At the corner of Baker Street and Ohio is Engine House #21, a great example of early adaptive reuse. Built in 1910 for horse-drawn equipment, it is a pleasing example of fire station design with a…

A short distance west of Engine House #21 and turning north on Smith Avenue, you will eventually cross the Mississippi River on the Smith High Bridge. Of the first three bridges in the area, the High…

The story of Dayton’s Bluff begins on top of the bright white cliffs over-looking St. Paul, where the great Mississippi River cut hundreds of feet downwards into the sedimentary rock, forming the…

The electric streetcar service began on Selby Avenue in 1890. St. Anthony Hill, however, proved to be a vexatious impediment; the steep grade made for slow and hard going travel, especially in winter.…

Since 1840, St. Paul has taken on different identities: frontier hamlet, steamboat burg, provincial capital, and railroad boomtown. These transformations have left their marks all over town. Nowhere…

Located in the North End neighborhood, Rice Street began as a commercial corridor that served St. Paul’s working class. Rice Street is unassuming; when it was rushed into being, more than a century…

St. Paul’s Frogtown neighborhood has always been one of the city’s succession neighborhoods, welcoming generation after generation of newcomers to the capital city and the United States. Frogtown also…

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…

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…

Set on the hills overlooking downtown St. Paul and the Mississippi River, the East Side has always been separated from the rest of the city, first by the marshy ground of the Trout Brook and Phalen…

Jackson and Mount Airy Streets The original Mount Airy neighborhood was one of modest, immigrant housing along winding and crooked streets. It was originally home to workers for the area’s…

Capitol Heights is the neighborhood north of the state capitol complex. It historically was a mix of modest homes, apartments or flats, and a group of mansions along University and Sherburne avenues…

Most of the original Rondo Avenue and much of the historic Rondo neighborhood were destroyed when Interstate 94 was built. The street was named for an early settler, Joseph Rondeau. Part of the…

Part of what was historically Lower Rice Street was lost due to urban renewal, construction of the Saint Paul Sears store, University Avenue widening and the state capitol complex expansion. Some…

Jackson Preparatory Magnet School, 437 Edmund Avenue, is the only Saint Paul Public School left in the neighborhood. The oldest section of the current building dates from 1924. The building was…

Frogtown had parochial schools including Saint Agnes (530 W. Lafond Av.), Saint Adalbert (260 W. Edmund Av.) and Saint Vincent (645 Virginia St.) Catholic schools and Trinity/Saint Stephanus and Saint…

Saint Adalbert School, 260 W. Edmund Avenue. The school first opened its doors in 1882, using spaces including the priest’s residence and the sacristy as classroom space. A wooden school was built and…

Trinity/Saint Stephanus Lutheran School got its start downtown in 1861 as Trinity Lutheran School. In 1888, the church congregation bought property at Lafond and Grotto and built a new two-story…

Less is known about Saint Matthew’s Lutheran School at 501 N. Dale St. Some histories indicate that the congregation did briefly operate a school. But other histories indicate the building, which…

Saint Vincent de Paul began in 1888 to serve Frogtown’s Irish Catholics. Its congregation has many Hmong members today. In 1888 the local conference of the St. Vincent de Paul Society opened a…