While the house at 470 Hopkins Street is not on the National Register, it has a rich history that can help explain the changes over time in the Railroad Island neighborhood. The stories of the people who lived here were discovered by a researcher for the Minnesota Historical Society. The work of discovering the house’s story was done by Benjamin Filene, who also curated a major exhibit called “Open House: If These Walls Could Talk ” that opened at the History Center in 2006.
It was constructed in a manner that resembled the interior of the house. Visitors could walk through and experience how the structure changed through the years. They could see what the place looked like, how rooms were furnished, examine photos and other documents and hear spoken reminiscences. At least fifty families passed through 470 Hopkins Street between 1888 and 2003. Here are some of their stories:
Albert Schumacher, a German immigrant, took out a building permit and had a home for his family constructed in 1887. He was a successful pharmacist and even appeared in the Dual City Blue Book, a listing of prominent people in the Twin Cities. When people enter the parlor in the exhibit, they experience how Albert Schumacher mourned after his wife, Henriette, died in 1894. Remaining family members stayed there until 1908 and, while they then moved away, Albert stayed in the neighborhood, and duplexed the old house, becoming a landlord.
Filomeno Cocchiarella, his wife Rose, and a cousin bought the house from the Schumachers in 1923 and Italian relatives and friends soon joined them. Filomeno was a track repairman for a railroad and died in an accident on the job in December, 1945. Michelina D’Aloia, Filomeno’s niece, had moved into 470 Hopkins in 1932, shortly after she and her mother arrived in America from Italy.
When Michelina was learning English, she taught her mother the new language as well. She also helped neighbors study for their citizenship papers. “I taught them how to answer the questions and everything,” she recalled. “It was kind of scary, but when I went with them, I think they had a lot of confidence.” Michelina married Russell Frascone and they raised their family in the Hopkins Street until 1956 when, like other Italians, they moved to a newer part of the city. As people open the oven door in the historical exhibit, they hear the story of how her brother made sure there was enough food at her wedding, which took place during the meat-rationing days of WWII. He bought over seventy-five baby chickens and raised them in the basement of the house.
When you open the door of the simulated bathroom in the Historical Society exhibit, the story of Dick and Angie Krismer is revealed. They lived in the house between 1958 and 1967, a time in which many Italians were leaving the area and were being replaced by Asians, African American and Latinos. The Krismers had what at the time was called a “mixed marriage”--he was German and she was Italian. Dick worked at a slaughterhouse in South St. Paul and the screams of the pigs permanently damaged his hearing. They raised four children in a small unit and remembered having to have an “assembly line” when it was bath time.
In the 1960s and 1970s, there were fewer ethnic people who moved in and most of those newcomers were poor. Though they often had blue collar skills, there were fewer jobs because of industrialization. By the 1980s and the 1990s, the people that lived at 470 Hopkins were diverse. African American, American Indian, Latino, and Hmong were among the residents.
The phrase “Nyob Zoo!”--hello in Hmong-- is written over the door as people enter the 2002-2005 era in the exhibit. Pang Toua and his wife Mai Vang, lived in the house during that time. Pang was a soldier in the CIA-supported Hmong army in Laos. In 1975., after the American forces withdrew from Southeast Asia, he and his family of six children fled. After spending four years in a Pathet Lao work camp and two more in a Thai refugee camp, they reluctantly left their homeland and arrived in Minnesota in 1986. There is a Hmong shaman shrine In the living room and the view out the window dissolves into scenes of Laos and Thai refugee camps.
470 Hopkins is a triplex today with a new side entrance. The spacious front porch shown in an early photo has long been enclosed and the third floor where Italian families cured sausages is gone, destroyed in a 1970 fire. All of the Victorian decorations on the exterior have disappeared and the structure is now sheathed in smooth pink siding. This ordinary house was picked almost at random by Minnesota Historical Society, because they had an old photo of the location. It was a good choice, because this house turned out to be a rich microcosm of the stories that help explain the development of the entire neighborhood. So in a way, walls can talk.
]]>Swede Hollow. Even though it has been gone for half a century, there are people who still remember it fondly. A number of articles have been written about its history, often in a nostalgic manner. Some say it was a slum, while others think it was a nurturing community that welcomed waves of immigrants to their first home in a new land. It was not large--around eighteen acres-- bisected by a creek and tucked into a valley with sixty to eighty foot high cliffs that hid its homes from the outside world.
An 1886 newspaper headline declared it “A Foreign Settlement in the Midst of St. Paul.” The article said that the area had a “quaint appearance” in the midst of a “still more quaint and picturesque surrounding.” One winter day a reporter had taken a look at “the little hamlet of shanties” that was “filled with a “flaxen-haired population.” According to The St. Paul Globe, the area was almost exclusively residential. “There are no stores, a single saloon being the only public place within the valley.” It was in “the front room of a little shanty and is kept by a woman.”
Swedish immigrants began settling there in the 1860s. According to the 1886 visitor, there were around 110 families in the hollow and the total population was estimated at around 600. Nels Hokanson, a Swedish man who grew up there, wrote about some of his families activities: “In the evenings friends often came to share the warmth, drink coffee, take snuff or smoke their curved Swedish pipes,” Nels wrote. “Mother spun wool or knitted and listened to the talk from her place in a corner under a picture of King Oscar II of Sweden.” While there were a variety of immigrants who settled there, those of Scandinavian predominated in the early years and the area became known as “Svenska Dalen” or Swede Hollow.
As the Swedish moved "up onto the street," others took over their spots starting in the early 1900’s. One of former residents was Gentille Yarusso, who later wrote about the community. "Our people chose this place because they were with their own countrymen, with familiar faces, family noises, gestures, facial expressions,” he remembered. “This enchanted landscape...resembled the place they had left behind. They loved the hills, the trees, the stream, the security of friends and relatives."
During the WWII era a stream of Mexicans began joining the Swede Hollow colony, adding their own customs and, as those before them, finding jobs. They eventually started a small chapel that met in a former railroad boxcar. Alberta Silva Rodriquez was among the last people to live there. She remembered times of sharing, when the Mexican women would trade onions, garlic and peppers for Italian bread cooked in outdoor ovens. Her mother and an Italian neighbor were able to communicate. “I don’t know how,” Alberta said, “but they did.”
In December 1956, the city Health Department decided that since Swede Hollow had no sewer or city water service it was a health hazard. The last fourteen families were moved out and the remaining homes burned down by the Fire Department. Thanks to the efforts of Friends of Swede Hollow and the city of St. Paul the hollow has been revitalized and is once again a center of the community.
In 1973 Swede Hollow was designated a Saint Paul Park. The restoration of Swede Hollow as a park was the Saint Paul Garden Club's Bicentennial project, for which they received a major award. A section of Phalen Creek, which had been diverted into a large storm sewer, was “daylighted” so it flowed through pools that attracted wildlife. Visitors could walk or bike through the park on new trails. There are a few reminders of the old days seen in sporadic remains of stone foundations and flowers that were planted in immigrant yards.
]]>The Brunson House, located at 485 Kenney Street and built around 1856, is thought to be the oldest brick residence in St. Paul. Its original owner was Benjamin W. Brunson who was born in Michigan and went with his parents to Wisconsin in 1835. He purchased an interest in the Chippewa Falls Mill in 1844 and three years later came to St. Paul. Once here, he assisted in surveying the first town plat with his brother Ira.
During the Civil War Benjamin served three years in the Eighth Minnesota Infantry Regiment and worked his way up from private to lieutenant. He became a lawyer and was a member of the first and second territorial legislatures.
He bought land on the eastern edge of Trout Brook and laid out what was known as "Brunson's Addition," where he built his own residence for his wife and three children. He was active in a variety of areas, including assisting Harriet Bishop in setting up the first Sunday school in the city. He was also a member of the Masons, a charter member of the I. O. O. F. and an active member of the Old Settlers Association.
According to one contemporary writer, at the age of 62 Brunson was “a quiet and unobtrusive man with decided opinions of his own and quite independent in character. He is not a large man; moves and talks in a moderate manner, and he thinks a good deal more than he talks” and was “bright, cheerful and active.” He died at the age of 73 and is buried in Oakland Cemetery. The Brunson House, located in the Railroad Island neighborhood, was placed on the National Register of Historic Places in 1975.
]]>Benjamin Brunson, a surveyor of Saint Paul in 1847, planned Brunson’s Addition in what is now lower Payne Avenue. The neighborhood had pleasing views of Trout Brook, Phalen Creek and downtown, because no railroads had yet cut through the area. The area is approximately 180 acres in size and is bounded by railroad tracks on the north and west, Swede Hollow Park on the east and East 7th Street on the south.
Railroad Island was one of a few early neighborhoods that developed just outside downtown Saint Paul in the 1850’s. Initially it attracted fairly prosperous residents who liked the views of Trout Brook to the west. As a result, many Victorian houses were built in the area in the late nineteenth century on Burr, Brunson, Minnehaha, Desoto, Mt. Ida, and other streets.
But with the arrival of railroads, with their noisy and smoky engines, many people decided to move to newer areas in the western part of the city. In fact, the encirclement of the neighborhood by several railroads is where it got its name.
As the elite left, the community slowly developed into a blue collar area. Historically, the majority of the housing in Railroad Island was single-family and owner-occupied. Many neighborhood residents worked at the nearby brewery, Whirlpool, 3-M, the railroads and other East Side businesses. When an major influx of Italian immigrants started around 1910, a large number of them came to Railroad Island. Many hailed from the Benevento region of Italy, near Naples.
There were a number of important Italian institutions that developed in the community. St. Ambrose Catholic Church was created to serve the Italian community and was headed up by Msgr Louis Pioletti for several decades. On St. Joseph’s Day the men carried statues through the streets. There were special feast days for St. Anthony, and Mary. In addition, there were numerous restaurants and other speciality shops in lower Payne Avenue.
In recent years, closings and employment cut-backs have taken jobs and, with them, economic and social stability from the neighborhood. Owner-occupied housing slowly converted to rental units which generally has resulted in a lower level of maintenance of the neighborhood's housing. However, there are still many homeowners who savor the historic homes in the area. Railroad is now quite diverse in its population but then, hasn’t it always been?
]]>Phalen Creek was a spring fed-stream flowing from Lake Phalen through a deep ravine that ancient waters had gouged from the land. It ended up forming a small delta on the Mississippi River floodplain. Surrounded by trees and wetlands, it served as a corridor for songbirds and other wildlife. The local Dakota, who lived nearby, surely fished there and hunted along its banks.
When Father Louis Hennepin, a Franciscan priest and explorer was paddling up the Mississippi in 1680, his group met a Dakota war party who detained him and beached his canoe at the creek’s confluence with the Mississippi River. He is usually considered the first European person to visit Phalen Creek.
Shortly after Minnesota became a territory, Edward Phalen took up a claim on the creek that would later be named for him. In 1844 he sold it to William Dugas, who built Saint Paul's first saw and grist mill there. The meandering waterway would have a long-lasting impact on the East Side neighborhood and its water power led to the economic investment that brought settlers into the area.
The ample water supply and sandstone cliffs in which storage spaces could be dug were attractive and the site once housed at least four different breweries. The most significant of these was the one built at the northeast corner of Greenbrier and Minnehaha. Andrew Keller, a native of Germany, established the Pittsburgh Brewery there in 1860. Five years later he sold his small plant to Theodore Hamm, and he and his family transformed it into one of the largest breweries in the country.
After the Civil War, railroads were built in the area and one of them ran along the route of Phalen Creek and attracted industries that brought people to the East Side. The banks of the creek were also homes of Swede Hollow and Connemara Patch, two immigrant settlements. While these residents got their drinking water from artesian wells, they used creek for washing, watering their small gardens and some residents put their outhouses on stilts across the stream.
There were some dangers. Occasional heavy rains turned the creak into a raging torrent. In the spring of 1897, six year old Margaret Connelly slipped on a rock walkway across the creek near East Fifth Street and was swept into a sewer and drowned. Her parents investigated suing Saint Paul for lack of safety near the sewers, but the courts found that no liability attached to the city.
Over time, the creek was deployed into large storm and creek sewers and by the middle 1930’s all of the waterway was contained in a huge storm water system. While the Swede Hollow and Connemara Patch communities no longer exist, there is still a creek. But you can no longer see it, because it now runs underground from Phalen Lake to the Mississippi River.
]]>The Payne Avenue State Bank, a two-story brick building at 961-63 Payne Avenue, was constructed in 1923. With its four large classical columns it is probably the most impressive building on the commercial corridor of this part of the East Side. The building served as a center of commerce on a street that was, and is, a major contributor of the city’s immigrant history.
When it opened the avenue was filled with Scandinavian businesses and it became locally known as “The Swedish Bank Building. Over the years, the bank was the financial backbone of the early Scandinavians, Germans, Italians, and other settlers who established their cultural life in the neighborhood.
The bank was designed in a Beaux-Arts style by William L. Alban, who graduated from the Chicago School of Architecture. He began his practice in St. Paul in 1906 and specialized in church and school architecture with a concern for creating what was called “formal order.” He designed the Asbury Methodist Episcopal Church of St. Paul on Saint Paul’s East Side. He worked with a number of different architects and often teamed up with Charles Hausler. Alban died on July 1, 1961 and the bank he designed was listed on the National Register of Historic Places in 2007.
By the mid-1990s, after years of neglect, the Old Swedish Bank had fallen into disrepair. The East Side Neighborhood Development Company (ESNDC) acquired the building in 1999, but the costs and challenges of redeveloping it proved so difficult that it stood vacant until 2005. ESNDC then partnered with the local Neighborhood Development Center and successfully created a plan for the building. It would mirror its historic role in the neighborhood as a trusted institution where residents could go for services to build assets for their families. It also provides financial planning and employment opportunities.
By 2007 they had completed an award-winning renovation of the historic bank. The building now houses a variety of finance related groups. There are small business opportunities as well as education and training. Different organizations provide financial services and counseling, economic development, business growth and individual asset building through providing culturally-specific training and education services.
The renovation of the Payne Avenue State Bank, which works for economic development, historic renovation, and revitalization, serves as a powerful symbol of economic re-birth and opportunity for the entire community. Today, Payne Avenue and the old “Swedish Bank” are renewing those collaborative roles.
]]>Casa Bella Plaza Latina — whose building was once slated to become a pawn shop--is a colorful mercado with a wide variety of locally owned businesses. Its 35,000-square-foot commercial space is located at 925 Payne Avenue. The project was driven by a cooperative of ten emerging Latino entrepreneurs. The renovation also provided refurbished office space for the East Side Neighborhood Development Company (ESNDC) which was one of the sponsors of the project.
With the booming growth of Latinos on the East Side, congregation members of the nearby Sacred Heart Church asked the organizers of the Mercado Central project in Minneapolis to help develop a similar enterprise in Saint Paul. Plaza Latina was established on Payne Avenue by members of the Mercado Central development team in collaboration with ESNDC.
In 2000 the first economic forum was implemented and led to business planning and leadership development and between then and 2002 the project opened with its first ten tenants. They were the initial Latino businesses to open on the East Side of the city. Today the plaza contains, among other things, a small restaurant, a jewelry store, dress shop, a hair salon, an alteration business, an insurance agency, and two non-profit service agencies.
Other new Latino enterprises have joined the older businesses that have served the community for many years -- a clothing and school uniform operation, a speciality work shoe store, a steak house, an antique shop, a few few bars and restaurants and the headquarters of the East Side Arts organization. Since then, many other Latino operations have moved into the avenue, ranging from restaurants, groceries, clothing stores and speciality shops in a manner similar to that of the Swedes, Italians and other immigrants throughout Payne Avenues history.
]]>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.
]]>Morelli’s, located at 535 Tedesco Street on the northwest corner of Payne Avenue, has been in the Italian food business since 1915. James Morelli and his young wife recognized that the growing number of immigrants who lived in the area were eager to find a taste of home, so they began stocking pasta, polenta and olive oil and other items.
Initially the Morelli family lived in Swede Hollow, joining many other Italian families who were filling in behind departing Scandinavians. According to the 1919 city directory the family was living above their store at 564 Bradley Street. By the 1930s the grocery had moved to its present location at 535 Collins Street, now named Tedesco.
Matthew “Matt” Morelli, the next generation to take over the store, was born in Swede Hollow. As a youngster he worked at the grocery and would lug purchases from the family store down the stairs to deliver to the residents of the small settlement along Phalen Creek.
The Italian specialty market was more than just a grocery store. It was a gathering place for the community and a place to go for help. If people had a problem, they could go upstairs to Matt’s office and he would assist newcomers to get jobs. After he had a stroke and had to rely on a wheelchair, he would still come to the store for a few hours a day.
Even now local Italians carry on many of the old traditions, especially when it came to food. On Christmas eve, the Morellis gather for a traditional Italian meal of salted codfish and chestnuts. In the spring they had Easter pizza. “And no matter what my mother would cook for Thanksgiving,” said one relative, “my father or grandfather would always want macaroni of some kind.”
As times changed, Morelli’s Market began to sell fewer groceries and more wine and beer — much of it imported from the old country. But it still has food, because they were grandfathered in after liquor stores could no longer offer groceries in Minnesota. There is still a nice selection of pastas, sauces, fresh olives and an old fashioned meat department that includes a variety of Italian cheeses and sausages.
]]>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 Creek beds on the east side of Downtown, and then by the railroads that followed those corridors. Payne Avenue became the primary business district for the East Side, serving its many neighborhoods.
By the time St. Paul was settled in the 1850s, Phalen Creek had cut a corridor from Lake Phalen to the Mississippi River just east of Downtown. Here is where much of the first industry was established and first residents lived.
If one characteristic defined the East Side throughout its history, it is that it has been a place for newcomers. In the late nineteenth century, the Irish, Germans, Swedes and Italians made the East Side their home. As early as the 1860s, newly arriving Swedish immigrants made their way to settle in the abandoned shacks of fur trappers on the banks of the Phalen Creek ravine. Called “Svenska Dalen,” or Swedish Dale, the modest neighborhood soon was known as Swede Hollow.
Many of the men in the Hollow were day laborers, climbing the long stairway out of the ravine each day to work. Women took in sewing or laundry, and often cared for boarders in the home in addition to their families.
By 1915, most Swedes moved out of the ravine and north along Payne Avenue. But Swede Hollow continued to be an initial entry point for new residents, and Italians replaced Swedes in the Hollow. Arriving by trains, many immigrants were met by Joseph Yarusso, one of the first Italians in the Hollow, who took it upon himself to help the newcomers. The Italians, like the Swedes before them, eventually moved up the hill and became largely identified with the Railroad Island neighborhood.
Mexican Americans, who came to St. Paul beginning in the 1920s, inhabited Swede Hollow until 1956, when the area was vacated and deemed unfit for habitation. In time, the area would turn into the park it is today.
But it was up on the hill where the east side thrived. Payne Avenue and its adjacent streets buzzed with restaurants, grocery and clothing stores. The large businesses of 3M, Seeger Refrigeration and Hamm’s made development and housing boom in the area. And streetcars carried the many residents through adjacent arteries, and also back and forth from downtown.
While the 1970s saw a decline as many major industries closed, the area is now in a renaissance period due greatly to the more recent immigrants of the east side. In fact it was East-Siders like congressman Bruce Vento, himself of Italian immigrant ancestry that identified with the plight of the Hmong after the Vietnam War and was instrumental in helping establish the Hmong presence on the East Side. It was groups like these Hmong, Hispanics, and other more recent arrivals, that carried on the East Side immigrant tradition and are greatly to thank for the East Side’s survival.
Today, as popular Gastropubs, organic farms, and artist communities take root, it’s important to remember the immigrant tradition that defines and has determined the culture of this East Side neighborhood.
For more (including 14 images & 1 video) view the original article
]]>