Ramsey County History – Fall 2015: “St. Paul’s New Directions in the 1930s”

St. Paul’s New Directions in the 1930s
Author: James A. Stolpestad

Author James A. Stolpestad recounts how, in the late 1920s and early 1930s, St. Paul leaders in government successfully campaigned for public funding to build the St. Paul City Hall and Ramsey County Courthouse, remade old Third Street into the esplanade that was then named Kellogg Boulevard, and successfully lobbied the federal government to include funding for a new post office and custom house in legislation passed during the Hoover administration. That federal money resulted in the Post Office and Custom House on Kellogg Boulevard that opened in 1934. At the same time, that these major public buildings and spaces were constructed, private businesses in St. Paul were also busy putting up a substantial number of new buildings, such as the St. Paul Union Depot, the Lowry Hotel, the Minnesota Building, the First National Bank, the Women’s City Club, Bethesda Hospital, the Lowry Medical Arts Building, the Northern States Power Building (now Ecolab), the Tri-State Telephone Building, Mickey’s Diner, the Montgomery Ward building, the Ford Motor Company Assembly Plant, new buildings at Minnesota Mining (3M), and an addition to the West Publishing Building. By the time the Great Depression tightened its grip on the city, many of the historically significant buildings in St. Paul that are still extant had been constructed, and, in the process, they changed the face of the city.
PDF of Stolpestad article