I thought that I’d write next about our current home and Kathleen’s hometown—St. Paul, Minnesota, After leaving the Navy in 1995, we lived in Minneapolis for 21 years, then downsized and relocated to St. Paul in 2016, purchasing the condo left by Kathleen’s late parents. With a population of 304,000, the city is one of two U.S. state capitals located on the Mississippi River. Bonus Question 1: What is the other? (Answer at end of post) Map Link: St. Paul, MN
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| Source: visitsaintpaul.com |
The first Native peoples to this area were the Hopewells about 2,500 years ago, followed by the Dakota and Sioux. Hopewell burial mounds are preserved in Indian Mounds Regional Park on the city’s east side, although only six out of the dozens of mounds that once existed survived St. Paul’s development push.
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| Indian Mounds Regional Park |
The first American settlement here was at Fort Snelling, completed in 1825 at the confluence of the Minnesota and Mississippi Rivers. The fort soon attracted a squatter’s settlement, called Camp Coldwater, and included a moonshine still owned by Pierre Parrant, a French-Canadian nicknamed “Pigs Eye” on account of his near-blindness in one eye. Fort Snelling’s commandant did not approve of the still’s proximity to the fort and ordered Parrant to vacate. He moved a few miles downriver, resumed his trade, and was soon followed by other settlers. The new location was known as “Pigs Eye’s Landing” until 1841, when a French priest, Father Lucien Galtier moved to the territory and was horrified to learn that his new diocese was named after a bootlegger with a lazy eye. Father Galtier quickly constructed a log chapel, named it after Saint Paul the Apostle and the town had a new name. Parrant would inexplicably abandon his whiskey business and the area in 1844 and his life after leaving what was now St. Paul remains a mystery.
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| Fort Snelling today |
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| First chapel of Saint Paul |
The other Twin City, Minneapolis (“city of water”), was settled on either side of St. Anthony Falls, a natural power source that turned it into a major lumber and flour milling center. The soft limestone of the riverbed eroded easily, moving the falls upriver by 1-4 feet per year. To stop the erosion and protect their livelihoods, mill owners destroyed the natural falls and replaced them with a sloping timber apron in 1880, which was changed to concrete in the 1950s. The power source was preserved, but the centuries of erosion had left the river below the falls strewn with rocks and debris, creating a section of shallows and rapids that was unnavigable to larger watercraft. St. Paul became the logical head of navigation and the last stop on the Upper Mississippi and rapidly grew as riverboat traffic exploded with settlers and goods. Minneapolis would not enjoy safe, deep-water river navigation until the 1960s, when locks were built up to and around St. Anthony Falls. The uppermost lock was closed in 2015 to prevent the spread of invasive aquatic species further north into Minnesota fisheries.
It was river commerce that put St. Paul on the map, but it was the railroads that kept it there. The most famous local railroad magnate was Canadian-born James J. Hill, nicknamed “The Empire Builder” and his Great Northern Railroad connected St. Paul and Seattle via the northernmost transcontinental railroad in the country. Hill’s railroad still exits today (as the Burlington Northern Santa Fe), as does his Summit Avenue mansion, completed in 1891. Still the largest home in the state, the house has 42 rooms, 13 bathrooms, 36,500 square feet of living space and 44,500 square feet of total area and is a popular tourist attraction.
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| James J. Hill house |
Across the street from the Hill house is the Cathedral of Saint Paul, a stunning structure and another popular stop on city tours. Completed in 1915 and built from Minnesota granite, its copper dome soars 186 feet above Cathedral Hill. Construction was spearheaded by Archbishop John Ireland, whose name graces the boulevard connecting the cathedral and the state capitol. Our current capitol, the third since Minnesota statehood in 1858, was designed by Cass Gilbert and completed in 1905. It is the second-largest self-supported marble dome in the world, after St. Peter’s Basilica in Vatican City.
We live at The Commodore, opened in 1920 as a long-term residential hotel in the historic Cathedral Hill neighborhood and a half-mile from the James J. Hill house and Cathedral of St. Paul. We’re one block from Summit Avenue—its five miles from the Cathedral to the Mississippi River has the highest concentration of Victorian-era homes in the country, and includes the Minnesota Governor’s residence. F. Scott Fitzgerald was born a few blocks away on Laurel Avenue, went to school at the original St. Paul Academy on Dale St. and wrote his first novel in his parents’ attic on Summit Avenue in 1920. Bonus Question 2: What was the title of this book? (Hint: It’s not The Great Gatsby). While Fitzgerald is celebrated as St. Paul’s most famous native son, he only spent about seven years of his short life here (he died in Hollywood at the age of 44 after a long struggle with alcoholism). The Commodore was briefly home to F. Scott and his wife Zelda in the Roaring 20s, and the two were popular in the restaurant and basement speakeasy, which is now our parking garage. The Fitzgerald’s loved to party, and were evicted for rambunctious behavior from fine hotels around the world, including The Commodore (twice). After being asked to leave The Commodore for the second time in 1922, the Fitzgeralds departed St. Paul for good. Other guests at The Commodore were Eleanor Roosevelt, actor Gloria Swanson, author Sinclair Lewis, and a Who’s Who list of early 20th-century gangsters, including John Dillinger, Al Capone, “Baby Face” Nelson, “Machine Gun” Kelly and the Ma Barker family. St. Paul was a popular hangout for criminals, who took advantage of the “O’Connor Rule”—Chief of Police John O’Connor (and his successor Thomas Brown) openly permitted mobsters to reside unmolested in St. Paul as long as they paid bribes on time and committed their crimes in Minneapolis. Map Link: The Commodore
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| The Commodore in 1925. Source: Minnesota Historical Society |
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| The Commodore dining room |
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The Commodore mirrored bar, added in 1934 after
Prohibition was repealed |
Our neighborhood coffeeshop is named after Nina Clifford, who ran an upscale brothel and is a local legend. Vice crimes, including prostitution, gambling and alcohol sales, were exempt from the O’Connor Rule, and thrived within St. Paul. Likenesses of Nina (pronounced “nine-uh” and born Johanna Crow) are in several locations, usually angled towards her former business. Contrary to popular belief, the Blair Arcade, where Nina’s coffeeshop is housed, was not the site of her brothel—it was located in Downtown St. Paul at the bluffs where the Minnesota Science Museum now stands. It was also widely believed that there was a tunnel connecting the brothel to the Minnesota Club, where the rich and famous of the era socialized, but this was debunked when excavation for the Science Museum found no evidence. Fun facts: When Nina’s establishment was demolished in 1937, one of the bricks was put on display with a plaque at the Minnesota Club, and a chandelier was relocated to the private office of the Mayor of St. Paul and remains there today.
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| Nina Clifford carving, facing her business |
We live adjacent to St. Paul’s Rondo neighborhood, which was the backbone of the city’s black community for much of the 20th century. Between 1956 and 1968, Rondo’s core area was destroyed and the remainder cleaved in two to make way for the construction of Interstate 94, with the displacement of at least 650 families and businesses. Rondo Days, held annually in July, commemorates the neighborhood and is the largest African-American festival in Minnesota. St. Paul has more than 36,000 Hmong residents, the largest number of any U.S. city; most are refugees and their descendants who fled Southeast Asia following the Vietnam War.
St. Paul is the home of Bethel College, Century College, Concordia University, Hamline University, Macalester College, Metropolitan State University, St. Paul College, the University of Minnesota-St. Paul campus, College of St. Catherine, College of St. Scholastica, Mitchell Hamline College of Law, and the University of St. Thomas, Minnesota’s largest private institution of higher education.
The city is the location of the Minnesota State Fair, where in 1901 Vice President Teddy Roosevelt first spoke his famous foreign policy mantra “speak softly and carry a big stick.”
St. Paul’s Xcel Energy Center is home to the NHL’s Minnesota Wild and the PWHL’s Minnesota Frost, while Allianz Field hosts the Minnesota United FC Loons MLS soccer team and CHS Field in Lowertown is home of the St. Paul Saints, a minor league baseball team affiliated with the Minnesota Twins, 10 miles away in Minneapolis.
There are 17 Fortune 500 companies headquartered in Minnesota, the 10th-most of all U.S. states, with Ecolab and Securian Financial in St. Paul and 3M in Maplewood, an eastern suburb.
Besides F. Scott Fitzgerald, other native St. Paulites include “Peanuts” creator Charles Schultz, U.S. Supreme Court Chief Justice Warren Burger, actors Loni Anderson, Josh Hartnett and Emily Rudd, comedian Louie Anderson, explorer Ann Bancroft, “Miracle on Ice” hockey coach Herb Brooks, skier and Olympic medalist Lindsey Vonn, Olympic gold medal gymnast Suni Lee, and baseball Hall of Famers Jack Morris, Paul Molitor, Joe Mauer and Dave Winfield.
St. Paul photo album:
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| Union Depot |
Bonus Question 1 Answer: Baton Rouge, LA, is the only other state capital located on the Mississippi River. Coincidentally, both St. Paul and Baton Rouge are on the east bank.
Bonus Question 2 Answer: F. Scott Fitzgerald’s first novel, This Side of Paradise was an overnight hit, and vaulted him to instant fame. Zelda had refused to marry him until he was a commercial success, as had Fitzgerald’s first love, Ginevra King, a 16-year-old Chicago socialite who was his muse for Daisy Buchanan in The Great Gatsby. After F. Scott quickly became rich, Zelda rekindled their engagement and they were married a month later. Fitzgerald would not publish his third and most famous novel, The Great Gatsby, until 1925. It did not sell well, received only modest reviews and was not critically acclaimed as one of America’s finest novels until after Fitzgerald’s death in 1940—he died believing himself to be a failure and his work forgotten. St. Paul and many other cities nationwide are currently celebrating the book’s 100-year anniversary with festivals and other remembrances.
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