Neighborhoods at the Edge of the Walking City
Saint Paul Historic Context Study Neighborhoods at the Edge of the Walking City Saint Paul, Minnesota, 1867 (Chicago: Chicago Lithographing Co., 1867). Ruger Map Collection, Library of Congress. Prepared for Historic Saint Paul, City of Saint Paul Heritage Preservation Commission, and Ramsey County Historical Society Saint Paul, Minnesota By Mead & Hunt, Inc. 2011 Saint Paul Historic Context Study Neighborhoods at the Edge of the Walking City Introduction This historic context examines Saint Paul’s neighborhoods located at the edge of the “walking city,” or the area in which residents could easily travel on foot to reach their destinations before mass transportation was readily available. In the mid-nineteenth century, the early years of Saint Paul’s development, the city’s residents settled around the Mississippi River steamboat landings known as the Upper and Lower Landings. While many of the houses were interspersed among the commercial and public buildings at each of the landings, several notable residential districts, including Irvine Park, Lafayette Park, and Dayton’s Bluff, developed near the original settlements early in Saint Paul’s history.1 As the city grew in the post-Civil War years beyond the original settlements, the limits of the walking city expanded and it became a city of several separate, distinct, and larger neighborhoods.2 These neighborhoods included, as typically identified today, Summit-University, Thomas-Dale, North End, Payne-Phalen, West 7th Street, and West Side. Figure 1. The central area of Saint Paul with neighborhoods identified in their general locations in order to provide a relative sense of their locations in the city.
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