Eastside Heritage / This Place in History

Eastside Heritage, also, This Place in History. . The Eastside, which makes up a third of Saint Paul, is comprised of many diverse neighborhoods. The earliest were developed as part of a walking city; the later ones came with the streetcars and automobiles. The oldest homes date to the 1850s and the newer sections are filled with bungalows and ranch-style houses. Apartments abound on main thoroughfares and near the two freeways., From the outset, the Eastside has always been home to a mix of wealthy, middle-class, and low-income residents. Along the railroad tracks, there were numerous industries that attracted working people. As transportation became easier, many of those with more resources moved into the newer homes in neighborhoods near the city limits., Waves of immigration have flowed into the community. The original Native Americans and early French settlers were joined by Yankees, Scandinavians, Germans, Irish, Italians, Poles, and others. Starting in the 1980s, many Hmong, Latinos, and African Americans became Eastside residents. Over the years, all of them made contributions to the community through their businesses, cultural institutions, and places of worship., Freeways had a major impact on the Eastside and promoted suburbanization. This 1967 photo shows Sunray Center on the left, the new homes of Battle Creek on the right, and the new 3M complex seen in the distance., The area of East Seventh and Arcade, shown here in 1932, was an important commercial center in the Dayton's Bluff neighborhood. The intersection of two streetcar lines and automobile traffic made this a busy location., Historic Payne Avenue, a major thoroughfare on the Eastside, once featured a wide variety of businesses and institutions. This photo shows [...]2 parade on the avenue., Railroads were important to the development of the Eastside, providing employment and affecting the city's landscape. There was once a small commuter depot in the Highwood Hills neighborhood., Phalen Park, acquired and initially developed in the late 1890s, is a major Eastside attraction featuring a golf course, a large lake, and other amenities. This is the bathing beach on a busy day in 1925., In the early days of the Eastside, there were often specialty stores for food. The Georg Pabst Meat Market, shown at 790 Margaret Street in the 1890s, was one of the most popular stops for German-Americans., Food prepared in traditional ways was valued in the Italian-American community. Luciano Cocchiarella (left) and Filomena D'Aloia of Hopkins Street display their homemade bread baked in an earthen oven in 1940., [Second panel:], If you stopped by this place in 1800, you would have been standing among trees and wildflowers next to a stream later named Phalen Creek., During the "boom" era after World War II, you would have been in the midst of a busy center of industry, with grain silos towering above you and railroad tracks packed with trains moving raw materials and goods to and from the Eastside., Decades later, in the 1980s, you would have found this area to be much quieter. Times had changed; many industries were gone leaving behind their building shells , but change was coming., The rebirth of this place was fully underway by the late 1990s, when you would have seen the removal of blight, the construction of a new roadway, and the opening of businesses as part of the Phalen Corridor Initiative., Today, you can again enjoy the outdoors here – and celebrate the [...] history of Saint Paul's Eastside., Phalen Creek now flows below ground through a storm sewer, but canoeists enjoyed it in the early 1900s., The Whirlpool plant straddled busy Arcade Street with a skyway used for moving production materials and finished products back and forth from the rail lines and loading docks to the factory buildings, ca. 1980., Phalen Village's Realife Cooperative, a building for seniors, is part of a redeveloped neighborhood of new housing options, shopping, business and job growth, and recreational opportunities at the eastern end of Phalen Boulevard., Created in 2009, Eastside Heritage Park's buildings are made of natural materials and arranged to recall the immigrant settlements of nearby Swede Hollow and the summer village known as Kaposia, where Dakota Indians once lived along the Mississippi River., Williams Hill Business Center, developed by the Saint Paul Port Authority in the late 1990s, exemplifies the Eastside's rebirth., The tall grain elevators and malting facility of Hamm's Brewery once stood on this site. All around were leading industries and employers, including 3M, Whirlpool, and Northern Malleable Iron.