Author: Sarah Lemanczyk

Sarah Lemanczyk, photo by Karl Herber / karlherber.com

Looking up at the St. Paul Central Library’s four stories of pink Tennessee marble makes you feel small. The Italian Renaissance building, its façade decorated in classical columns and pilasters, looks as though it belongs in a city of grander scale. And indeed, it’s a remnant of a time when St. Paul was more connected to the East Coast—a time when local developers still looked east for inspiration. (Central Library got its spark from New York architect Electus Litchfield.) The interior walls and stairs are wrapped in gray Mankato stone and marble. The chandeliers are gilded and ubiquitous. There is an almost medieval feeling of privilege in being allowed to walk these halls, especially if the object of your desires is not astronomical secrets printed on musty scrolls, but rather, the Trading Places DVD.

Central Library opened its doors in 1917, funded mostly by selling city bonds. In 2000, those doors, along with the rest of the library, received a two-year, $15.9 million renovation. It was the first major restoration in the library’s history; it improved access to the stacks and added more computers while still, somehow, preserving the building’s old-world charms. These days, libraries are generally built to be bright, efficient spaces. And then there’s the Central library.

After passing through a hive of library-related activity—checkout, return, security cameras—the atmosphere becomes hushed, the lights dimmed. Wide stone staircases endlessly curve upward. (You can hear your footsteps.) Chandeliers provide the only light. The aura is rich; the environs silent—quite a feat, considering the building is over 90,000 square feet and holds over a quarter million books.

One of the only outright deviations to the library’s aesthetic is the wide-open children’s section on the first floor. It’s divided into two sections: one with plush, circular sofas for lounging teens; the other with a mass of carpeted space in which kids can run, jump, and shout about their love of reading. Other nods to modernity are the wide, navigable mezzanine stacks and islands of Internet-enabled computers. At any given time, most of the desks that house these machines will be occupied—havens for the older, the ambitious, and the asleep.

Attached to the public library is the James J. Hill Reference Library, which was funded in large part by Gilded Age railroad mogul and philanthropist James J. Hill. Though it’s technically a separate library, no trip to Central is complete without a pass through the Hill’s reading room, a soaring three-story chamber with floor-to-ceiling books, narrow balconies, winding staircases, and large private tables. Here you’ll find free coffee, a clientele sporting button-downs and sensible heels, and all the back issues of Chemical Market Report you’ll ever need.

But the real magic is in the building’s public side, the more average side. As you sink into one of the magazine room’s leatherette armchairs with the latest Lonely Planet guide to somewhere warm, a view of Rice Park spreads out before you. The clunky start-and-stop of the copier machine echoes from behind a row of long, dark wooden tables. It’s the kind of place where, beneath the glorious beamed ceilings and angel friezes, an everyday dad wrapped in Sean John fleece sits with his nose in a book while his young son intermittently doodles and stares out the tall arched windows, his feet dangling high above the stone floor.

You can’t spit in Lowertown without hitting a plaque denoting one historically significant edifice or another. Warehouses stand shoulder to shoulder, erected in a passel of architectural styles—from Italianate to Richardsonian to Beaux Arts—monuments to a zeal for development that’s matched only by the recent condo craze. Many of these majestic industrial buildings, like the Romanesque revival Boston & Northwest Realty Company, were designed by Cass Gilbert, the turn-of-the-century hotshot who went on to draw up plans for the Minnesota State Capitol, the U.S. Supreme Court, and New York City’s Woolworth Building and George Washington Bridge.

Roughly speaking, Lowertown is the area between Galtier Plaza (on Jackson Street) and, to the east, the Saint Paul Farmers’ Market, with its onion-with-a-pinwheel sculpture (on Broadway Street). The farmers’ market has been in operation since 1853, making it one of St. Paul’s oldest landmarks.

Lowertown’s north and south borders are, respectively, West Seventh Street and Kellogg Boulevard. But the strip of land between Kellogg and the Mississippi feels a little forlorn; there, Warner Road shuttles cars past downtown, and a little-used pedestrian promenade offers views of the Mississippi at work.

The river is, of course, why Saint Paul exists at all. In its infancy during the 1840s, the city was occupied by voyageurs too rowdy to mix with the soldiers at Fort Snelling. They made their money trapping beaver, mink, otter, and muskrat while the waters were open, hunkering down when ice made travel impossible. And then, with a belch of smoke and toot of the horn, the railroads—and their attendant robber barons—arrived. Bankers soon outnumbered furriers. Warehouses sprang up overnight as the prosperous businessmen of Lowertown took to architectural one-upsmanship, creating buildings swathed in marble, such as the Merchants National Bank on East Jackson, designed in the Richardsonian Romanesque style.

A closer look at many of these commemorated structures finds that, their glorious façades notwithstanding, they are no longer centers of commerce and industry, but rather parking ramps. In fact, many of the parked cars belong to the office workers who comprise about a third of Lowertown’s weekday population; other neighborhood denizens include artists in live/work lofts (they’ll open their doors during the St. Paul Art Crawl this month, October 13 through 15) and their newer neighbors, the residents of stainless-steel-and-granite rehabbed condos. But still, even at midday, Lowertown can seem sparse. Perhaps it’s the scale of things—all those eighteen-foot ceilings with their massive beams. A building designed to house huge supplies of grain destined for the East coast, or ore heading for the West, or even the trains themselves, is hardly filled by a scant three or four folks sipping coffee at the Black Dog Café (housed in the Northern Pacific Railway Warehouse).

If Lowertown has a crown jewel, it has to be the Saint Paul Union Depot. There, the spirit of the 1920s, when thousands of train travelers passed through daily, is well preserved. Even as jackhammer dust fills the stretch out back where lofts are being built, the depot’s dark, polished wood and hanging lights exude glamour.

If you go to Lowertown by car, take advantage of the free parking by the river at Lower Landing, where steamboats have docked since the 1840s. Walking up Jackson Street, you’ll retrace the first steps taken by many immigrants in their new city. Crest the hill, and brick and stone buildings appear all around. It’ll seem new to you, too.

There’s enough history in Minnehaha Park’s 193 acres that it feels worthy of a Ken Burns documentary film. There’s the home of the first permanent settler west of the Mississippi—the transplanted John H. Stevens house. Originally built around 1850, it was in this house that the word “Minneapolis” was first tossed around. The Pergola Garden drips with flora native to the area, and there’s even a replica of Henry Wadsworth Longfellow’s home in Cambridge, Massachusetts.

Those wanting to skip the history lesson can slip into the Sea Salt restaurant, a slick place that’s open seasonally, to load up on shrimp tacos or Sebastian Joe’s ice cream—and then head over to the band shell for an evening bluegrass concert.

But the real magic remains at the falls.

A stairway winds down into a tangle of greenery. You lose the sounds of the city even before losing sight of the banking planes and the brick towers of the Ford Plant to the east. More important, as you descend among the silver maples, you begin to see the waters “laugh and leap into the valley,” as Longfellow put it in his 1855 Song of Hiawatha. It was that poem that first lured pilgrims, including the likes of Mark Twain and Henry David Thoreau, to this place, and actually gave the falls its name. By 1894, a zoo was built on the park grounds. By 1922, tourist cabins were erected and the park’s Princess Station welcomed dozens of streetcars a day.

Watching the water foam up, tasting the mist in the breeze, you’ve moved back in time—to a Minnesota devoid of mills, dams, or the Mall of America. Daily life in the Twin Cities offers few such opportunities to mingle with the ancient. Standing in the rush of water, hidden from the world above, it seems entirely plausible, as the creation story goes, that this is the spot where the mother of the earth gave birth to the Dakota people and that all the trees and surrounding grounds are indeed sacred.

The park has many moods. There are sunny afternoons with crowds of picnickers; Hmong girls splashing in the creek; bevies of high-end bicycles locked to the wrought iron fences along the gorge; and cool, cloudy mornings when walking along the creek is a solitary pursuit, met only by the occasional heron, clutch of bachelor ducks, or jogger.

Several years ago, the parks department put up fences to discourage intrepid trailblazers from clambering up to and even behind the waterfall. This spring, the stairway, which dates back to the New Deal WPA era, got a fresh coat of concrete. But even if you can no longer stick your hand in the froth, there’s still something a little illicit about disappearing in the woods, about the rush of all that water around you. The falls remain an icon, a vision of what the world was before us—and a sense that, should it come to pass, the world would do just fine without us.

Standing where Cedar and Riverside Avenues cross, it’s hard to believe that this was once the blondest intersection in all of Minneapolis. In the 1800s, it was home to the city’s largest concentration of Scandinavian immigrants. Today, framed by the looming Riverside Plaza Towers and the long-standing 400 Bar, the neighborhood is still defined by newcomers, except that they are more likely to hail from East Africa than Northern Europe.

Next to neighborhood stalwarts such as the Wienery and the labor-party-endorsed Mayday Books, newer entities have moved in, like the Dar Al-Hijrah Islamic Center, which shares its space with the Cedar-Riverside cop shop, and the Al Karama Mall, offering fine furniture and digital versions of the Koran.

Despite Mohammed’s presence, the neighborhood retains its reputation as a hard-drinkin’ destination with a few hard-luck regulars. Bars and clubs line the streets, from the Triple Rock Social Club to the Nomad World Pub to more purposeful drinking haunts like Palmer’s. Throw in throngs of U students straight outta Ames, and you’ve got a neighborhood with a distinctly transient feel. The ubiquitous ads for phone cards and money transfers only add to the effect.

Life for Cedar Avenue’s newest homesteaders still seems firmly rooted in Africa. Aside from a few mini groceries selling Syrian bath products and locally made flat breads, most of the area’s Somalis shop at a makeshift market at 419 Cedar Ave. S. This place would seem forlorn if not for the smiles and laughter of the women hawking colorful long skirts, tunics, and headscarves, all of which can be admired in cracked mirrors alongside machine-made prayer rugs, plastic flowers, and incense.

Another favorite destination is Ubah Restaurant and Coffee, where men in kufis and henna-dyed beards slurp down steaming soup from plastic bowls and watch Al Jazeera on the big-screen TV. It’s hard to go unnoticed at Ubah, especially if you’re a lily-white woman. Each new customer gave me a curious once-over before sitting down. And I got the sweetest smile from the slight young man who wiped my table.

It occurred to me while sipping coffee that this is exactly what the Department of Homeland Security is most fearful of: foreign-born, Islamic, Al Jazeera-watching men. But from where I sat, it looked like they were probably discussing the weather and their kids and telling jokes. Cancel that code orange.

Cedar-Riverside remains, as always, a sort of cultural chameleon. But just as in the seventies, the word on the street is “peace.” Now it just sounds more like “salaam.”

—Sarah Lemanczyk

St. Paul’s Chinatown isn’t of the polished, touristy variety celebrated by chambers of commerce in other cities. There are no novelty pagodas or souvenir key chains. What exists here is a multi-ethnic community that lives, shops, and eats within its borders. Every shop entrance is a mural of advertisements for practical services: tax preparation, real estate, life insurance, auto repair. Stores stock Thai parrot soap right next to hundred-pound bags of road salt. Try finding that in San Francisco.

From storefronts along Rice Street selling dim sum and Korean-style beef ribs to signs on University Avenue promising, “Men suit, short,” St. Paul’s Chinatown—or, more aptly, Southeast Asia-town—is bustling with color, activity, and commerce. Shoppers admire the Gaudi-esque public art piece Mosaic Chimney by Angela Carlson, in front of Somkeo Sengmavong’s on University, before popping inside for incense, a gold necklace, or lunch at the cafeteria. Around here, if you can’t find the perfect tea and a reasonably priced pot to go with it, you’re just not applying yourself.

The Sunrise Oriental Supermarket, located inside a University Avenue warehouse, is easily identified by its enormous sign proclaiming, “Asian Fabric.” A true community market, Sunrise is all things to all people. It offers a grocery, a pharmacy, a video counter, a portrait studio, an accountant’s office, an arcade, a small café, and a selection of very reasonably priced designer handbags. As advertised, the store is also stocked with a blinding array of fabrics—bolts of teal and red, silk and velvet—embossed, embroidered, and bejeweled. The walls are lined with traditional Hmong formalwear, and the sewing machines are always running.

Nearby sits Hmong ABC, which touts itself as the first and only Hmong bookstore in the world (the Hmong alphabet wasn’t developed until the 1950s, so, culturally speaking, Hmong books are pretty rad) and sells works by both local authors and Hmong writers worldwide. Besides books, the store has a smorgasbord of native crafts. Embroidered bedding is stacked floor to ceiling, along with dolls, jewelry, journals, and baskets from Thailand.

Walking into the simply named Market on nearby Como, it feels as though you’ve left the United States. Teens check out designer clothing, and each other. Children run screaming from one loud electronic toy display to the next. The arcade buzzes and pops. Old men and women socialize over tea, gossiping and discussing politics. Rows of tables are laden with dried mushrooms and fragrant twigs, icons and incense burners, jewelry and clothing. Children’s Mandarin-styled dresses hang next to neon green platform boots, and—as is always the case in these urban bazaars—there is a large table covered with industrial-looking bras and granny underpants. This must have been what New York’s Canal Street was like before it was overrun by fake Rolexes and I ™ New York

T-shirts: frenetic, dirty, and thoroughly amazing.

If you insist on spotless floors and airtight food packages, head to Double Dragon Foods, the Kowalski’s of Asian supermarkets, at the corner of Maryland and Rice. Here you will find moonfish, baby octopus, fresh lobsters, and six types of shrimp. The bok choy and the taro root are neatly stacked, and the baby limes are misted regularly. The housewares department stocks all the usual suspects, along with the not-so-usual red plastic shrines, electric dragon candles, and ginseng soaps.

Perfect places to take your time and browse, to slurp noodles and eavesdrop on conversations you don’t understand, University Avenue and Rice Street are no longer simply routes to somewhere else. The byways are now their own destination.—Sarah Lemanczyk