Another building owned by the St. Paul Hebrew Institute was at 133 E. Fillmore.
There were four apartments in the building, but there is no information about the tenants. They may have been used for the people who came to use the large bath area.
In the 1960 Riverview Industrial Project surveys the assessor described the area in the basement of the building.
In his words, it was a "ritual Hebrew bath. There is an entry and reception room in front and an emersion room with extensive shower and bath facilities and sunken ceramic tile emersion pool. In connection with this bath, there are 2 concrete water storage tanks and a separate boiler for heating the pool water."
]]>In 1888 Rabbi Herman Simon became rabbi of the West Side Congregations and proceeded to lead the effort to establish a Hebrew Institute on the West Side.
The St. Paul Hebrew Institute and Sheltering Home was completed and dedicated in 1911 at 297 Kentucky St. This Institute served as the Lower West Side's Talmud Torah, and its major function was the education of children. Neither the building nor the street still exist.
The Sheltering Home housed and fed many of the new immigrants when they first arrived on the Lower West Side address; in 1938 the Institute was still listed at 295 Kentucky.
The Institute remained in use until some time in 1958.
]]>Beth Midrash Ha Godol Synagogue was organized some time in the late 1880s with Rabbi Isaac Lichtenberg serving as the congregation's rabbi. It is believed that the congregation worshiped at 165 State Street beginning some time later than that, perhaps around 1892.
Little is known about this congregation, and it was likely quite small. The building at this address is a storefront, one story connected to a two-story duplex next door.
As with many other smaller congregations, it is possible that this one worshiped in the rear of the store, or in one of the connected residences.
An article in the St. Paul Globe newspaper for March 18, 1898 included the information that Samuel Stollerhoff, "principal founder of the Russian Brotherhood," resided at this address.
]]>The Sons of Israel Synagogue was located at 110 Robertson Street, this street no longer exists and ran between and parallel to State and Eva Streets.
The building is shown on the Hopkins 1916 map, but no other information has been located about the congregation.
Surveyed during the process of reviewing properties for the Riverview Industrial Project the assessor completed a highly detailed document that included photographs not just of the exterior but the interior as well. He described the furnishings, lighting, and condition of the building to the extent of counting the number and types of light bulbs.
None of the other surveys were as complete as this one; it is as good as any well-researched architectural description:
"The synagogue is a large rectangular frame two story structure, with a wood tap siding and composition roof. The exterior is in very poor condition, and is badly in need of paint. There are many windows which have been broken and are boarded up.
"The roof of the church extends out past the main building and is supported by four wooden pillars which rest on a concrete block portico below. This portion of the building is set back approximately five feet from the sidewalk."
]]>The Congregation of the Sons of Zion, or B'nai Zion, was organized in 1883 by newer Russian Jewish immigrants who were said to not want to affiliate with the already established Orthodox Sons of Jacob , a synagogue generally known as a “Polish” congregation. The congregation dedicated its new synagogue at 150 State Street in 1895.
Interestingly, an article in the St. Paul Globe newspaper lists their establishment of a congregation at 104 State Street. The 1904 Sanborn map shows this as a "tenement", and a 1960 photo shows this address to be a 3-plex residential building. It is possible that the congregation first met in a member's home.
Clearly the Russian Brotherhood and the Sons of Zion congregations had, at least in the early years, the most lively and active congregations on the West Side. A search of the St. Paul Globe in the late 1880s and into the early 1900s reveals dozens of articles about the activities of both congregations. No articles about any other synagogues were found for that time period.
They weren’t always competitive, as a number of articles in 1896 followed their combined efforts to remove a Kosher “meat inspector” with whom they had conflicts. In the newspaper this was called “the butcher wars.”
The two congregations together may have had the largest membership of all the other synagogues in the neighborhood.
]]>The Agudas Achim Synagogue was founded by members of the Congregation of the Russian Brotherhood, though the locations and date of closure are not certain. It seems, however, that this building was in use by 1909.
There were two addresses sometimes used for each - the 202 Fairfield and an earlier address of 282-4 Texas St. In any case, the 1904 uses the 202 Fairfield address.
There is little information about the connections between the two synagogues, so the contradictions remain mysterious.
The building at 202 E. Fairfield was one of the few synagogues left standing into the 1950s. Built of brick, it had large central metal dome, with ornamentation at each end of the front gables, with two large columns flanking a central entrance door at the top of the stairs.
A survey prepared in advance of the 1960 Riverview Industrial Project notes that the building was then in excellent condition.
]]>The histories of the church, Our Lady of Guadalupe, and of Sister Giovanni (“Sister G” as she was known) are intertwined. In 1931. the Guild of Catholic women rented space in a grocery store at 123 S. Wabasha on the West Side to found a “Mexican Mission.” Incorporated in 1939 as a parish it continued to hold masses and provide educational and social services to the Hispanic immigrants in the community.
As it expanded, the mission church moved to 286 E. Fairfield. Enough congregants joined the parish to participate in Spanish-language masses to name the church in honor of its shrine to the Lady of Guadalupe. As a result of the constant flooding in that area the church purchased land further south and east to construct a new building at 401 Concord Ave., completed in 1961.
Sister Mary Giovanni Gourhan, affectionately known as “Sister G”, was born in 1914 and entered the School Sisters of Notre Dame when she was 18 years old. Sister G was sent to the Sacred Heart Mission School in St. Paul, Minnesota, where she began her career in education. She focused particularly on students who were having difficulties in a standard school environment, believing that alternatives to that standard would benefit underserved students.
She was sent in 1963 to Our Lady of Guadalupe to continue that work. In 1964 she created a summer school program that introduced children to crafts and recreation. In 1967 she founded the Guadalupe Alternative Program that remains a vibrant and successful program now called GAP, after a merger with Change.Inc, another program that was developed along the same ideas.
Sister Giovanni was a charismatic and beloved teacher and advocate. Remembered to this day, she appears in a mosaic over the doorway to the GAP School, and an image of her face is hiding in one of the West Side murals.
She seemed never to tire of facing down politicians and bureaucrats who might be reluctant to pursue change. She was a force of nature whose work radically changed the face of education and social services in the community.
]]>Torre San Miguel, the only remaining portion of the Irish-Catholic Church of St. Michael, is located on a slight rise of land at the far north end of the Torre San Miguel Homes on Wood St. Originally the bell tower for the 1882 church, it was left standing when the church and other related buildings were sold and demolished in 1970 for the construction of the new the affordable housing development. The date shows as raised numbers in stone on the brickwork just above the foundation.
The original brick has been painted a medium tan shade, with turquoise highlights on the arches above the former windows and on the belt course above the first window. In nearly mint condition, it is a community landmark and serves to bring together two histories of the West Side. Before the neighborhood saw a rise in the Hispanic population it was settled by Irish and German immigrants.
Few structures of any kind remain from those very early settlements as the people moved away, and buildings in the lowest part of the flood plain were demolished. When the new community began to celebrate its own heritage, the renaming of the tower (from “Saint Michael” to “Torre San Miguel”) honored that transformation.
That this structure remains standing and in excellent repair is almost remarkable.
Note: For a full-ziti view of the tower image click on the link below
]]>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.
For more (including 8 images & 1 video) view the original article
]]>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 Bridge was the last to be constructed, connecting Uppertown and Lower West Side.
After the West Side opened to settlement in 1851, the first organized crossing was John Irvine’s ferry in 1852. The Wabasha Bridge followed in 1859, then the Robert Street Bridge in 1886. These connected the Lower West Side very well, but left the blufftop isolated. No doubt some people liked it that way, but others wanted easier transportation, more commerce, and an increase in the value of their real estate -- and St. Paul had always been a town of real estate speculators.
The prime mover behind a third bridge was Robert A. Smith--banker, postmaster, city councilman, state representative, senator, and Saint Paul’s longest-serving mayor of fifteen years. Its main contractor was steel baron Andrew Carnegie, operating behind the name Keystone Bridge Company. The bridge presented some technical challenges -- it had to be very long and very high on one end. Construction began in 1888 and finished in 1889.
The High Bridge was a spectacular instant landmark: almost half a mile long, 182 feet above river level, made of wrought iron, with four huge limestone river piers below, and a deck made of cedar blocks to muffle the sound of the iron-rimmed wagon wheels for which the bridge was designed.
It held together just fifteen years. Saint Paul’s most violent storm, the Cyclone of 1904, took the south end down in winds estimated at 180 miles per hour. But the bridge was promptly rebuilt and lasted eight decades more, though with lengthy closings for repair in 1958 and 1977. Time, gravity, and corrosion required its demolition in 1985. The current bridge opened four years later and today is a favorite tailgating spot on the Fourth of July for viewing the annual fireworks show at Harriet Island.
Crossing the High Bridge pays off on both ends, as it takes you to neighborhoods that are interesting and little-visited by nonresidents. At the lower end you will find Uppertown, one of the city’s oldest precincts, with old worker housing, rehabbed rowhouses, and the lovely, restored Irvine Park. At the upper end to the left, is one of the best lookout points in St. Paul, and beyond it, Prospect Park. To the right, you will see Cherokee Heights and Cherokee Park.
]]>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 hose tower.
After its retirement from the fire service in 1943 it was used by the VFW and then, starting in 1950, as a clubhouse for the Saint Paul Turnverein. The Turnverein (known today as The Turners) began in the old country as an anti-Napoleonic movement.
Transplanted to America with the great German immigration, it served immigrants to preserve their German culture and language, and as a place for young people to develop physical vigor, especially before public schools instituted physical education programs.
Until the anti-German sentiment fomented by World War I, St. Paul had a very prominent public German culture, with newspapers (20 German-language papers are known to have been published in the city), the Germania Bank, cultural institutions like the Schubert Club, social clubs, and a statue of Schiller in Como Park.
The St. Paul Turnverein once had a fine clubhouse downtown and many participants. The Ohio Street club building is tiny compared to that one and the chapter is no longer active. Today the building is a private residence. On the way to or from, notice the 1883 rowhouse at 542-548; it awaits restoration. There is another rowhouse nearby at Winifred and Bellows, built in 1891.
]]>Located just a couple of hundred feet west from the Haas House at 241 West George is the Samuel Dearing House.
Augustus Gauger, German-born and prolific St. Paul architect, designed this one, and was built in 1886, with both Italianate and queen Anne elements. The Dearings, originally from New Hampshire, were dairy farmers -- they had a prize herd of shorthorns -- and real estate speculators who owned many acres on the blufftop (they called their cows The Bluffdale Herd).
The depression of 1893, which lasted a few years, seems to have caused them some distress, as they repeatedly held public land auctions in parcels from six to one hundred lots, and in 1895 he sold several city blocks for $24,000 -- at least $600,000 in today’s money. The Dearings kept their fine house through it all and in 1905 moved to Santa Cruz, where they lived on Walnut Avenue, a street renowned today for its beautiful and well-preserved Victorian houses.
The George Street house, from 1886, combines Italianate and Queen Anne elements, both of which the Dearings found all around them in their new California neighborhood.
]]>Half a mile west of the Rau-Strong House is the Charles Haas House at 214 West George. Note the wonderful front porch and attic windows above. Built in 1889.
Charles Haas was born in Indiana County, in Western Pennsylvania, in 1849, and came to St. Paul at age 7. His father, Caspar Haas, born in Hesse Darmstadt, and in St. Paul became a very early West Side saloonkeeper -- the Sugar Bar. Later he ran a butcher shop in the West Seventh area. Charles learned the butcher trade, but soon moved up the distribution chain and became a livestock dealer.
As early as 1884 the Globe newspaper referred to him as a “well known cattle salesman.” After the South St. Paul stockyards opened in 1887, bringing with them a vast increase in the volume of trade, Haas spearheaded the creation of the St. Paul Livestock Exchange and served as its president sixteen years in three different stretches. He was a politician too, serving terms as register of deed and county assessor.
Despite his German heritage Haas was also a member of the Irish-American Club; perhaps because his wife, Mary, had been born in Ireland, and perhaps also because of the advantages of socializing with St. Paul Irish-American politicians with names like Butler, O’Brien, and Donnelly. The Haases belonged to St. Michael’s parish. Charles died at the West George house in 1933.
George Street, by the way, takes its name from George Bell, believed to have been the first white settler on the West Side; he staked his claim in 1851, immediately after the Treaties of Traverse des Sioux and Mendota that ceded the land to the United States.
]]>Continuing west on George Street, there are three residences worth admiring. Just south of the Riverview Library is the Rau-Strong House at 2 East George.
Adam Rau was a stonecutter and contractor, born in Germany. He quarried the limestone for this residence (native limestone was St. Paul's first choice for truly permanent structures in the early years.) The walls are two feet thick and the style, according to Larry Millett, “a melange . . . but more Italianate than anything else.” Rau designed it himself. The house went up in 1883, and Rau may have had plans for it from the beginning. When his daughter Elizabeth married Ossian Strong in 1885 the place soon became theirs.
Strong, the son of a farm laborer from New York, worked 50 years for the same wholesale grocery company, Foley Brothers & Kelly. Elizabeth Rau died at age 33 in 1894, leaving three young daughters. Strong used the house’s size to advantage; soon he had both his parents and his mother-in-law living there too. Strong died at age 72 in 1922. The house stayed in the family until 1986.
]]>A short distance south of St. Matthew's School, at the corner of Humboldt and George, you will find Riverview Library.
The industrialist (founder of US Steel) and philanthropist Andrew Carnegie gave money for the building of 1579 public libraries in the United States. The standard view is that he did this for the benefit of immigrants (as he was, from Scotland) and their children, to enable them better to rise in the meritocratic society of the United States. A few cynics might speculate that he desired also to expiate guilt over his brutal treatment of his workers (think of the Homestead Massacre.)
The Riverview is one of three Carnegie libraries in St. Paul, all built in 1916; the others are St. Anthony Park and Arlington Hills. There is disagreement about who designed Riverview and St. Anthony (they are very similar.) St. Paul Public Library ascribes them to the untraceable “Cameron and Company.” Architectural historian Larry Millett gives credit to St. Paul city architect Charles Hausler. The most delightful feature of this library is the abundant light invited in by the enormous windows.
]]>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 bakery since Ed Jerabek, a Czech immigrant, opened one in St. Paul in 1906. One might say that Edward Jerabek had pastry, or at least flour, in his blood. His father was an immigrant miller from Bohemia, now part of the Czech Republic. Edward came to St. Paul as an adult, from the Czech community in Silver Lake, McLeod County.
He went straight into the retail baking business, first on Front Avenue in the North End, then 710 Smith Street (the building still stands, now occupied by Capital Deals bike shop), a few blocks south of the High Bridge, then two years on West Seventh Street, and finally, in 1926, at Winifred and Stryker where it remains today. Jerabek’s may be the oldest continuing commercial establishment on the West Side. The current owners are the first who are not descendants of the founder, but they do continue some Czech pastry traditions -- the pastry recipes are original.
]]>Built in 1902, St. Matthew’s is probably the second-oldest school building in the city, after St. Joseph’s Academy/Christ’s Household of Faith (1863). The school itself, originally housed in the first St. Matthew’s Church (long gone), began in 1892. This was one of the six German “national parishes” in St. Paul, organized on ethnic lines. Parts of the surrounding neighborhood were in that era heavily German. Census records from 1900, for example, show some blocks populated up to one-third by people claiming one or more grandparents from Germany. And of course in the city as a whole (state too) Germans were by far the most numerous ethnic group.
By conducting services and school in German, St. Matthew’s helped immigrant families preserve language and culture. German was the language of church and school until 1917, when feelings incited by World War I suppressed many German names, institutions, and practices in St. Paul and around the state. St. Matthew’s was a grade school until 1929, when the second building (complete with bowling alley) and high school were added. Enrollment hit 1000 in 1952 and 1200 in 1958. It is now, much smaller, a pre-K through 8th grade school.
]]>Directly below the Yoerg residences, nestled into the bluff at Ohio Street, was his brewery, which was lost to a fire in 1958. Follow Isabel Street west to Ohio; there you will see an outcropping of the limestone upon which much of St. Paul is built. Follow Ohio, then, down to the flats, and look back at the bluffside; somewhere there, stood the Yoerg brewery. No trace of it remains.
By 1958, Yoerg's ”cave-aged” beer, had already disappeared. Prohibition of course devastated the brewing industry, but Yoerg's found a way to survive that, with soft drinks, milk, and near-beer. It could not, however, survive the post-World War II competition, and closed in 1952. Hamm's and Schmidt prospered on into the 1970s; then, as the national brewing industry consolidated, came a series of increasingly desperate changes of ownership, until both sputtered out in the 1990s. The brewery buildings remain, still waiting for new life.
Despite the closing of most of the early breweries, some brewing continues to thrive in St. Paul. Summit Brewing began in 1986 as a craft label. It is now the biggest brewer in the state, with a new brewery not far down Fort Road from the empty Schmidt complex. It is a worthy successor to Yoerg, Stahlman, Banholzer, and the rest – except that the founder's surname, Stutrud, is anything but German.
]]>A few houses down on West Isabel is another French Second Empire home Yoerg Sr. built for his son, Anthony Junior, who followed him in the beer business. The other sons, Louis and Frank, did so too. The young Anthony turned out to be the most worldly successful of the second generation and the one who spent the least time in the beer trade. He served on the city council, the board of education, and in the legislature, and very briefly as brewery president after his father died. But he soon went his own way, in real estate, and moved to California in 1919.
]]>After the Yoergs built their new brewery in 1870, It did not take long for competitors to show up: Brueggeman, Banholzer, Stahlman, Schmidt, and Hamm. The last two grew giant, with Schmidt's castle-like complex southwest of city center, along Fort Road and right on top of Fountain Cave: and Hamm's along Phalen Creek just east of downtown.
Though St. Paul has cultivated an Irish image, and Minnesota a Scandinavian one, in fact Germans comprised the biggest national ethnic group in both city and state from the mid-19th century forward. Beer was one of the resulting cultural manifestations, and St. Paul remained a major brewing town until the late 20th century.
These were family businesses, and in this now scarcely imaginable era, industrialists often lived near their factories and their workers. The Schmidts and their successors, the Bremers, lived across the street from their brewery. Old Man Hamm's mansion perched on the bluff above Swede Hollow; he could look down from there on his factory, his workers, and some of his his customers. The Yoergs were no different.
Anthony Yoerg's house on 215 West Isabel still stands today - a French Second Empire box with a mansard roof, designed by Monroe Sheire, who was also the author of the Alexander Ramsey House.
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