The North End is a neighborhood in

Saint Paul Paul, also named Saul of Tarsus, commonly known as Paul the Apostle and Saint Paul, was a Christian apostle ( AD) who spread the teachings of Jesus in the first-century world. For his contributions towards the New Testament, he is generally ...

in the

U.S. The United States of America (USA), also known as the United States (U.S.) or America, is a country primarily located in North America. It is a federal republic of 50 states and a federal capital district, Washington, D.C. The 48 contiguous ...

state of

Minnesota Minnesota ( ) is a U.S. state, state in the Upper Midwestern region of the United States. It is bordered by the Canadian provinces of Manitoba and Ontario to the north and east and by the U.S. states of Wisconsin to the east, Iowa to the so ...

. The neighborhood was built around Rice Street and is often referred to by that name. It is bounded by Larpenteur Avenue on the north, the

Burlington Northern Santa Fe Railroad BNSF Railway is the largest freight railroad in the United States. One of six North American Class I railroads, BNSF has 36,000 employees, of track in 28 states, and over 8,000 locomotives. It has three transcontinental routes that provide ...

tracks to the south, Dale Street to the west, and Interstate 35E to the east.

History

European settlement of the neighborhood began in the 1840s. In 1849, Edmund Rice purchased a large tract of land in the vicinity of modern Cayuga Street and Interstate 35E for an estate he called Trout Brook. Beginning in 1857, Edmund Rice helped to establish and build the St. Paul and Pacific Railroad through his property, which forms the southern border of the North End. Other railroads began to encircle the neighborhood in the 1880s, including the

Northern Pacific Railroad The Northern Pacific Railway was an important American transcontinental railroad that operated across the northern tier of the Western United States, from Minnesota to the Pacific Northwest between 1864 and 1970. It was approved and chartered b ...

tracks running north of Maryland Avenue and the Soo Line, today the path of the Trout Brook Regional Trail. These railroads drove settlement in the southern part of the neighborhood. Large employers located along the railroad corridor, including the Jackson Street Roundhouse and the former Saint Paul Foundry, now the Empire Builder Business Park. Rice Street, which had its origins in rough trails used by the fur trade, gradually became a major commercial and transportation corridor, with

horsecar A horsecar, horse-drawn tram, horse-drawn streetcar (U.S.), or horse-drawn railway (historical), is a tram or streetcar pulled by a horse. Summary The horse-drawn tram (horsecar) was an early form of public transport, public rail transport, ...

and later electric

streetcar A tram (also known as a streetcar or trolley in Canada and the United States) is an urban rail transit in which vehicles, whether individual railcars or multiple-unit trains, run on tramway tracks on urban public streets; some include s ...

service as far north as Ivy Avenue. These brought development further north into the neighborhood, although areas north of Maryland Avenue remained substantially undeveloped until the mid-to-late 20th century. The neighborhood became a traditional entry point for successive waves of immigrants to Saint Paul, including Romanians, Bohemians, Hungarians, Irish, and especially southern Germans. The area south of Maryland Avenue around the St. Bernard's Church became known as "Little Bavaria" for its many German residents and businesses. Like many urban neighborhoods, the North End experienced decline in the second half of the twentieth century due to

White Flight The white flight, also known as white exodus, is the sudden or gradual large-scale migration of white people from areas becoming more racially or ethnoculturally diverse. Starting in the 1950s and 1960s, the terms became popular in the Racism ...

and concentrated poverty. New waves of immigrants replaced the descendants of previous generations, including substantial numbers of

Hmong Hmong may refer to: * Hmong people, an ethnic group living mainly in Southwest China, Vietnam, Laos, and Thailand * Hmong cuisine * Hmong customs and culture ** Hmong music ** Hmong textile art * Hmong language, a continuum of closely related ...

, Somali, and

Karen Karen may refer to: * Karen (name), a given name and surname * Karen (slang), a term and meme for a demanding white woman displaying certain behaviors People * Karen people, an ethnic group in Myanmar and Thailand * House of Karen, a historic ...

refugees. Today the North End is one of Saint Paul's poorest and most diverse neighborhoods. Substantial efforts by local government aimed at revitalizing the area are ongoing.

References

{{Saint Paul neighborhoods Asian-American culture in Minneapolis–Saint Paul Hmong-American culture in Minneapolis–Saint Paul Neighborhoods in Saint Paul, Minnesota Populated places established in the 19th century