Diamond Jubilee: Irvine Park, St Paul

After passing by all the lovely homes above the city on Summit Avenue, I returned to the lower city. I wanted to try a coffee recommended by DV in DC (who always knows great locations) and then continue onto a riverside park.

I walked along Grand Street which holds the coffee shop I sought as well as a popular breakfast joint. I enjoyed a latte (I needed energy during my full day walkathon)

Hope Breakfast Bar

I continued across the John E Johnson Memorial Highway to Irvine Park proper. The area is completely different from the rest of the city. The neighborhood is gorgeous and was nearly demolished in the 70s.

Irvine Park is a neighborhood just west of downtown Saint Paul, Minnesota, United States, that contains a number of historic homes. The neighborhood was platted by John Irvine and Henry Mower Rice in 1849. At the center of the neighborhood is Irvine Park, a New England–style public square. The neighborhood is a district listed on the National Register of Historic Places and also designated by the city as a historic district. The neighborhood suffered for much of the twentieth century. A report on housing from the 1930s characterized the area as being:

... in the less desirable rooming-house district; old homes, that at one time were mansions, but, over a period of years have been outmoded. Each successive tenant has been a little less able to pay adequate rent until the present occupants have commercialized the homes in one form or another.

In 1970, 96 percent of the neighborhood's houses were classified as substandard by the city. In the early 1970s the city planned to tear down the area and replace it with high-rise apartments for public housing. This plan was not implemented, however, and the neighborhood became a National Register Historic District in 1973. Irvine Park was named Saint Paul Heritage Preservation District in 1982.

(Wikipedia)

July 2021

It was hard for me to believe that such a gorgeous neighborhood (with now extremely valuable homes) was almost erased. Thank God more rational thinking prevailed. I can only wonder how many similar neighborhoods across America had been destroyed under similar circumstances.

St. Paul has many faces and I liked everything I had seen. One thing remained, however - the river. The city had redeveloped a section of the riverfront into a park and it came highly recommended. Irvine Park was right next to it.