Lowertown History Walk
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Description
Explore the historic Lowertown neighborhood in St. Paul with the Minnesota Historical Society
1. Land Acknowledgement
The Minnesota Historical Society affirms that every community owes its existence and vitality to generations from around the world who contributed their hopes, dreams, and energy to making the history that led to this moment. Some were brought here against their will, some were drawn to leave their distant homes in hope of a better life, and some have lived on this land for more generations than can be counted. Truth and acknowledgment are critical to building mutual respect and connection across all barriers of heritage and difference. The Minnesota Historical Society begins this effort to acknowledge what has been buried by honoring the truth. You are in the ancestral lands of the Dakota People which they ceded via the Treaty of 1837. We pay respects to their elders past and present and ask you to take a moment to consider the many historical legacies that bring people together in this place today.
2. About Lowertown
You begin your walk in the Commercial Core, but you will spend most of your time in Lowertown, which is the oldest section of Downtown Saint Paul. Lowertown was the engine of St. Paul's early growth as an American city, and its hippest neighborhood today. Lowertown contains many stories, all layered on top of each other: a river story; a boats-and-trains story; two tales of boom-and-bust, and another of neighborhood renaissance.
3. Welcome to Kellogg Mall Park
Look for the large granite marker in the park. It stands where a Catholic priest named Father Lucian Galtier built the log chapel of St. Paul for which he named the city in 1841. An American who visited two years later wrote, “[Saint Paul] had but three or four log houses, with a population not to exceed twelve white people and it was a mixture of forest, hills, running brooks, ravines, bog mires, lakes, whisky, mosquitoes, snakes and Indians.” His observations were not entirely incorrect, but his descriptions leaves out many of the finer, more telling deatls.
4. The Flow of Memory in the Culture Garden
Before you dive into the history of the boat landing, explore the St. Paul Culture Garden at the park's southeast corner. It is filled with art and poetry that reflect the interwoven and centuries-long stories of the many people who have converged around this bend in the Mississippi River known today as St. Paul.
5. A View of the Lower Landing
Now move on to a view of the Lower Landing. If you stand at the overlook (SE corner of the park) an look to the riverfront, you will see a long concrete dock marked by a blue railing. That is the Lower Landing, a locus of extraordinary change, opportunity, and loss.
6. Lowertown Goes Boom and Bust
If you had arrived at the Lower Landing in the mid-1850s you would have walked into a growing town of just over 1,000 people, mud streets laid out in intersecting grids and wooden shacks, houses, stores, saloons (the easiest businesses to license) and churches rising around those streets overnight. In the1850s St. Paul was a boomtown and Lowertown was at its epicenter.
7. A Glimpse of Gilded Age Lowertown
This block of Wall Street offers a glimpse of Lowertown during its economic heyday between 1880 and 1930 when these buildings hummed with the sounds of commerce and industry. The first one you'll take a look at is the Great Northern Lofts (300 Wall Street). Stand across from it on Broadway so you can see what the building's southeast corner reveals about its history.
8. Understanding the Land: Trout Brook Valley
Lowertown's first success was built on steamboat traffic. Its second act was fueled by the railroads. From here you can get a small glimpse of the original topography that made both possible.
9. Lowertown's Third Life
Modern Lowertown's economy of manufacturing, wholesaling and warehousing relied on robust transportation. When railroads overtook steamboats as the primary mode of distance travel and shipping, Lowertown grew. But when cars and planes overtook railroads, the neighborhood suffered. After World War II highway travel and air freight displaced railroads. Corporations moved their offices, factories, and warehouses out of Lowertown into the suburbs or other parts of the country. These buildings and the neighborhood struggled to survive. By the 1970s, Lowertown was a largely abandoned collection of badly decayed industrial hulks. What turned it around this time?
10. Feeding the Urban Village
Lowertown was a food desert in the 1980s. In order to make the neighborhood a place residents would want to live, developers had to address that problem. There has been a public market in downtown St. Paul locations since 1854. The Lowertown Redevelopment Corporation convinced the St. Paul Farmers' Market to relocate here in 1982 and it has been instrumental to the neighborhood's ability to grow and thrive.
11. Playing, Living and Dining in the Urban Village
Lowertown's transformation since the early 1980s has included creating places for people to gather, enjoy a good meal, and live with dignity irrespective of income. The next three locations showcase the conversion of this former industrial center into a neighborhood where people live, eat, and play. NOTE: all three can be viewed from the platform in front of CHS Field.
12. Union Depot
There has been a Union Depot in St. Paul for nearly 14 decades. Both this one and its predecessor served the railroads that fueled the largest and longest economic boom in St. Paul's history. This Union Depot weathered the nation's transition from rail to air and highway travel and shipping and today serves Lowertown and the Twin Cities as a revitalized transit/bus/rail depot and a center of community life and activity.
13. Inside the Depot
If you have a mask* and feel comfortable doing so, we encourage you to venture inside Union Depot to explore the head house, waiting room, and concourse, which have been restored to their 1920s appearance, and the public art pieces commissioned as part of the 2012 revitalization. *If you do go inside, please remember to maintain social distancing and wear a mask in compliance with Governor Walz's Executive Order 20-81.
14. Mears Park
At the heart of Lowertown is Mears park. Formerly a hill from which St. Paulites could view the river, it is one of the city’s oldest green spaces.
15. Around the Park
Like the block around the St. Paul Farmers' Market, the reimagination of the Mears Park block was inspired by Weiming Lu’s vision of Lowertown as a thriving mixed-use, job-creating urban village. Most of the surrounding buildings were constructed in the late 19th or early 20th centuries. One was built new in the mid-1980s. Your trip around the park starts there.
