Harry Blackmun (1908-1999) and his family lived at 847 East Fourth Street after they moved to St. Paul from southern Illinois in 1910. His father was a businessman who owned nearby groceries at 198…

Former chief justice of the U. S. Supreme Court Warren Burger (1907-1995) lived with his six siblings in a two-bedroom cottage at 695 Conway from 1914 to 1933. His father worked as a railway cargo…

The headline above appeared in a 1902 issue of the St Paul Globe over a story about a “group of quaint Irish families” at the “foot of Dayton’s Bluff.” The article is one of the few extensive…

After a lengthy war between England and France (which had laid claim to the area that included today’s St. Paul), they ceded the land to England in the treaty of 1763. Eager to find out the nature of…

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…

German immigrants were one of the first large groups of immigrants who flooded into Saint Paul when Minnesota became a Territory in 1849. And, as it turned out, they knew a great deal of the “inns”…

Located at the foot of Indian Mounds Park, Willowbrook Hatchery was started in 1878 by the newly formed State Fish Commission. Raising fish to stock the lakes and streams of Minnesota was—and still…

When German immigrant and former butcher/saloon owner Theodore Hamm bought a struggling business on Phalen Creek in St. Paul in 1864, would he have thought it would become one of the largest breweries…

Stormwater Treatment Managing stormwater runoff is important to urban planning and environmental conservation. The site of Beacon Bluff drains an area of approximately 163 acres of stormwater that…

Stormwater facilities at the Saint Paul Port Authority’s Beacon Bluff Business Center treat rainwater as a resource that is used to recharge groundwater, irrigate landscaping, as well as enhance and…

The electric streetcar service began on Selby Avenue in 1890. St. Anthony Hill, however, proved to be a vexatious impediment; the steep grade made for slow and hard going travel, especially in winter.…

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…

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…

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…

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…

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…

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…

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…

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…

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…