• INDEX
• ORIGIN STORY OF W7
• RESIDENCE
• GARDENS
• CV
• AWARDS
• MEDIA
• FAMILY
• TRAVEL
• POETRY & QUOTES

Curriculum vitae/resume

Joseph Frank Landsberger

“Origin Story of

Fort Road/West Seventh Street, the Township/City of Saint Paul,
the Territory/State of Minnesota, Glacial Age Forward”

Press release and Table of contents

It was the old days, the old ways.

(Send email request for more information.)

The Origin Story of Fort Road/West Seventh Street, the Township/City of Saint Paul, the Territory/State of Minnesota: Glacial Age Forward. ISBN: 979-8-218-57397-3

What distinguishes Origin Story is its insistence on centering the people, places, and processes that the state’s historiography marginalized. It corrects a longstanding omission: the neglect of the corridor of the Mississippi River and Fort Road, its West End, as essential to the state’s formation. It begins with Dakota lifeways, situating Indigenous presence as the essential baseline for all that follows. In the 1600s the French, Ojibwe and Métis fur trading community set in motion the transition to a “built” environment of the 1800s.

In Saint Paul, settlement emerged at breaks/landings in its 80-foot bluffs that bordered the city’s 26 miles of Mississippi River shoreline. While at the Lower Landing émigrés focused on wealth accumulation; Upper Landing immigrants were more interested in building lives. Successive waves of immigrants began transforming the Upper Landing into Minnesota’s true “Ellis Island” evidenced in twelve languages/dialects. Imagine the communications! What emerged is a deeply textured account of immigrant culture, including the distinctive forms of vernacular housing and commercial structures that became the oldest in its state.

Origin Story weaves its physical and subterranean landscape, geology and geography, into the historical narrative. The river fostered steamship and barge commerce, as did railroads and railyards that blasted out the bluffs. Economic workingclass inventiveness drained swamps and bogs for farms, dairies and abattoirs. Building materials: limestone and shale for brick, the Great Woods for lumber. Twelve breweries lined the river and its system of caves for lagering, as well as its ecosystem of supporting trades. Social and political upheavals also shaped its community. The population stabilized through the Long Depression (1873-1800) and melded culturally into the Twentieth Century, ignored even threatened by city powers. Police Chief O’Connor’s layover policy sponsored organized crime; the Mississippi River stagnated through the 1930s, deprived of oxygen, subject to human and industrial waste. Three miles of Seventh Street on its river side lost 16 feet and all its buildings for realignment. After World War II, official policy encouraged white flight to the suburbs. Freeways (Shepard Road and 35E) eliminated whole neighborhoods in conjunction with “urban renewal”;.

It is here that the book’s second major theme emerges: the extraordinary volunteer activism at the outset of the 1970s that preserved the West End’s cultural and architectural heritage. Downtown interests were perceived as adversaries rather than advocates, disregarded historic structures in favor of strip malls. Volunteers took action. Through their unique neighborhood council, the West Seventh/Fort Road Federation, they saved Irvine Park, Irvine Hill, Kips Glen, and Little Bohemia; raised cultural institutions of the CSPS Hall and Schmidt Brewery to historic site status. They successfully fought slum lords and porn shops, rebuilt playgrounds, parks and community and health centers. A commercial ghetto was fought: its neighborhood transformed into affordable housing. A development corporation preserved housing and the commercial strip, with some success but some losses. Garden tours drew attention to its river valley. It wasn’t radical as much as self-preservation.

Historians ignored this seminal history. The locally sourced, locally promoted “Origin Story” met a ready audience. Its narrative was illustrated by 1069 vintage and commissioned images documented with 246 endnotes. A segmented bibliography of 108 resources will fuel further research. The first edition sold out in two months (January/February) publicized by email, social media and word-of-mouth. Six months later a second edition was revised to include a dozen sagas from those who purchased the first.

All proceeds benefited local non-profits, sold through them and independent bookstores and on reserve at libraries and historical/cultural outlets. There are no marketing expenses. Educational program of lectures, courses and newsprint serialization is listed on the main page.

Table of Contents

Foreward: Method 1 Eras of the West End 2 Dakota Era 4 European Extractive Colonialism 20 American Expansionism 24 A Transitional Time 30 From Claims to Plats 38 Minnesota Identity 46 Minnesota Survey 48 Marginalization 56 Red River Carts 60 Reserve Township 64 Rural Migration 64 Urban Migration 66 Upper Landing/River Flats/The Levee 70 Limestone, Brick, Tunnels 80 Irvine Park 94 Westtown, Downtown 104 Dakota Conflict 112 Seven Corners, West Seventh 116 Pleasant Avenue 130 German Settlement 134 “Bohemian” Settlement 164 Little Bohemia 196 Uppertown, Uppertown Triangle 208 Italian Settlement 216 Irish Immigration 228

Peasant Valley 232 Dairies of the West End 246 Widening West Seventh/Infrastructure 248 Seven Corners West 258 James to Victoria 258 Benevolent Societies 270 Schools/Community Centers 288 Taverns (and Brothels) 296 Minnesota’s Waterways 302 Railroad Transportation 310 City Railway/Metro Transit 314 West End Car Culture 318 Smith Avenue High Bridge 320 Shepard Road Freeway 326 West End Arts and Entertainment 348 West End Arts 352 Community Reporter 372 West Seventh/Fort Road Federation 376 Affiliations 396 Bibliography 397 Endnotes 401 About the Author 412 Postscript and Postimage 415

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