Part of what was historically Lower Rice Street was lost due to urban renewal, construction of the Saint Paul Sears store, University Avenue widening and the state capitol complex expansion. Some buildings have been lost in more recent times;…

Located in the North End neighborhood, Rice Street began as a commercial corridor that served St. Paul’s working class. Rice Street is unassuming; when it was rushed into being, more than a century ago, there was no time for ornamentation or…

The dominant Rice Street institution for the past 120 years has been St. Bernard’s Church and School. Like St. Mary’s several blocks to the south, St. Bernard’s has its roots in the Austro-Hungarian Empire. Many of the original parishioners (the…

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…

Just three blocks east of Rice Street lies, very quietly, one of St. Paul’s loveliest, most serene, and most interesting greenspaces – the Oakland Cemetery. Founded in 1853, Oakland is St. Paul’s oldest public cemetery. It is also a relatively early…

All along Rice Street commercial buildings predominate, designed for profit, not for show. Between 1880 and 1925, both sides of the street from Sycamore to Maryland filled with storefronts and workplaces. These were grocers, barbers and beauty…

One small ethnic community made a striking contribution to the Rice Street landscape. Around 1900, a few hundred Romanian emigrants from the Austro-Hungarian Empire made their way to St. Paul, and some settled in the North End. In due course they…