The day after I arrived in Minnesota, I took a long photowalk around St. Paul. Although I've visited the city many times since childhood, only recently have I begun to really notice its history and architecture. When David and I visited in 2009, we explored the Cathedral, the Capitol, and the Science Museum, all of which were interesting, but that was about all we had time for. This time around, I focused on some sites associated with F. Scott Fitzgerald and the architecture downtown. I found the former much more interesting than the latter, so I'll focus on that here, but both were worthwhile.
The novelist F. Scott Fitzgerald (1896-1940), best known for The Great Gatsby (1925), is primarily associated with the more glamorous cities of New York, Paris and Hollywood, but he was born in St. Paul, Minnesota. Although he moved to New York with his family a year later, he returned at various times later in life - including when he wrote and published his first novel (This Side of Paradise, 1920) and when his daughter Frances Scott was born (1921).
So, with the help of this online walking tour, I started my exploration of St. Paul in Fitzgerald's old neighborhood. Fitzgerald's birth house, a house he occupied later, and various other Fitzgerald-related sites are all conveniently located within a four-block square in the Summit Hill district of west St. Paul. It is a lovely neighborhood and I really enjoyed my time there.
I began my tour on Selby Avenue, a leafy historic street populated with restaurants, little shops, old houses, and young hipsters - it reminded me of Northwest Portland. Here I stopped for a quick snack and drink at Great Harvest Bread, which I was pretty excited to stumble on - it's one of my favorite places and I didn't know they had it in the Midwest.
Nearby on Selby is the Dacotah Building, which is a cool building in its own right (built in 1868), but it also used to be the neighborhood drugstore and soda fountain, so Fitzgerald likely visited when he lived nearby in 1919-20. It is now a nice restaurant that highlights the building's historic features.
Even more fun? When I got home from my walk and showed the photos to Grandma on my laptop, explaining the above background, she said, "I wonder if that was Laska Drug - I worked there when I was young. Richard Laska, the owner, was so nice. He always worried about me taking the streetcar home late at night after work." So I Googled it, and indeed it was Laska Drug at one time! And Richard Laska's obituary said what a nice man he was. So there's a nice family connection as well.
There were a few other stops along the way, mostly of houses where Fitzgerald's family and friends lived and which he frequently visited. These will also be added to Go Historic eventually. In the meantime, you can see everything I've assembled on Fitzgerald so far here.
Other St. Paul Highlights
And finally, here are few highlights from the rest of my walk, in no particular order:
Coming up next: Minneapolis, photos from two flights, and Glasgow architecture.
For those of you with the super-secret link to the wedding photos, check it out again - more have been added! Want the link (and know me)? E-mail me!