Ramsey County History – Spring 2007: “Lost Neighborhood: The Jews of Fourteenth Street Remembered”

Lost Neighborhood: The Jews of Fourteenth Street Remembered
Author: Gene H. Rosenblum

Gene Rosenblum’s grandparents, immigrants from Lithuania, moved into St. Paul’s Fourteenth Street neighborhood in 1907. This heavily Jewish community comprised several streets in the shadow of the State Capitol. It had two synagogues, a community center, and many grocery stores and bakeries. The residents were fairly prosperous, at least compared to those of the West Side Flats. Many of the earliest Jewish residents were peddlers or small businessmen. They started arriving in the early 1880s, fleeing persecution in Russia and differed from the earlier Jews who had come to the city. The construction of the I-94 freeway in the 1960s wiped out the remnants of the community.
PDF of Rosenblum article