Saint Paul By Bike

July 29, 2023

Macalester-Groveland, Lexington-Hamline, North End, Payne-Phalen

22.7 miles

The stumps of ash trees litter boulevards throughout every Saint Paul neighborhood as the emerald ash borer claimed thousands of trees. On one block of Macalester Street, the stumps were transformed into platforms for flower art with words of inspiration.

Lexington-Hamline

A long-desired park is open in the Lexington-Hamline neighborhood thanks to a true grass roots effort. The endeavor to create the much-needed 3-acre Midway Peace Park began about 10 years before its November 2020 opening.

In either 2009 or 2011 (depending upon the source cited) students at Gordon Parks High School approached the nonprofit Trust for Public Land (TPL) about the lack of recreational spaces in the neighborhood. Students presented the idea of converting some underused, fenced-in lots just south of the school from an eyesore into a public green space. These lots were relics of University Avenue’s days as a hub of automobile dealers and related businesses. Residents of the nearby Skyline Tower, area district council members and other neighbors, joined the Gordon Parks’ students to advocate for the new park.

According to Trust for Public Land, more than 3,500 people live within a half mile of the Midway Peace Park, including about 1,000 at Skyline Tower, just west across Griggs Avenue.

By 2015, TPL was leading meetings with Midway residents, other supporters and the City of Saint Paul to make suggestions for features in the proposed park. Those conversations resulted in plans for a park with two playgrounds, a large grass athletic field, walking paths, benches, basketball court and more.

At about the same time, TPL was negotiating with the three different owners of the nearly vacant lots and raising funds to buy them. A year later, TPL had purchased the 5-acres and handed it over to the city.

Of course, the land now home to Midway Peace Park has a protracted and meandering history. It goes back to long before the Native Dakota people hunted and lived in the area. I hope to cover at least part of that history in a future post.

The City of Saint Paul was founded in 1851. At that time, land in and around what is Midway Peace Park was far, far from the burgeoning frontier city, about two miles outside city limits. The few roads that came out that far were likely one-time or still-used wagon trails.

Just a few years later, however, prosperous people from Saint Paul and beyond were gobbling up much of this land and platting it, even though it remained outside of Saint Paul proper.

A half-mile horse race track was built about four blocks south of the future Midway Peace Park in the 1860s. Midway Park, as it was called, held more than the very popular harness races, playing host to six Minnesota State Fairs, beginning in 1871. The rivalry between Saint Paul and Minneapolis was contentious and public even then, as evidenced by a note in the History of the Minnesota State Agricultural Society: From Its Organization in 1854 to the Annual Meeting of 1910.

Norman W. Kittson, former fur trader, steamboat and railroad line owner, territorial legislator and Saint Paul mayor, in 1881 was one of those who bought acres of land between Lexington Parkway and Snelling Avenues and between University and St. Anthony Avenues.

The land included the horse racing track, which Kittson expanded. He also dramatically improved other facilities, adding an elaborate stable with stalls for 64 horses and quarters for trainers, at a cost of $60,000 (nearly $2 million in 2024.) Kittsondale was reputed to be among the best horse racing facilities in the country.

Kittson’s death in 1888 led to the slow decline of Kittsondale. His will called for splitting his properties equally among his 11 children. Horse races and other events, including cricket, baseball and shooting contests, continued until about 1910, But gradually, the land was broken into smaller parcels and sold.

Remnants of Kittsondale remained for decades. The last of the once-grand buildings was demolished in 1942, making way for a new car lot.

With the opening of Midway Peace Park, part of the Kittsondale is again a place for recreation and leisure. Instead of a playground for the wealthy as it was before the turn of the last century, all are welcome to enjoy the offerings of the park.

Rice Street Area of the North End

People are creative with how and where they store belongings. An example is the canoe stashed atop a garage at 1061 Rice Street at Cook.

Construction of the new North End Community Center was in progress along Rice Street. between Lawson and Cook Avenues. The North End lags behind other neighborhoods in recreational facilities, so the new center will provide residents with significantly more and better opportunities. Fitness and dance spaces, a gymnasium, community meeting rooms and a community kitchen are among the features of the new 25,000 square foot community center.

The design and construction materials are energy-efficient and include geothermal heating and cooling, underground storm water management and a solar photovoltaic system.

The completion of the community center will improve the look and density of the immediate area of Rice Street. Perhaps it will attract new business to two former bank properties at 1020 and 1030 Rice that sat vacant.

Trout Brook Nature Sanctuary

Trout Brook Sanctuary is a park on the very eastern side of the North End, sandwiched between two sets of railroad tracks on the east and Agate Street on the west. This was my second time here. Similar to the Midway area I visited earlier on this ride, Dakota people for decades gathered food and other resources in this valley and used Trout Brook for north-south travel. The infamous 1837 treaty between the Dakota and U.S. government forced them off Trout Brook, and in fact, all their land east of the Mississippi. That treaty opened up the land to settlers and later, the railroads.

Among the earliest European-Americans to move to Trout Brook was Edmund Rice. In 1849 Rice purchased 45 acres of rolling, tree-lined hills and later built a mansion on a hill there. He and his wife Anna, raised 11 children at their Trout Brook estate.

Others besides Rice saw the appeal of Trout Brook. Two, Mr. Nobles in 1851, and William Lindeke not long after, built grain mills, which used the brook for power. In 1852 and 1853, a door and blind factory and a foundry and machine shop respectively were the next to spring up, according to Henry A. Castle in History of St. Paul and Vicinity Volume One.

The Rice mansion stood until 1887, when Rice sold it to the Northern Pacific Railroad, which had it demolished, according to historian Greg Brick’s Historic Waters of the Capitol Region Watershed District, Ramsey County, Minnesota.

Railroads were the next industry to remake Trout Brook beginning in the 1860s, and they did it in a way that rendered the area unrecognizable. The Trout Brook valley, with its gradual slope, was the best route to run railroad tracks from Downtown Saint Paul to northern and western destinations.

As much as 10 feet of fill was piled into the valley and graded to create more space and a lesser grade for rails. Trout Brook itself was an impediment so it was diverted underground into the sewer system.

Hundreds of trains, pulled by cacophonous and dirty steam engines, rumbled through Trout Brook valley day and night. People living in the area let it be known they did not appreciate the tumult. The St. Paul Daily Globe responded sharply in its December 10, 1879 edition.

“One of the most agreeable things the Globe has had to record for some time is this row about the whistles and bells and constantly moving trains. It shows an immense business in progress, and we trust the noise and multitude of trains will increase.”

The piece continued, “St. Paul is bound to be a city and noise is one of the incidents thereto.”

The dominance of railroads faded gradually beginning after the end of World War II. With Amtrak taking over passenger train service from about 20 railroads in 1971, railroads began abandoning miles of underused track. The Soo Line’s tracks along the western side of Trout Brook Valley were vacated in the late ‘70s.

The newly vacated space in the valley drew interest from other noisy and polluting businesses. Proposals for a school bus garage, a storage site for surplus sand, gravel and construction equipment and a burn facility for disposal of contaminated soil were all rejected by neighbors who met with, lobbied, cajoled and persuaded local officials to convert the land into a nature preserve. The city finally agreed, and purchased the 42-acre Trout Brook land in 2001. All told, neighbors committed more than 20 years of effort to the sanctuary. The opening ceremony for the Trout Brook Nature Sanctuary was held on May 30, 2015.

The foresight and effort of the zealous neighbors who fought for the creation of Trout Brook Nature Sanctuary will always be a model to those who want to fight developers or city hall.

On to Payne-Phalen

Interstate 35E, north of I-94, is the border of the North End and Payne-Phalen. I crossed from the North End along Arlington Avenue. I paused for a look at the rolling green hills of Arlington Arkwright Park’s athletic fields, which, not coincidentally are at the intersection of those two streets.

Jessie Street

As is often the case, I did not plan my route before jumping on my bike. I turned south onto Jessie Street only because Ivy Street East ended there. It was opportune that I unwittingly ventured onto Jessie Street, which, as it turns out, was named after Edmund Rice’s second daughter. That’s something I learned only as I researched and wrote this post (Thanks to The Street Where You Live by Don Empson.)

Jessie Street is a north-south residential thoroughfare that traverses much of the Payne-Phalen neighborhood. A healthy canopy of trees line the boulevards on both sides of the 1200 and 1100 blocks. The nicely maintained homes are older — most completed between 1885 and 1925 — and larger than I expected. Still, the stylish, grand red brick Queen Anne house on the northwest corner of Jessie and Jessamine Avenues was unexpected and quickly brought me to a stop to gawk.

So many details fought for my attention, the two towers reaching above the main roofline, the sprawling porch and medley of brick, stone and wood on the exterior.

It just so happened that Jennifer, one of the residents of 543 Jessamine Avenue East, stepped outside and we began talking. Jennifer her parents, Barbara and Steven, her four children, and “many” cats live there.

As Jennifer explained, Steven, an artist, had a strong interest in studying under a well-known Minneapolis artist, so he moved the family from Marshall, Minn. to Saint Paul. “He actually wanted to study with a particular artist, Richard Lack, and he wanted to get training in the French Academy style of drawing, which is charcoal drawing. Very detailed.”

For years, Jennifer said, her dad painted and occasionally created charcoal drawings.

Steven and Barbara rented a house near Cook Avenue and Earl Street in the Payne-Phalen neighborhood since they moved to Saint Paul. In 1986, their landlord decided to sell the house, which forced them to begin the quest for a home of their own. They found the 1888 Queen Anne beauty at 543 Jessamine Avenue and have lived there since.

Jennifer recalled moving day 1986 very clearly. Her high school friend Amy was over helping. “We were sitting at the second landing, we were giggling about something. Who knows? We were 16. And outta the corner of my eye, there was movement and I was like, ‘What on earth?’ There was a bat flying above our head. So we come out, it must’ve looked so funny, but we came screaming outta the house.”

Jennifer said she’s had “about 15” similar experiences with bats. Another memorable encounter occurred when a cousin was visiting. “The room that’s right up there,” she said pointing toward a second story window, “has a really tall ceiling and then there’s a skylight. That was my room.

“And I woke up from sleep. Sure enough, there was a bat flying above me and I come screaming out the door and my cousin later told me that I was screaming. The bat was following behind me and they couldn’t stop laughing. I’m like, ‘Oh, I wish there was video of this,’ because I mean, even to me, that must have been so funny.”

The regular visits from bats forced Steven into action. “My dad had to find like all of these nooks and crannies where bats were coming in. So, that still makes me laugh.”

Much of the knowledge that Jennifer and her folks have about the history of the house came from a visit from a previous resident. “My dad found out a lot of information from the woman who had grown up at this house.”

Jennifer was told by other sources their house was haunted. “My friends who lived in the neighborhood before I moved in, they had insisted there was a ghost in the house.”

That belief may have come about as a result of a tragic accident that claimed the life of a boy in the basement coal chute. “My understanding from, again, the woman that had come to visit and talk to my dad for a while, that there had been a whole system of pulleys and everything to move the coal along. And apparently one of the sons had climbed up and gotten entangled in that.”

Like most old homes, 543 Jessamine needed renovations. “So when my parents bought it, they did a lot. They fixed this [the front porch] so that it was an open porch again.” The home had been split into a duplex in the ’70s so Steven and Barbara returned it to a single family home.

Another trait the home shares with so many other older structures is a lack of insulation. “When my dad has had to cut into the walls, there really is no insulation, there’s newspaper. It makes it a very drafty house. It’s pretty cold.” With one exception, she said. “The third floor gets very hot because of all the drafts down below. It makes all the heat rise so it’s like, it’s very hot in the winter on the third floor.”

Of course, improvements weren’t limited to the home’s interior. Barbara and Steven added gardens and other landscaping, which won awards.

The yard is filled with dozens of rangy, intriguingly abstract metal sculptures. Jennifer told me they were works her dad created over the years. “He started to want to branch out into sculpture. So he taught himself how to weld and he has a large collection of scrap metal. Matter of fact, all the guys around that collect scrap metal. They know my dad.”

Some of the sculptures spin, twist, bend or otherwise move in the wind. Others were designed to be stationary.

Jennifer turned wistful as she talked about her parents and the future. “When their time comes and they’re no longer with me, that’s gonna be really interesting.” She continued, “I’d like to stay in this house. It needs a lot of work. Oh, it needs so much work. But, I’d be sad if I had to leave it. It’s beautiful. I’d like to be able to fix up all the things that need to be fixed for sure.”

An art house

Still in Payne-Phalen but south and a bit east, I bumped into an offbeat tapestry featuring a dog next to a model of a church. The 6 foot by 8 foot photographic fabric seemingly replaced the sign in front of the building at Case Avenue and Edgerton Street.

The structure at 580 Case Avenue East has been Case | Edgerton Studios since 2022. The Studio website indicates the former Arlington Hills Presbyterian Church building is being remodeled into a space that will include classrooms, studios, and other spaces for artists.

It was a fluke to visit two relatively new parks that resulted from years of determined efforts of neighborhood residents. Midway Peace Park and Trout Brook Nature Sanctuary are evidence that grass roots organizing sometimes can beat the odds.