Design: Road to Ruin

Fragments of the past still stand in unexpected corners of the cities.

Image credit: Cody Lidtke

Recommended by the Editor

Design: Lord of the Mansard

Destination: Goldstein Museum of Design

By: Phillip Koski |   May 2011   |  From the print edition

Ruins are a picturesque feature of many European cities, and popular tourist destinations for those who enjoy the romantic melancholy of contemplating time’s dissolving power. In this country, by contrast, not all ruins are picturesque, as any visitor to, say, Detroit or St. Louis will attest. In those cities, and all too many others, great clusters of shuttered factories and homes speak only of abandonment and despair.

While vacant, boarded-up buildings are not uncommon here in the Twin Cities, there are as yet none of the blasted, irrevocably damaged neighborhoods found in the Rust Belt. There are, however, intriguing ruins that date back to the early days of the cities. The best known are along the Minneapolis riverfront, where Mill Ruins Park and the massive stone walls of the old Washburn A Mill (1) (now part of the Mill City Museum) serve as vivid reminders of the city’s industrial past. As it turns out, St. Paul also has quite a few ruins, though they’re a bit harder to find than those in Minneapolis.

In Cass Gilbert Park, east of Sherburne Avenue and Cedar Street near the State Capitol, the top of a curving stone wall from the 1880s marks the site of Merriam’s Lookout, a handsome cul-de-sac where mansions (all gone) once perched. Below the bluffs on Robert Street are the remains of a staircase that led up to the lookout. Two Merriams—John and his son William—built mansions nearby in the 1880s. A low stone wall along Cedar was part of William’s property.

Near College Avenue and Old Kellogg Boulevard is the largely intact east portal of the Selby Avenue Streetcar Tunnel (2), built in 1907 to reduce the grade so that trolleys could climb the steep hill here. The 1,472-foot-long tunnel was filled in after streetcar service ended in 1954.

Beneath the Edgar Long House (3) at 332 Summit Avenue, built in 1889 and designed by Cass Gilbert, are ruins—the most romantic in the city—of a stone carriage house. They are best seen from Irvine Avenue, which snakes along the bluffs below Summit.

Finally, in downtown St. Paul on the south side of the Fitzgerald Condominiums along Wabasha Street near Exchange Street, is a remnant of the historic Hotel Spalding in the form of a tall sandstone column. The hotel, built in 1890, came down around 1970. Why the column was left behind is an enduring mystery.

Footnotes:

1. The ruins of the Washburn A Mill in Minneapolis mark the site of a notorious 1878 explosion, in which the biggest flourmill in the United States blew up after a spark ignited flour dust in the air. 18 people died in the blast, which garnered considerable national attention and led to industry reforms.

2. The sealed-up remains of the Selby Avenue Streetcar tunnel speak of a time lost to the Twin Cities, when a network of trolleys, cable cars and railroads prevailed, and light rail was a half century in the future. Post-World War II emphasis on cars and buses meant that urban rails were seen as anachronistic and quickly dismantled.

3. The Edgar Long House, standing above some of St. Paul’s most attractive ruins, is an example of Romanesque Revival architecture; it is named after its first owner, who by the late-nineteenth century had made his fortune in railroads and building construction.