| Historic Dayton's Bluff
Driving Tour |
| Part 1 |
| Prepared for
The Historic Dayton's Bluff Association by Thomas R. Zahn & Associates, Inc. This Project was made possible by the generosity of
the Saint Paul United Way
All historic photographs are from the collection of the Minnesota Historical Society |
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| Historic View of Dayton's Bluff in the background over the Mississippi River and Saint Paul's downtown circa 1890. |
| On behalf of the membership of the Historic Dayton's Bluff Association,
I welcome you to our neighborhood. We hope that your visit with us will
be enjoyable and that you will want to return, perhaps to become a new
neighbor.
Dayton's Bluff is a very diverse neighborhood, composed of people from all walks of life. The one thing we have in common is a growing interest in the revitalization of our neighborhood. While you are spending time with us, visualize the grand neighborhood Dayton's Bluff once was and is becoming again. join us in our dedicated work to return this great neighborhood to its former glory. I want to thank the generosity of the Saint Paul United Way which made this driving tour possible through their Community Investment Fund. I hope you enjoy your driving tour of historic Dayton's Bluff. Your interest and support is very important to us. Susan Omoto, Chair |
| Historic Dayton's Bluff Association |
| Who Are We?
The Historic Dayton's Bluff Association (HDBA) is people working together to preserve the culture and historic diversity, beauty, and integrity of our neighborhood. We work on improving neighborhood respect and pride by maintaining the historic character of the area. The HDBA is a non-profit organization that holds monthly meetings of its membership. Our current goal is to have Dayton's Bluff designated a historic district. Members also provide support to other members who are renovating their homes, looking for a home to buy, or working on other community- related projects. What Do We Do? The HDBA sponsors the Historic Dayton's Bluff Home Tour each fall to raise community awareness and generate operating funds. The HDBA won a certificate of recognition from the Saint Paul Heritage Preservation Commission and the American Institute of Architects for outstanding work in the community. Members of the HDBA participate in other neighborhood- based organizations
to help improve housing opportunities and promote a positive image of the
neighborhood.
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| A Driving Tour of Historic Dayton's Bluff |
| Development of Dayton's Bluff began early in the history of Saint
Paul due to its proximity to the downtown. The area is named after Lyman
Dayton an early pioneer real estate developer who owned extensive properties
in the area beginning in the 1850s.
Probably the most striking feature of Dayton's Bluff to a 19th century visitor was its dramatic terracing of partially wooded hills overlooking Lowertown. Landbrokers and newspaper journalists praised Dayton's Bluff as the most desirable residential location in the city. When street cars began to run across the great granite bridge into the downtown in the late 1880s, Seventh Street became an arterial and new development began to spring up along the streetcar line. Industries locating here at the time provided a work center for many residents. Among such businesses were the Theodore Hamm Brewing Company and Minnesota Mining and Manufacturing (3M). Steady growth on the bluff between the 1880s and the 1920s created a diversity of styles, prices, and locations that fit the needs, tastes, and budgets of a variety of urban dwellers. During the first quarter of the 20th century the area prospered. By the 1930s, families establishing their homes in Dayton's Bluff were a moderate and middle income mixture of both blue and white collar workers. However, the great depression hit the area hard. Many people lost their jobs, local stores lost revenues, and people who owned mansions could no longer afford the upkeep and moved away. |
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| 1904 photograph of the Muench family gardens at 334 Mounds Boulevard overlooking the river valley. |
| Despite some of the changes inevitable in the urban environment over
time, the heart of the neighborhood remains intact. Sometimes hidden under
"home improvements," the character of its homes and storefronts remain,
providing the essential building blocks of a historically and architecturally
rich environment. Although much of the scenic variety has been modified,
the view from the bluff remains spectacular.
Because of these assets Dayton's Bluff is now experiencing a renaissance. Private investment has provided not only many renovated homes, but also enthusiastic homeowners determined to make Dayton's Bluff a premier place to live. The following driving tour of Dayton's Bluff provides a guide to some of the area's most important sites. Each site of interest is followed by a brief description which provides architectural and/or historical information about the property. We hope you enjoy your tour of our architectural past and join in our vision for the future. |
| 1. Linz-Bergmeier House
"Fountain Place" 614 North Fountain Place Queen Anne/Colonial Revival style 1885, 1891, 1916 |
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Named because of the beautiful Victorian terraced landscape with gardens, pools, and fountains that graced the grounds of 614 Fountain Street. The original building was a stylistic. The first remodeling added Classical detailing, the second introduced Craftsman motifs and dormers. The building has a magnificent outlook over Swede Hollow. The house supported one of the most elaborate residential landscapes in the city of Saint Paul. |
| 2. John Allenson House
635 North Bates Avenue Eastlake style 1888 |
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The Allenson house boasts a wonderfully complete Eastlake patternbook design. The ornamental trim of houses such as this one was a triumph of wood-working machinery; the gouge decorated the vergeboards and casings, the lathe turned the porch piers and spindles, and the fret-saw produced the ornate brackets. |
| 3. 627-635 North Greenbrier Street
Victorian patternbook houses 1880s |
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Looking south down Greenbrier you can see two fine examples of elaborate portico and gable carvings. These two houses demonstrate the importance the Victorian era put on front porch entries. |
| 4. Hamm's Mansion Site
Theodore Hamm and his family lived here next to the brewery he established
in the 1860s. The brick mansion which once stood here of the eastern edge
of Swede Hollow, was built in the 1880s by the Hamm children for their
parents who were on an extended trip back to their German homeland.
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| Swede Hollow
Plans to make Swede Hollow a park can be traced back to 1900, when William Hamm served on the Park Board and wanted the beautiful little valley to be a city park in memory of his father, the founder of the Hamm Brewery Company. In the 1960s and early 1970s, ideas for Swede Hollow ranged from filling it in for industrial use to using it as part of highway 212 project that would have cost Dayton's Bluff nearly 500 homes. However, in 1973 Swede Hollow was designated a Saint Paul park. The restoration of Swede Hollow as a park was the Saint Paul Garden Club's Bicentennial project, for which they received the Garden Clubs of America's Founder's Fund Award in 1977. |
| 5. William & Marie Hamm House
668 North Greenbrier Street Reed & Stem, architects Neoclassical style 1892 |
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William Hamm built this solid house for his new bride, Marie Scheffer, in the same year that the Hamm Brewery underwent a dramatic expansion. He hired Allen H. Stem, a St. Paul architect whose reputation as a designer exceeded Cass Gilbert's until the state capitol competition. Conceived in a neoclassical spirit, the house displays Stem's penchant for monumental exteriors with exquisitely crafted interiors. Verandas with fine balustrades once faced both streets. |
| 6. Otto & Marie Hamm Muller House
672 North Greenbrier Street Augustus F.Gauger, architect Queen Anne style 1891 |
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The Muller House was architect Augustus Gauger's largest residential commission on the bluff. The architect's fond-ness for rounded forms is displayed in the corner tower and its upper story windows, the tiny eyebrow windows that until recently graced the tower cap, and a oversized staircase window. Unfortunately, the stained glass that once filled these windows is now gone. Gauger's clients were, as usual, German immigrants, this time an on-again-off-again employee of Hamm's Brewery and his wife, a daughter of Theodore Hamm himself. For many years the house was heated by steam piped up the hill from the brewery. Most of its vigorously contoured exterior survives except for a spindlework porch, the victim of repeated insensitive remodelings. |
| 7. Peter & Emma Classen House
680 North Greenbrier Street E. P Bassford, architect Classicized Queen Anne style 1887 |
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Peter Classen was a collector for Theodore Hamm. Otto Muller lived with the Classens until building his own house next door. The front picture window, with flanking colonettes, is the only obvious remnant of the house's earliest style. Successive remodeling have superimposed Neoclassical, Craftsman and modernist elements. |
| 8. Henry & Hilda Defiel House
732 East Margaret Street Herman Kretz & Co., architects Late Queen Anne style 1890 |
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| Henry Defiel was the eldest son of a German immigrant who had made his fortune dealing in ice. Every winter, the People's Ice Company harvested their "crop" from White Bear Lake and Lake Minnetonka, then stored it in vast war houses scattered throughout the city for prompt local delivery. Henry and Hilda put up their house in the midst of the East Side operation an within easy commute down Seventh Street. Their architect was German-trained Hermann Kretz, best known locally for his dozens of up-scale row houses on and around St. Anthony Hill. An almost mechanical precision in Kretz's compositions, however florid, betray his years of training as an engineer. |
| 9. Margaret Street Police Substation
745 East Margaret Street H.R.P. Hamilton, architect Modified Italianate 1886 |
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The Margaret Street Police Station was built in 1886 and served the east side of St. Paul until the mid 1930s when all the substations were vacated and the police worked out of the central station downtown. |
| 10. 752 East Margaret Street
Queen Anne style 1887 |
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This is one of five historical homes that line this street in the "Swede Hollow" neighborhood. Built in 1887, this three bedroom home was architecturally restored and updated for contemporary living by the Department of Planning and Economic Development of the City of Saint Paul. |
| 11. George Pabst Grocery
789-804 East Margaret Street French Renaissance style 1895 |
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This high Victorian commercial building gives us just a peek at its original grandeur. Although the first floor has been sheathed over, the second story still displays the original steep roof with French Renaissance dormers with flor de les ornamentation. |
| 12. East Sixth Streetscape |
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Looking down this row of houses on the north side of Sixth Street gives you an idea about the integrity of massing and set-back that created a sense of unity in this turn of the century neighborhood. Although many of these houses have been modified with various cosmetic changes, their massing and rhythm of spacing demonstrate an era when the whole was greater than the sum of its parts. |
| 13. Michael & Rose Walter House
770 East Sixth Street Italianate style 1880 |
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When the Walters built their rather standard Italianate house in 1880, they could have had little idea that it would one day be treasured as a rare local survivor of the bracketed, multiple-porched style it represented. The name of the designer and builder are lost to us, but their skills can still be seen in the sunbursts flanking the central gable and the elegantly sawn and turned columns of the veranda and kitchen porch. |
| 14. Andrew J. Hoban House
762 East Sixth Street Eclectic 1889 |
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This is one of the finest masonry buildings in the district. It has a strong rectilinear profile with bracketed eaves and rock faced limestone trim. Of special note are the large key stone treatment over the east window set. Also notice the west side gable with its ornate singled sides and the oriel window. |
| 15. Arthur & Elsa Koenig House
757 East Sixth Street Italianate style 1879 |
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This Italianate home was built in 1897 by Arthur and Elsa Koenig of Steyr, Austria. Arthur was a resident agent for Phillips Best Brewing Company of Milwaukee. The Koenig House has become something of a signature of historic Dayton's Bluff. While its larger peers have gone down or disappeared into their alterations, the Koenig House continues to command its lofty site. An early limestone wall sets it off from the street, while its profusion of wings, bays, and porches sprawl out over the flattened crest of the Eichenwald hill. The truncation of its corner tower is the only significant exterior loss. A few pieces of ornamental iron cresting still poke up from the roofs to give a sense of the lacy skyline that once graced so many Italianate houses in the area. |
| 16. Eichenwald Row
393-399 Eichenwald Street Andrew J. Hoban, masterbuilder Victorian rowhouse 1892 |
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By the early 1890s, all of the dramatic sites facing the city had been taken, and builders turned their attention to open lots in the vicinity of the mansions to build their upscale projects. Eichenwald Row was the most elaborate serial housing venture in the bluff area. Created by local masterbuilder Andrew Hoban, it captured nearly every phase of the Queen Anne style, from the English Tudor of the gable facings, to the Early American of the porch columns, to the Richardsonian Romanesque of the broad- arched stone and brickwork. |
| 17. Peter & Louisa John House
373 North Maple Street Buechner & Orth, architects Colonial Revival style-house and carriage house 1906 |
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This large five-bedroom Colonial Revival home and carriage house was built in 1906 by Peter John, a prominent shopkeeper and saloon owner in the Dayton's Bluff area. Mr. John married Louisa Hamm of the well-known Hamm brewing family. The home was well maintained during the 75 years it remained in the family. It is truly unique that the home still retains many of the original 1906 wall coverings complete with hand-painted motifs. Also there is a wide variety of fine wood carvings, stained glass and inlaid wood floors. |
| 18. Darius Hevener House
729 East Sixth Street Augustus F. Gauger, architect Queen Anne style 1889 |
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The Hevener House is the most intact of the 1880s houses on Sixth Street with a splendid porch, foliate ornament and gouged bracket-work. Architect Augustus Gauger gave the design a splendidly detailed facade, combining the latest Queen Anne filigree with touches of the old bracketed style that he could never quite give up. The Queen Anne style originated in England in the late 1860s. This picturesque style mixes Medieval, Elizabethan and Jacobean elements in asymmetrical collections of architectural details. The use of highly ornate spindlework was an American interpretation of the style popularized by the distribution of precut architectural elements through the expanding railway system. The style maintained popularity from 1880-1910. |
| 19. 393 North Bates Avenue
Elmer H. Justus, builder Adobe Revival style 1929 |
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This is a rare example of a one story Adobe Revival house. The small residence has a uniquely formal symmetrical facade. This popular western style is rarely seen in the Midwest. Notice the use of brick around the entrance stoop and the small pent roofs at the roof parapet and above the entry. |
| You can continue your tour of Dayton's Bluff by going to Part
2 of the Historic Dayton's Bluff Driving Tour.
If you would like additional information about Dayton's Bluff please call the Dayton's Bluff Community Council at 651-772-2075 |