Ramsey County History – Summer 2020: “The View from Summit Avenue: Inspiration Point for Sinclair Lewis’s Main Street”

The View from Summit Avenue: Inspiration Point for Sinclair Lewis’s Main Street
Author: Ralph L. Goldstein

When a young Sinclair Lewis traveled to Saint Paul at the turn of the twentieth century to take his Yale University entrance exams, he found time to explore the city, marveling at the construction of the new capitol building and the view of the waters of the mighty Mississippi from a lookout point on lovely Summit Avenue. Little did he know then that he’d remember his evening strolls and incorporate what he saw and experienced into his novel Main Street, a fictional story of small-town America that captured the country’s attention, garnered (mostly) positive reviews, and celebrates one-hundred years in 2020. Ralph L. Goldstein, president of the Sinclair Lewis Society, shares the story of Lewis, known affectionately by his first wife as the “Minnesota Tumbleweed,” his rise to literary fame—thanks to Main Street and other works, and the ways he incorporated specific places, historical events, and actual people from Saint Paul and other parts of Minnesota into many of his twenty-three novels and a myriad of short stories.

PDF of R. Goldstein article