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.

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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 has been home to several generations of the same families, who are proud to live here. Diversity is a word synonymous with Frogtown – not just in terms of the community’s ethnic and socio-economic makeup, but also when looking at the neighborhood’s civic and service organizations, faith-based groups, schools, businesses and industries.

St. Paul’s Frogtown area today is considered to be bordered by University Avenue on the south, over to Lexington Parkway, up to Minnehaha Ave. and running to Rice Street on the East. Now considered District 7, this area was once referred to as the Thomas Dale area and now contains the Mount Airy, Capitol Heights, Lower Rice Street, East Midway and Northern Rondo neighborhoods.

Frogtown began its start as St. Paulites moved northward from downtown into an area that was then wetland. In fact, it was this swampy area and it’s frog song serenade that gave it the name Froschburg, or Frog City, by the German - Bohemains who had moved there. Much of the German, Scandinavian and Polish immigrants found employment on the St. Paul and Pacific Railroad, which runs just north of Frogtown. Several of the oldest of the Jackson Street Rail Shops can be seen on Sherburne, Charles and Como, east of Rice Street.

University Avenue established itself as the main route connecting St. Paul to Minneapolis, before the creation of Highway 94. It therefore became the key commercial center of the neighborhood and street cars traveling between the two Twin Cities, helped the businesses boom along this much traveled route. One of the oldest commercial buildings that stills exists is the Ford Building at 117 W. University.

Of the many churches in the area, the German-Catholic Church of St. Agnes is one of the most notable architectural landmarks in Frogtown. It’s Baroque style spire has been a neighborhood icon since 1912.

In time, the building of highway 94 replaced University as the main route between the Twin Cities and led to the destruction of the predominantly African American Rondo neighborhood in the 1960’s. Much of this community would head north to reestablish itself in Frogtown.

Later, other immigrant groups such as Hmong, Vietnamese, Somali and Latinos, would create much of the character of the University Ave. area. Halal meat markets and pho noodle restaurants offer a variety of culinary experiences. Other important features of Frogtown include the Rondo library and community center, the No. 18 fire station and the Hmong-American farmers market at Unidale.

While the construction of the light rail Metro Transit Green Line, had some adverse impact on the flow through the area, its completion in 2014 will undoubtedly return the University route through Frogtown, as one of the liveliest, well traveled and booming commercial districts in the Twin Cities - an historic echo of the flourishing days of long ago.

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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 ago, there was no time for ornamentation or ostentation.

Despite its utilitarian appearance, Rice Street has a character that is unique to the street and the North End. A trip along Rice Street reveals a rich neighborhood history with ethnic and working class roots. Rice Street was and is a street that works.

The street takes its name from Henry Rice (1816-1894) who came to St. Paul via the fur trade. Rice settled here in 1849 and quickly made a fortune, chiefly in real estate.

Then he went into politics, eventually becoming one of Minnesota’s first U.S. senators (1857-63). Rice served as a regent of the University of Minnesota, president of the Minnesota Historical Society, and treasurer of Ramsey County.

As you walk north on Rice Street from University, there is a mixture of religious and commercial buildings, some of which are a remnant of a small Romanian community, which made a striking contribution to the street’s landscape. Both the St. Mary’s Romanian Orthodox Church and St. Bernard’s Church have their roots in the Austro-Hungarian Empire.

As a streetcar route, Rice Street was once home to twenty-four grocers, butchers, confectioners, and bakers operating between Atwater Street and Maryland Avenue. Though less than half of the original commercial buildings still stand, Rice has few vacant lots or empty storefronts. The best place to catch a glimpse of the Rice Street of old is at the southern end, starting at Atwater Street and looking north. Here, nearer downtown, more old structures survived than on the northern stretches. These blocks were also home to some of Rice’s longest-lasting enterprises.

St. Paul’s historic Oakland cemetery is another site worthy of a visit in the Rice Street area. With roots going back to 1853, this non-denominational cemetery was designed with aesthetics in mind. Notable features include St. Paul’s firefighter’s memorial, the Soldier’s rest and contains the graves of such prominent Minnesotans as  former Governor Ramsey, Henry Sibley and Henry Rice himself.

Rice St. continues to thrive and buzz with much the same activity as it had since in it’s street car days and is a vibrant connection between St. Paul and the surrounding communities.

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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 can one see them better than on Cathedral Hill, which was known in day’s past as St. Anthony Hill.

At the Hill District’s beginning, you will find remnants of the empire-building years of the late 19th-century. Here lived people of wealth, ambition, and ostentation. The site offers one of the city’s best views: to the north, the Capitol; to the east, downtown below and Dayton’s Bluff in the distance; and to the southeast, Cherokee Heights. The observer blessed with imagination may see it as it was before transformed by the human hand: the tree-lined river gorge, the great turn of the river to the south, low hills rising on the left, white cliffs, sandbars in the channel, and wetlands and woods where downtown now stands.

As St. Paul expanded, the wealthy desired a location atop the bluffs, as a grand view of the river valley, a place above the industrial air and close proximity to their businesses below. Initially, only the wealthy had the means to transport themselves up the bluff. But later, stagecoach and streetcar routes afforded middle and working class citizens a means of traveling from work below to their homes up on the hill.

Beginning in 1890, the three streetcar lines ranged west from St. Anthony Hill along the parallel Grand Avenue, Rondo Avenue, and Selby Avenue. When the Selby streetcar route was developed, it ran every 3 minutes at peak times, along a newly established commercial route. This period marked the greatest boom in residential and commercial construction. However, 1922 ordinance prevented the building of multi-family dwellings thus preserving much of the original appearance to this day.

This area also included the Rondo neighborhood which sat north, where Highway 94 is today. The highways construction destroyed the vibrant African American community which had survived almost independently. Forced migrations scattered residents throughout the more depressed areas of Selby and University. Recovering from varying degrees of urban flight and red-lining, Selby is an area of resurgence, with an influx of new businesses and home ownership.

As you tour the area, you’ll visit the grand Roman Catholic Cathedral, completed in 1915. A visit here is akin to traveling back to ancient Rome and truly one of the greatest architectural marvels in the United States.

Although modest in comparison, a short trip down the hill from the Cathedral are some of Cass Gilbert's most exemplary works in religious architecture. Across from Boyd park on Selby is the Virginia Street Swedenborgian Church and four blocks northwest of there is Dayton Avenue Presbyterian Church - the first of which houses one of the longest-established congregations in the city. Other prominent buildings in the area in between the two churches on Selby and Western are the Dacotah Building, once the W.A. Frost Pharmacy, and the Blair Flats, which was once Hotel Albion, then the Angus Hotel.

Around Summit, you’ll also see such structures as the Governor’s Mansion, F.Scott Fitzgerald’s birthplace home, Stuart Driscoll house, the oldest on Summit, and even the rare remnants of the streetcar rails. The new light rail harbors a return to the connectedness of this area to a larger community, and the great potential that it brings.

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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 bluffs. This natural landmark attracted the first inhabitants who built burial mounds that can still be found upon this sacred site. Later, the Dakota would call the area Imniza Ska, meaning white cliff and their large seasonal village of Kaposia could be found just down river.

This bluff also stands on top of the sacred Wakan Tipi cave or “Dwelling of the Great Mystery” later called Carver's Cave, after Jonathan Carver, the first British explorer to visit and witness the impressive site.

Soon after the coming of the first explorers, and the U.S. achieved independence, other immigrants began to arrive, including fur traders and soldiers from Fort Snelling.

Claims were made, farming land was established and homes were built atop the bluff, by wealthy speculators such as Lyman Dayton and his wife Maria, for whom the area is named.

Before the railroad cut through a portion of Carver’s cave and filled the land below, the area was a vast swamp that separated it from downtown St. Paul, before bridges connected these two points. Phalen Creek, which fed this swamp, attracted many of the first flour, feed and lumber mills and here working-class neighborhoods grew.

The 1860's saw the growth of German and Irish communities, and businesses, churches and cultural institutions began to flourish. The wealthier began to build large houses higher on the hills - the most prominent being the Hamm’s mansion which overlooked his large brewery below.

Industries like the Hamm’s Brewery and the railroad provided new economic opportunities for the waves of immigrants coming into the area. Neighborhoods like Swede Hollow and Connemara Patch, separated by the 7th Street improvement arches, flourished along the Phalen Creek Ravine.

Soon, businesses like 3M and Whirlpool brought additional economic prosperity and housing flourished, up and beyond the ravine.

While Phalen Creek has since been placed underground and many of the mansions that topped the bluff no longer stand, much of Dayton’s bluff remains the same.

Today, Dayton’s Bluff is alive with vibrant insitutions like Metro State University and a more recent immigrant population that continues to build the character of the East Side of St. Paul.

But at any moment, you can travel back...

As you walk the bluff you can imagine the first indigenous peoples looking out across the marshy valley and vast river below, see yourself as an original pioneer hunting deer and meeting with the Dakota people, listen to the steamboat whistles and chugging locomotives coming up from the river valley, and watch the first aeroplane fly over the light tower, as you look down, seeing St. Paul for what it truly is, a gateway to our past and our future, flowing with the ever running river current below.

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