disappeared are verandas with balustrades that faced both streets.
By 1904, William Sr. and his family had outgrown the house and moved across the street into his parent’s old brick mansion. For a brief time the Otto Muller and George Benz families, who earlier had Greenbrier homes of their own, lived there pending moves to other locations. In 1926, the George and Josephine Hamm Benz family moved to a new house on the River Road. Otto and Marie Muller moved from 672 Greenbrier into 668 Greenbrier.
When no members of the Hamm wished to live in the house, the family made the generous decision to donate the use of the house to the Community Chest. For a time it was East Side Relief Center where sometimes there were long lines of poor people who came for public assistance during the Great Depression. The Hamm's finally sold the house in 1934 and it began its forty- year history as a boarding house. It has now been returned to single-family use and is in the process of being restored.
]]>This brick house was built in 1886 for William and Bertha Constans for a cost of $18,400, with a $3,500 carriage house. Architect Augustus Gauger designed the home, although nothing of his original design is visible today. It was once Queen Anne in style with a five story tower on the south-east corner, but was remodeled in the 1920’s by Walter Hill, son of the railroad builder James J. Hill. Now Neo-Classical in style, the mansion was again remodeled in 1969, further altering its original form.
William Constans was born in June of 1829 in Diemeringen, France. Having only a common school education, he came to the United States in 1847, and moved to Saint Paul in 1850. He started work as a clerk for a grocery and tailor shop. After realizing a clerk would not get him to the financial position he wanted, he quit, and with about $300 in savings, started his own business, selling malts, hops, and brewer’s supplies. A year after starting the business, William had a partner, James Burbank, join in his business, and the company became the firm of “Constans and Burbank”.
William married Bertha Franckenberg on April 22nd, 1867 in Ozaukee County, Wisconsin, and together they raised six children. By 1883 his company was called “Constans and Schmidt”, and was the largest of its kind in the Northwest. With a fortune estimated at several hundred thousand dollars, he invested in a home on Summit Avenue in 1886.
]]>Willard's is believed to be the second-oldest bar in Saint Paul. A West End watering hole, The Spot, is the only place that is older. Willard's opened in 1908 as Kohl’s, which is what it was known as until 1970. Neighborhood lore has it that the bar had a soda fountain counter out front and a speakeasy in the back during the Prohibition era. (The bar's website notes that "We are pretty sure the statute of limitations has run out on that by now!"
After 1970 the business went through ownership and name changes. In 1982 it was purchased by Tom Kaufman. He was known throughout Frogtown for taking in stray animals and changed the name from Quinn's to Willard's to honor a little dog he'd rescued. Willard the dog became the bar mascot.
The bar is described by some as the "front porch of Frogtown." Frogtown had many other small bars and bar/restaurants scattered throughout the community. Many people might remember the now-closed Family Inn, 561 Edmund Ave. Among the many other long-gone Frogtown establishments are the Albrecht Tavern, 449 Thomas Ave., the Char-Dale, 535 N. Dale St; the Frontier Tavern, 558 Edmund Ave..; Bob's Frogtown Tavern, 436 Lafond Ave.; the Red Feather Nite Club, 665 University Ave.and the Stahl House, 586 Rice St.
]]>Today, there are six remaining Indian Mounds found on both sides of the current pavilion. At one time there were thirty nine, found in two separate areas along the bluff, but they were destroyed by early farming, houses and park development. These burial sites have been researched, photographed and written about extensively. However, there are still many unanswered questions about their origin and significance. There is an informational plaque behind the pavilion, but it is filled with questionable assumptions. The information contained here includes some confirmed facts as well as a few uncertain statements.
One of the first questions to ask might be, "when were they built?" No one knows for sure. An educated guess would be that they were constructed-probably a few at a time-between 200 BCE and--400 AD. They are certainly the oldest remaining examples of human works in Saint Paul. Many scholars see them as part of what they call the Hopewell culture, a concept that includes the beliefs and practices of Native American peoples who built mounds in many area of the country.
Another query: "who built them?" Again, there is uncertainty. The park plaque says that they were the handiwork of Hopewellian people who moved eastward into the area. However, there is no proof of this and it could be that the local residents were just influenced by the Hopewell practices. One source said that the mounds here are the sole archeological example of Hopewellian characteristics in Minnesota. The Dakota, who were here when European settlers arrived, made use of the mounds for some burials, but may not have been the original builders. One of several sources on the matter include a note in an 1849 issue of the Pioneer Pres, which stated that “mounds… are a subject of wonder and admiration... their ancient and inscrutable origin, baffle even conjecture. The present race of Indians, know as little of them as ourselves.” The truth is, we may never know who the mound builders were.
What do we know about the people or peoples who created the mounds? Once again, small bits of information allow a few speculations. Early excavations suggest the mound builders may have had a structured society with art that included figures with religious implications. The mounds that were examined contained carved animals on the utensils and pottery possibly used for feasts and rituals.
Artifacts that were found included stone knives, copper axes, a variety of carved pipes, pottery vessels, and ornaments made of copper and shell. Some items were made of material not available locally. There was volcanic glass from Wyoming, copper from Lake Superior area, mica from the Appalachia and marine shell from saltwater oceans. This suggests the existence of an extensive trade network.
We are also not sure who got buried there. Probably not everyone, or there would have been hundreds of mounds. Perhaps some leaders or prominent people. Several types of burials were discovered. Most were simple internments accompanied by mussel shells or projectile points. There were log tombs at the base of some mounds and two others contained seven inch high thin limestone slabs set upright. Human remains found there were accompanied by more elaborate grave offerings, including shells, perforated bear teeth and a hammered sheet of copper. Small bundle burials were found in the upper parts of several mounds and may have been placed there in more recent times.
Only four complete skeletons have been found in Dayton’s Bluff. On September 20, 1895, city park workers, razing Mound number eight “to improve the view from the park road”, came upon what they called “a gruesome find” after several tons of earth had been removed. The sets of bones were in the center and on the bottom of the burial mound.
While city residents were fascinated by the Indian Mounds, they were far from reverential in their actions. For years there were spiral paths cut into the burial sites so people could easily walk up to see the scenery. For many years there were poles for electric wires going through the area and even imbedded in the side of a mound until the utility company was forced by law to remove them.
Attitudes were changing by the 1980’s and this made for changes in the area around the Indian Mounds. In 1981 the city removal of roads between the burial sites and the bluff were completed, improving the setting and relationship of landscape to the topography. Around the same time, the Dayton’s Bluff Community Council led a successful effort to place decorative fences that still remain around the mounds to protect them from thoughtless visitors.
]]>3M constantly improved its machinery and technology to develop, produce, and sell its products. Nonetheless, it was dependent on its people to get the job done. Some of these jobs no longer exist or have been completely automated.
The West Side of St. Paul originally got it's name not from the fact that it sits west of St. Paul, but because at this point of the river, the Mississippi bends from its north-south bearing, to an east-west, placing the West Side on the left or 'West' side of the river. In fact, this is the only St. Paul neighborhood on the ‘other’ side of the Mississippi River.
It took a long time for this area to become part of the city, partially because of geography and partially because this land was Dakota territory until treaties were signed in 1851. After that it was first ferry crossings, then bridges like the early woodend Wabasha street bridge that helped the early community grow. As the low lands near the river were threatened by frequent flooding, most businesses and housing sought locations higher up the bluff.
The initial Dakota, French-Canadian, German and Irish immigrants were met by subsequent eastern European and Russian Jews and later large Mexican communities. While it became it’s own city of West St. Paul at one time, it has since been reincorporated into the larger city of St. Paul.
Business such as the Yoerg and Bruggeman Breweries found favorable conditions along the caves of the sandstone bluffs. Other manufacturing industries grew as did the working communities that supported them.
Early on it was the wealthy who built their more affluent housing along the top of the bluff and much of the poorer and working class who built below. But over time there has been a more equal distribution of classes throughout the West Side.
Such churches as the Church of St. Michael at 389 S. Robert St. reflect the cultural evolution of the West Side community. Once Irish Catholic the tower has since been renamed Torre de San Miguel, in recognition of the Chicano community that now resides there.
Other notable locations include the Omaha Swing Bridge, and Harriet Island, which is one of St. Paul’s most popular festival sites and provides a grand view of the city.
"Today, much of the heart of the West Side can be seen in established Mexican segments of the neighborhood, where the culture thrives." "In fact, the West Side's Cinco de Mayo fiesta is one of the ten largest in the United States." There are also Syrian and Lebanese influences that make the West Side even more unique.
Today the West Side remains a part of St. Paul, but it’s distinctive not only in the geographic location of where it resides, but also in the culture of the communities that have helped to create it.
For more (including 8 images & 1 video) view the original article
]]>One important Frogtown landmark on Minnehaha Avenue is the West Minnehaha Recreation Center. “West Minne” is one of the city’s older recreation centers. The original Platteville limestone recreation center building was erected in 1937-38 as one of many Works Progress Administration (WPA) buildings in Saint Paul. The WPA was a federal program that provided badly needed jobs during the Great Depression. Many historic Saint Paul buildings, walls and other structures were built as a result of the WPA.
West Minne was one of numerous city parks buildings designed and built during Clarence “Cap” Wigington’s tenure with the City of Saint Paul. He is regarded as the nation’s first African-American Municipal Architect. His creations are all over the city and include the Highland Park Water Tower and the Harriet Island Pavilion.
The building has had additions and renovations over time but the Wigington building is still quite distinctive.
The playground itself dates from the 1920s and was served in its early years by a small wood frame building, which was used largely as a warming house for skaters. The wood warming house was later replaced by a small concrete structure for a time. The playground had more than one skating rink during much of its history. Men would push snow into banks to make a large pleasure skating rink. Boards and a net comprised the smaller hockey rink. Frogtown youth played hockey or skated to music. The rinks were lit for nighttime use. Music was played on a record player or phonograph in the warming house, for the pleasure rink.
As the neighborhood’s largest public space, West Minne Playground has hosted countless events over the years. Those range from neighborhood festivals to Frogtown Football teams.
The Frogtown Festival, ethnic festivals and Saint Paul Winter Carnival events were held there. Recreation center and area school sporting events and practices have also been held there. West Minne has long been used by Saint Agnes School and was used by other neighborhood schools in the past.
It’s estimated that more than two dozen kinds of sports have been played at West Minne, in the gym and on the fields, over the years.
]]>Saint Paul’s West End is Minnesota’s first urban neighborhood. With West 7th/Fort Road as its spine, it extends from Seven Corners near downtown to the overlook on the east bank of the Mississippi River across from Fort Snelling. This was also the last stretch of the historic fur trade route from Eastern states and Canada.
From the arrival of Zebulon Pike in 1805 to the West End of today, a number of recurring themes shaped this community’s development. Most symbolic of this process is the Mississippi, the Great River, which has been the integral connector for all the encounters we have experienced, understood, forgotten, and recovered.
Fort Snelling, which was constructed 1819 to 1825, at the confluence of the Minnesota and Mississippi Rivers, was built to protect our northern borders from the British and to control development in the territories. It served as the mechanism for successive treaties and distributions of former Dakota lands, which eventually resulted in supplanting the indigenous population and loss of control of their traditional lands.
For a time in the 1820s and ’30s, settlers from a Swiss colony at Fort Garry (Winnipeg), along with a mixed group of Dakota, Métis and French Canadians, were allowed to use lands adjacent to Fort Snelling. When their use of fuel and forage conflicted with the needs of Fort Snelling, they were expelled and first settled at Fountain Cave three miles downriver near what is now Randolph Avenue. A second expulsion pushed the mixed group of settlers, whiskey sellers, and ex-soldiers to begin to build around the area of the Upper Landing three miles further downstream. This settlement became the core of Saint Paul and the West End neighborhood. In the 1840s this group expanded, and with the arrival of a wave of Eastern settlers later in the decade, the growth of Saint Paul began in earnest.
As the heads of river navigation, the Lower and Upper Landings provided a destination not just for goods but also for entrepreneurs and adventurers who were ready for a new territory and the hope of a new start. Early Saint Paul’s population expanded rapidly.
The settlement of Saint Paul was established in 1849, the same year as was the Minnesota Territory. Early settlers John Irvine, whose ferryboat dock was at the Upper Landing, and Henry Rice, a fur trader who quickly made a fortune in real estate, each donated lands for future parks. These donations may have been the first real sign that a community was about to grow here.
Saint Paul became an incorporated city in 1854. Rapid development centered at Seven Corners, the major intersection that included Third Street (the “third up from the river,” now Kellogg Blvd.), Seventh Street and Eagle Street. As the population increased, the direction of development was westward along Fort Road through Uppertown. John Irvine’s land donation became Irvine Park, and many newly rich land developers and businessmen began to build homes and businesses.
Today, the West End continues to be a community of caring connections. It maintains a wide diversity of class, culture, wealth, and lifestyle, while common concerns in development, health, and quality of life sustain forward movement and assure continuity for the generations to come.
]]>(Johnson's Service Station)
-271 East Kellogg Boulevard (between Wacouta and Wall) -
- 1907, J. Walter Stevens -
Since before the Civil War, Wells Fargo expedited national parcel delivery in areas beyond the reach of railroads. By the time this building was constructed, Wells Fargo had become part of American Express, organized principally to enable immigrants to send money to their families overseas. Conveniently located near the Depot, this building served largely clerical functions, which may account for its small scale.
]]>The Saint Paul Municipal Forest is located at the eastern edge of Indian Mounds Park. Most people in the city and even in Dayton’s Bluff know that it exists as a separate entity. The twenty-five acre site is located along Burns Avenue and is centered in the general vicinity of Point Douglas Road. This tree covered area has an interesting history.
In January 1915, Senator Dunn who represented Dayton’s Bluff in the State Legislature asked the City Council to push legislation for a state appropriation providing that part of the current fish hatchery tract be procured “for the nucleus of a municipal forest for St. Paul.” In a sense, he was just asking for a return of previous city land.
A few decades earlier, Saint Paul had given the state 200 acres for a fish hatchery. It turned out that the state never needed that much acreage. As Dunn remarked that the section that had been procured to protect the springs was hilly and “would make an ideal forest.” The senator got his way and the St. Paul Municipal Forest became a reality. Beside trees, the area included trails and, at one time, a serpentine road that connected the park with the fish hatchery below.
The fish hatchery is still there, but is no longer the visitor attraction it once was, and the road is overgrown, although parts of it can be seen if people look carefully. The city web site does not include much information about the landmark, saying only that "the St. Paul Municipal Forest lies in the eastern end of Indian Mounds Park. Some twenty acres of the site was a gift from the state and was acquired in 1915. It had been a portion of the fish hatchery property that was not usable because of its high location.
]]>