- 652-658 Sherburne Avenue - This complex at 652-658 Sherburne Ave. has large porches and a rough brick block exterior that on first glance appears to be stone. There is a similar building at…

Fort Snelling (constructed 1819-25), 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…

Construction of the Horace P. Rugg mansion was completed in 1887, at an estimated cost of $24,500. Rugg built his fortune selling railway, plumbing, and pump supplies. Designed by the firm of Hodgson…

Horseshoer seems like a little bit of an exotic profession today, but in the 19th century--in fact until the 1920's--a motorized truck could not haul as much weight as a draft horse and wagon. While…

Stormwater facilities at the Saint Paul Port Authority’s Beacon Bluff Business Center treat rainwater as a resource that is used to recharge groundwater, irrigate landscaping, as well as enhance and…

Some 12,000 years ago, groups of people followed the big game up the Mississippi River as the glaciers melted. If they happened to stop in what is today’s Indian Mounds Park they must have been awed…

“Thermo-Fax”  “It all started with writer’s cramp.” When Dr. Carl S. Miller was doing research and taking hand-written notes for his doctorate in physical chemistry at the University of Minnesota,…

Federal and state transportation authorities wanted to connect Highway 5 with Interstate 94 by running a six-lane freeway between the two, dividing the West End neighborhoods and cutting off the area…

Closely allied to the Omaha’s Randolph Street Shops was the Orme Brass and Iron Works at Drake and Armstrong streets, a foundry that furnished a range of cast iron and brass items to the railroad’s…

John Irvine’s gift to the young village had seen its zenith and a long decline, and so became a target for urban renewal. Many of the houses in the area were owned by absentee landlords and subdivided…

After a lengthy war between England and France (which had laid claim to the area that included today’s St. Paul), they ceded the land to England in the treaty of 1763. Eager to find out the nature of…

By the early 1900s, the river flats of Upper Landing gradually passed to the Italian immigrants from the region of Molise in south-central Italy. “Little Italy” was a thriving, almost self-contained…

- 258-60 East Fifth Street (between Wacouta and Wall) - 1883 - This narrow storefront preserves the scale of Saint Paul buildings from the generation preceding the warehouses that dominate…

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…

(Empire Builder Business Park) - 23-27 Empire Drive - Built in 1882, the shops and the people who worked in them did every aspect of work imaginable for locomotives, freight and passenger rail…

The house at 485 Summit was built in 1907 for James and Minnesota “Minne” Macleod. The home is Tudor in style and was designed by James Macleod, who made a living as an architect. Built for a cost of…

240 Summit Avenue // Saint Paul, MN 55102 Take a 75-minute guided tour of the National Historic Register home of railroad baron.

- Saint Paul Early Settler, 1799-1884 - James Thompson arrived at Fort Snelling as a slave in 1827. He married an Ojibwe woman and learned the language. In the 1830s, he was hired by missionary…

- 481-483 Edmund Avenue - The James Tracy Double House is a 2 ½ story duplex that has kept its charming wooden gingerbread porch and other building features. It was built in 1890.

On your way up Humboldt, take a left on Winifred Street and stop at Jerabek’s New Bohemian Coffeehouse and Bakery. There is nothing historic about the building, but the family has been operating a…