Ramsey County History – Fall 2018: “From Streetcars to Soccer: The Rise and Fall of TCRT’s Snelling Shops”

From Streetcars to Soccer: The Rise and Fall of TCRT’s Snelling Shops
Author: John W. Diers

In 1907, the Twin City Rapid Transit Company (TCRT), a privately held corporation that operated all the streetcar lines in Minneapolis and St. Paul, opened its Snelling Avenue shops complex in St. Paul. For nearly fifty years, workers at this site prided themselves on the high quality of the electric streetcars they manufactured, repaired, or rebuilt for TCRT during its run providing affordable public transportation for people in the Twin Cities. Over the years, the Snelling complex expanded. In its heyday in 1920, the Snelling facility was the operating hub for seven streetcar lines that carried 238 million passengers. The automobile, however, was the undoing of the streetcar. Even after it switched to buses in 1952, TCRT was unable to compete with passenger cars. Ridership plummeted, which caused a steep decline in the firm’s profits and eventually forced its demise in 1954. Today, the streetcars are gone; instead a newly erected soccer stadium, Allianz Field, occupies the Snelling Shops site.
PDF of Diers article