The block of Charles Avenue between Dale and Kent streets has one of the largest groups of original Victorian workingmen’s cottages left in Saint Paul. Old city directories show that many were homes to area railroad and railroad-related industry workers. Many of these homes date from the 1880s and 1890s.
]]>Neighborhood growth radiated from downtown, with most of the growth to the west and north. Many of the earliest dwellings were single-family homes or duplexes. Small corner stores, taverns and other businesses, most of which have been converted to housing uses, were scattered throughout the community.
One prominent developer, Canada native Benjamin Lafond, platted Lafond’s Addition in 1857, including Lafond Avenue, Lake Street (now Blair Avenue) and Bluff Street (now Van Buren). Many histories incorrectly state that Thomas, Edmund, Charles, and Ellen (now Sherburne) avenues were named for Lafond family members. Historian Don Empson said those streets were platted by other earlier developers. Other developers included the Rice family, who platted Edmund, Charles and Ellen avenues. Those were named for Rice family members. Thomas was name for Thomas Stinson. The Stinsons owned and developed much property in Saint Paul.
The first houses were a mix of wood frame or brick construction. The area between Rice and Dale Streets saw the most growth and development during the 1880s, with working-class homes interspersed with small businesses, duplexes and a few multi-family dwellings.
A trip through this area reveals many existing Victorian-era working-class homes, with detailed window openings, porches, and trim. Many blocks have small lots. But the difference between Frogtown and other working-class neighborhoods is that the houses on many blocks have different architectural styles and not as much of a cookie-cutter look.
]]>A century ago the Rice Street area, especially between Atwater and Front, was a new and densely populated neighborhood. There were lots of rooming houses and many big families. Lyton Place today is a quiet, two-block street running east from Rice to Oakland Cemetery. In good weather you can find a few kids on bicycles or pausing in the park. Census takers in 1905 found 141 people living in just 23 households on those two blocks - 68 of them were 18 years of age or younger. Their names were Mulligan, Taack, Stinsky, Miller, Hollman, Guindon, Woods, Woodburn, Hancock, Leuzinger, Comer, Best, Martin, Douglas, Peterson, Johnson, Ordmann, and Howe -- mostly individuals from the British Isles with seasonings of Scandinavia, Germany, and Eastern Europe. Some of these houses (on the first block) are still there.
But on the next block east you will find something interestingly different. There, and around the corner on Sycamore, in the early 1990s the city took down three rows of degraded houses and replaced them with these that reflect, without re-creating, the styles of the era. After more than twenty years these houses remain attractive, an admirable feat of blending new housing with old.
Just a little roaming in this precinct pays off for this with the interest and imagination to see, in the mind’s eye, the neighborhood of a century ago. Cross Rice Street and try the adjacent streets of Woodbridge and Marion between Atwater and Milford. Strip away the new(er) siding and additions, and populate the streets with five of six kids per house. Add the occasional clatter of the streetcars on Rice Street, and you have the North End of 1910, when a street laborer could own a house and raise a family on his wages.
Nearby on Marion Street it is easy to see where clear-cutting of the old houses has taken place. This was the neighborhood where civil rights leader Roy Wilkins grew up, in the 1910s. His house is gone, replaced by the public housing across the street from Lewis Park.
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