Historic Saint Paul

Located in the North End neighborhood, Rice Street began as a commercial corridor that served Saint Paul’s working class. Rice Street is unassuming; when it was rushed into being more than a century ago, there was no time for ornamentation or ostentation. Despite its utilitarian appearance, Rice Street has a character that is unique to the street and the North End.

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Since 1840, Saint Paul has taken on different identities: frontier hamlet, steamboat burg, provincial capital, railroad boomtown, city in stagnation, city in decline, city in revival. These transformations have left their marks all over town. Nowhere can one see them better than on Selby Avenue.

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The contours of the earth define and set apart Saint Paul’s West Side. On the north, the great swoop of the Mississippi forms the point and two sides of a rounded triangle; a line of limestone cliffs – the shore long ago of the glacial River Warren – forms the base. The low plains inside the triangle, the flats, has invited immigrants, industry, and floods for more than a century and a half.

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Saint Paul is known for its “Main Street” commercial districts that grew to serve the immigrants who settled the city’s neighborhoods a century ago. One of the liveliest of these districts is the East Side’s Payne Avenue, known in the 1930s as the “downtown of northeastern Ramsey County.”

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As the Mississippi River travels past downtown Saint Paul, it makes a sharp curve beneath towering sandstone and limestone bluffs. This stretch of river has been a focal point of human activity since the earliest phases of our history – and it continues to be a vibrant area that combines rich ecological resources with unique sites that remind us of our area’s diverse cultural heritage.

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