2001 Residential Real Estate Development: 1880-1950

• In 1849, Lyman Dayton laid out a large addition on the bluff east of downtown overlooking the Lowertown landing, and between 1852 and 1857 eighty-two additions were made to the city’s original plat. Most were near the Upper or Lowertown landings, but Iglehart, Hall and Mackubin’s Addition was miles to the north, at the west side of Lake Phalen. Others were arranged near the edges of Lake Como.
• Settlement outside downtown and its edges before the 1870s was limited primarily to farmers, traders, and those with small businesses along the roads leading out of St. Paul proper. One notable exception was the short-lived project of Henry McKenty. In 1859, he platted a sixty-lot addition on the south shore of Lake Como where a few hotels were in operations. The two-and-one-half acre lots of “Como Villas” were inaccessible until McKenty financed a private road from Rondo and Rice Streets to the lakeshore, but still there were few sales and less construction. McKenty’s Como Addition of 1857, just to the north, met a similar fate.
• A second electric interurban line was completed in 1898, linking downtown St. Paul, Como Park, and the Como Avenue line in southeast Minneapolis.
• During the 1880s, St. Paul followed the lead of Minneapolis in establishing a city- wide system of parkways and parks, and the city’s real estate dealers lobbied for the cause. St. Paul’s original downtown was furnished with a modest system of urban parks and squares, including Rice, Irvine, Smith, and Central parks and Courthouse and Lafayette squares. However, the city had no substantial tracts until the much-debated acquisition of land around Lake Como in 1872; a public park was not developed here until 1887. In the 1890s Indian Mounds Park was acquired, and the first tracts of property around Lake Phalen in 1894.
• St. Paul’s leaders were energized by the efforts of other cities such as Chicago to plan for parks and parkways in anticipation of residential development. In 1872, on the eve of a financial panic which depressed the city treasury, they invited Horace W. S. Cleveland to prepare an outline plan for park improvements 14 In his outline of a system of continuous parks and parkways Cleveland emphasized the necessity of preserving the natural terrain of the Mississippi and the city’s lakes, and to lay out streets and public places so as to preserve the future wealth of the city. However, a Board of Park Commissioners empowered to condemn private property for public parks, avenues and boulevards, was not created until 1887. Now the local economy was experiencing a boom of new residential construction, and the commissioners invited Cleveland to return to St. Paul. In 1887 he designed the roadways and landscape of Como Park.
• Of particular interest to the future of real estate was the construction of Mississippi River Boulevard from the Minneapolis City limits to Fort Snelling, where acquisition began in 1901. At the east, acquisitions for Wheelock Parkway stretching from lakes Como to Phalen began in 1909. On the West Side, purchase of lands for Cherokee Heights and the West Side Boulevard were authorized in 1909.
• Warrendale, on the eastern shore of Lake Como and owned by Kentucky developer Cary I .Warren and George W. Cross and F.D. Hager of St. Paul, was laid out into curving streets following the lakeshore topography. The Northwest Magazine credited H.W. S. Cleveland of Chicago and a Kilvington of Minneapolis as the designers of the plan, but civil engineers Libby and Dahl signed the recorded plat. It arranged the fifty-two acre site into nine blocks divided by three small park triangles. The plat was recorded in May 1883. Warren was no doubt inspired by the acquisition of Como Park in 1872 (although it was not developed for years) and the proximity of the St. Paul and Northern Pacific trackage, whose Shortline offered passenger service. The early development of Warrendale along W. Como Boulevard and Van Slyke Avenue was impressive, with houses by Augustus Gauger and Charles Wallingford, but lot sales were modest in number. Deed restrictions called for houses of not less than $2,000. Most of the lots remained unsold until the early twentieth century and were eventually sold by other real estate firms.
• Hamline, laid out on the well-elevated plateau between Hewitt, Snelling, Holton, and College avenues in 1880, was developed mostly before World War I. When a second generation of lot sales was organized by the Hamline Improvement Association, the district boasted Hamline University, railway shops, the Midway manufacturing district, and proximity to the state fairgrounds, the University of Minnesota, and Como Park.
  • Public improvements to Como Park also encouraged development. The Lake Park Addition, promoted by E.L. Dodge in 1912, offered lots for $250 to $350 between Como, Snelling, Pascal and Midway Parkway. The Royal Oaks Addition, across Lake Como from the pavilion, was also developed in this period, with sixty lots sold at $300 to $400.