Edward Devitt (1911-1992) was born into an Irish working class family in Saint Paul. He attended Van Buren Elementary School where he was a younger schoolmate of Warren Burger and Harry Blackmun.…

The house at 323 Summit Avenue was built in 1893 for Edward and Mary Saunders. Designed by Clarence Johnston in the Renaissance Revival style, the original construction cost came to about $35,000.…

On the site where 421 Summit stands today, there stood a small frame house. It was purchased in 1882 by Joseph Wheelock, who the then hired architect Clarence Johnston to redesign it for him. The home…

Located one block south and one block east from the Minea House is the Edward and Elizabeth Heimbach House at 64 West Delos. Martin Brueggemann (see John and Mary Minea House) also built this one…

The intersection of Lexington and Marshall represents two points of entry by African Americans: education and athletic achievement. In Saint Paul, access to educational institutions was generally…

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…

The large brick and stone house at 332 Summit Avenue was built in 1889 by Edgar and Mary Long. Designed by the architectural firm of Gilbert and Taylor, the mansion is Romanesque in style, and…

Even though pre-Civil War legislation attempted to restrict the movement of African Americans to Minnesota, free blacks and fugitive slaves continued to come. The highest concentration of blacks…

Originally on the site where 361 Summit stands today, was a large wood-frame house built by Charles and Lilly Bunker. It was designed by George Wirth and cost around $6,000 to build. The home was…

People of Mexican origin or descent began to come to St. Paul around the time of World War I. Oftentimes they were migrant agricultural workers who found reasons to stay year-round, working in the…

A thousand years ago the area around the confluence of Trout Brook and Phalen Brook near the Mississippi River was a marshy flood plain. By the early 1900s, the entire delta had been expanded by…

Dietsch’s Hall, 601 N. Western Ave., was another historic gathering place for the Frogtown German community. It was built in 1890 by Joseph Steinkamp, who operated a bar and other businesses in the…

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…

This is the largest of Cass Gilbert's four churches in the area (the others are the Virginia Street Swedenborgian Church, St. Clement's Episcopal, and the former German Bethlehem Church at the foot of…

This large Italianate styled mansion was completed in 1858, and is the oldest standing structure on Summit Avenue. The original owner, David Stuart came to Saint Paul in the early 1850’s, and built a…

Other key commercial districts in the neighborhood include Dale Street and the Dale-Como-Front intersection, which abuts the North End, Lower Rice Street and several small pockets of commercial…

St. Paul began as a steamboat town, but that era lasted barely 30 years. Railroads, and the boom in population and prosperity that they brought, made St. Paul into a city. As the city outgrerw the…

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…

The mansion at 495 Summit Avenue was built in 1881 for Cyrus and Mary Thurston. Although the architect is unknown, it is likely that the house was designed by local architect Augustus F. Gauger.…

The Cyril Congregational Church was formed in 1886, which conducted its services in Czech until 1945.