Ramsey County History – Fall 2002: “Lost Neighborhood: Borup’s Addition and the Prosperous Pioneer African Americans Who Owned Homes There”

Lost Neighborhood: Borup’s Addition and the Prosperous Pioneer African Americans Who Owned Homes There
Author: David Riehle

The story of a vanished neighborhood populated, though not exclusively, by pioneer African Americans, many of whom arrived around the time of the Civil War. This nineteenth-century community was located in Borup’s Addition on the eastern edge of today’s downtown, roughly between Robert Street, Seventh, Broadway and on the north by today’s I-94 freeway. The residents of the neighborhood were generally a prosperous group, many owned their homes and businesses long before the famous Rondo community developed. Using old city valuation files, city directories, and other sources, the author looks at several houses, one grocery store, and the people who lived on Sibley Street. Additional information comes from a 1923 interview with John Hickman Sr., one of the old-timers from the area and son of the legendary Rev. Robert Hickman. John Hickman described the neighborhood as an amalgam of free people of color from the northern states and ex-slaves, often called “contrabands,” who arrived in the city during the Civil War. Two of the people he remembered were James K. Hillyard, a beloved tailor and musician, and barber Blakely Durant. Old records indicate that Borup’s Addition was almost evenly split between Black and white residents, but they did not share buildings. By 1900, most of the African-American residents had moved to the northwest, and homes in that area slowly became decrepit. In the mid-1930s, the city acquired the homes to allow an expansion of the city market.
PDF of Riehle article