- 265 South Exchange Street // Saint Paul, MN 55102 -
Take a trip back in time to the 19th century and visit one of the best-preserved Victorian houses in the country; this was the home of Alexander Ramsey, Minnesota's first territorial governor. Located near the historic Irvine Park neighborhood, it makes a memorable addition to a day of sightseeing, dining and shopping.
]]>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 intercity freight was transported by the most modern technology available--steam and electric railroads--local freight cartage was carried in the same way it had been for centuries--by "teamsters" who drove a team of horses.
Horseshoeing was vital and indispensable to horse-drawn transportation. Horses that are used for work on hard surfaces require horseshoes to preserve the hoof. Wild horses did not have needed a harder hoof since they spent most of their time feeding and roaming grassy, soft areas. Their hooves wore down at the correct rate for their needs. Once horses were domesticated, they spent more time on roads and city streets. Hooves now wore down too quickly, and were damaged. A metal horseshoe, uniquely fitted to the animal, gives the horse stability and protection from these new elements that nature did not design their hooves for.
Horseshoeing was closely allied with blacksmithing, or working with and shaping iron, and once the work horse had passed from the scene, many horseshoers, like Abraham Knoble, turned to full time blacksmithing at 1741 W 7th St., long since torn down.
William Latchford, Local 28's "Sergeant-at-Arms," was employed by Engine Company No. 8 of the St Paul Fire Department. Lest it be forgotten, the Department's motive power was, of course, provided by horses for all of the 19th century.
"Leather Workers on Horse Goods"
The 19th century labor unions were broadly representative of these circumstances. Not only were the horseshoers engaged in maintaining the free flow of horse-powered commerce, the members of St Paul's Leather Workers on Horse Goods Local Union 19 manufactured a myriad of leather implements essential to keeping the nags moving--harnesses, reins, collars and, yes, horsewhips.
While no one ethnic group predominated in this industry, there is a strong indication that Germans played a large part--the union's official monthly publication,The Leather Workers' Journal, had a regular feature re-printing news from the German language and Berlin-based Sattler-Zeitung, the organ of the Sattler Verbande, or Saddle Makers Union.
One of the Bohemian West End workers enrolled in the St Paul union local was Frank J Jelinek, the Secretary-Treasurer, and an employee of the Scheffer-Rossum Company, who lived at 301 Goodhue St, just a short walk to the CSPS Hall. Brother Jelinek reported in the August, 1906 issue of the union's Journal that a spirited baseball tournament, involving teams from Scheffer and Rossum, and the PRL Hardenbergh Company, among others. The contests took place at Schmidt's Park and the winning team was awarded a barrel of the brewery's best beer.
]]>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.
]]>Workers from Bohemia, and other Slavic minorities within the Austro-Hungarian Empire did not predominate in a single industry, like the Germans. Their most enduring monument is the three-story Czech and Slovak Protective Society building just off W 7th Street at Michigan St., which celebrated its 125th anniversary in 2012.
The Czech and Slovak “Sokol,” a word meaning literally “falcon,” but with the sense of “club” or “organization” was a group dedicated to health and physical and mental exercise, like the German turnvereins, predominantly composed of “freethinkers,”— religious non-believers, or at least non-participants. The St. Paul CSPS hall, located next door to the Bohemian St. Stanislaus Catholic church, makes an interesting counterpoint. According to oral tradition, an early priest at the parish used to visit the CSPS to have a drink or two with the infidels.
One member of Rad Cech No. 12, meaning essentially Czech Sokol No. 12, Jan Rachac, was the lead carpenter in the construction of the Minnesota State Capitol, and a member of Carpenters Local 87. He also did fine finish work on the James J. Hill mansion on Summit Avenue. He built his home at 309 Harrison Street nearby. Although substantially altered over the years, the house is still there.
]]>German workers and German bosses had a monopoly on brewing beer in St Paul, as they did almost everywhere in the United States in the 19th and early 20th centuries. As historian Gary Brueggeman has explained (“Beer Capital of the State-St Paul’s Historic Family Breweries”) St Paul had several advantages: It had the largest German population in the state, including many skilled “braumeisters” who emigrated here as early as the 1840’s, bringing their tradition of creating, distributing and consuming “lager” beer. Unlike the venerable ale, which is brewed warm, lager beer requires cold temperatures for brewing and must be stored at temperatures in the 40’s for aging. “Lager” in fact is the German word for “storehouse.”
St Paul conveniently afforded ready-made facilities for cold storage: sandstone caves which maintained constant temperatures year round. Additional storage could be readily excavated out of the soft stone composing the bluffs along the river. Brewing began here as early as 1848 with the establishment of Anthony Yoerg’s brewery in the Seven Corners vicinity.
Breweries on the West End included the North Mississippi Brewery, owned by the Banholzer family, whose Teutonic mansion at 689 Stewart Ave still stands, although the brewery was closed in 1904. “Banholzer Park,” located nearby, included a beer garden (of course) and other amenities, and was the site, on several occasions, of the official Labor Day celebration hosted by the St Paul Trades and Labor Assembly. Of course the buildings composing the mighty Schmidt Brewery, which lasted into the present era, are still there on West Seventh Street, as is the “Marie Schmidt Bremer House” at 855 W 7th St, originally built by brewer Christopher Stahlmann.
The Brewery Workers Union conducted its local affairs entirely in German—tough luck for the handful of brewery workers who spoke languages other than German. The national organization in particular reflected the influence and inspiration of the Marxist German Social Democratic Party, inscribing at the top of its letterhead, “Workers of the World Unite!” The minutes of Local 97 denominate their members as “genosssen,” the same term used for membership in the German socialist party, the equivalent of “comrade” in English. And, perhaps more significantly, the Brewery Workers, joined by the United Mine Workers of America, were the only unions in the craft union-based American Federation of Labor that organized on an industrial basis, taking in every worker in the industry, whether a braumeister, a maltster, an stationary engineer, a teamster, a laborer, or, apparently, a saloon owner, although the national union constitutionally barred the latter from membership. The records of Local 97 show Hubert Theissen, who owned a saloon at 497 Wabasha, and Paul Grimm, a saloon operator at 700 Reaney, as members in good standing. Of course, these men may have also been employed at one or another of the numerous breweries in the city, and merely run their saloon out of a room in their homes.
In 1908 the "schatzmeister,” or treasurer (literally “treasure master”) of Local 97 was George Tschida Jr. of the well known and extended St Paul family. He was employed by the Hamm’s brewery. The Tschidas were part of a German speaking minority in the Austro-Hungarian Empire that emigrated, or re-emigrated to the United States in the late 19th century.
Workers at West End breweries, selected more or less at random from scattered records, include local union secretary Peter Lipp, employed by the Melchior Funk Brewery, which once stood at the corner of what is now Colburne and Palace. Genosse Lipp boarded at 787 W 7th St. Michael Kellner, a laborer at the Stahlmann brewery, had his residence at 327 Colburne. Of course, there were innumerable workers employed at the giant Schmidt brewing complex over several generations.
]]>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 shops. Workers at the Orme Foundry belonged to one of the oldest labor organizations in the state, Iron Molders Union Local 232, probably organized in 1872. Leading members of Local 232 included Edward Curry, James McDaniels and Michael Fahey, none of whom lived in the West End, however. The three union officers are representative of the predominantly Anglo-Scot-Irish workforce in the industry.
]]>Constructed beginning in the late 1800’s, the railroad shops of the Chicago, St Paul, Minneapolis & Omaha Railway (the “Omaha”) at Randolph and Toronto Streets employed nearly 1,000 workers for the first half of the 20th century. The West End construction project represented a major expansion of the Omaha’s operations in St Paul. The shops maintained locomotives and other rolling equipment, and constructed railcars, primarily wooden boxcars. The machine shop, erected in 1899, was built for $22,000, the equivalent of over half a million dollars today.
Other major buildings were the blacksmith and boiler shops, and the locomotive roundhouse. Just down the hill from the Omaha’s shops, accessed by a double tracked spur (or vice versa, depending on your perspective) was the Omaha’s Western Avenue switching yards, containing about 27 tracks until just a few years ago, when Shephard Road was re-routed through, eliminating all but about 6 tracks.
Railroad shopworkers belonged to a variety of craft unions ranging from blacksmiths to laborers to car repairers. The journeymen machinists, enrolled in the International Association of Machinists, were the largest labor organization in the railroad shops. In 1922, railroad shopcraft workers, numbering about half a million nationwide, went on strike against wage cuts. The strike lasted six months and ended in defeat. Hundreds of Twin City shopcraft workers were blacklisted and the unions eliminated from the shops, not to return until the labor upsurge of the 1930’s.
]]>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 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.
]]>In 1873, the City and County Hospital opened, followed in 1891 by the Ancker School of Nursing. City and County Hospital was one of the first in the country to have onsite residences and training for nurses. The whole complex, located at Jefferson Avenue and Colbourne Street, was renamed Ancker Hospital in 1923. In 1965, Ancker Hospital was replaced by Regions Hospital.
In 1971, the Helping Hand Health Center, under Dr. Tim Rumsey, carried on a community-based clinic in a holistic health mode. Evolving in 1992 to United Family Practice Health Center, it started the United Family Medical (UFM) Residency Program, providing medical education and training in family medicine with a focus on rural and under-served populations’ health needs. In its 2009 facility at Randolph and West 7th, the Peter J. King Family Health Center, UFM continues its mission: to serve and to teach.
]]>Some of the oldest public and private schools in the City and State are located in the West 7th neighborhood. While some schools have come and gone—Riverside, Davis, and St. Stanislaus—the community has rallied to ensure that neighborhood-based schools remain strong in the West End. Monroe, Adams, Saint Francis de Sales, and Saint James, all established between 1880 and 1913, have all transformed over the years to accommodate 21st century educational needs.
]]>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 from others further “uphill.” In 1969, Residents in Protest 35E (R.I.P. 35E) sued the Minnesota Highway Department and the U.S. Department of Transportation, demanding an environmental impact study (EIS). With new conditions added—a 45-mph speed limit; banning of trucks; some sections sub-grade level; landscaping; and special attention to the slopes — construction resumed in 1984 with completion in 1990.
]]>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 into minimal living units. Public acquisition of property for urban renewal was already underway when neighbors and planners began to acknowledge the area’s historic significance. Neighbors organized and fought to save the park and its surrounding homes. After a long process involving owners and potential owners, the City’s Housing and Redevelopment Authority (HRA), the Minnesota Historical Society, and the Ramsey County Historical Society, the area was listed in 1973 on the National Register of Historic Places. In the past 40 years, Irvine Park has become the City’s premier historic district and remains one of Saint Paul’s most visited public parks.
]]>Farmers and their allies supported improving the river’s shipping capacity once it became clear that railroad dominance meant higher shipping rates. The Equity Co-operative Exchange was formed in 1911 and built its first grain elevators on the Upper Levee in 1915. The Minnesota Farmers Union took over Equity and expanded the Upper Levee elevators (1927-31), eventually including 60 grain silos, a mill, the head house for loading grain onto barges, and the sack house for bagging grain. Restoration of the latter two buildings, under the name City House, was completed in 2009. City House is now listed in the National Register of Historic Places and has been restored as a park pavilion and event venue, situated on piers and cantilevered out over the Mississippi River.
]]>Saloons in the West End formed a complex network of social support “agencies.” Local bars served as places to leave messages, sources of employment information, and social networking sites.
]]>The Italian Catholic community worshiped at Holy Redeemer, located in downtown Saint Paul.
]]>The Cyril Congregational Church was formed in 1886, which conducted its services in Czech until 1945.
]]>The Saint Stanislav Kostka Church was established in 1872, serving both Polish and Czech parishioners but with services in Czech.
]]>The development of Saint Paul centered at Seven Corners, the major intersection that included Third Street, Seventh Street and Eagle Street.
]]>Bohemian influence in the West End also began early. From the 1860s to the 1880s, Czech (Bohemians, Moravians and Silesians) and Slovak immigrants engaged in a period of intense commercial and cultural development. Alongside Germans and Poles, Jews and Scandinavians, they worked the breweries and railroads, quarries and icehouses, and many retail establishments, making West 7th a busy commercial center and the “cradle of commerce” for Minnesota. As skilled tradespeople and artisans, the community was involved in shoe and boot making, cigar making, tailoring, butchering, brewing, blacksmithing, carpentry, gunsmithing, and masonry trades. Most Bohemian workers, however, were “common laborers.”
The Czech Slovak Protective Society (CSPS) was formed in 1872 and opened its first hall in1879. CSPS continues to provide a cultural touchstone for the Bohemian community, with fraternal, educational, social, charitable, and recreational activities, associated with a religious liberalism and/or free thought position.
]]>German immigration brought with it the need for beer. Fortunately, the West End—with its extensive sandstone cave networks and spring water—was ideal for establishing breweries. The Schmidt Brewery was the largest and longest operating brewery and remains the most valued historic resource in the West End. The names Banholzer, Brueggemann, Emmert, Schmidt, Stahlman and Yoerg represent brewing activity in the West End for over 100 years. Meanwhile, the art of brewing continues in the neighborhood with Summit (1989), Vine Park (1995), and Flat Earth (2008) brewing companies.
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