Keep Saint Paul’s
Historic Homes Beautiful

Lower Summit near the Cathedral is the avenue's oldest ground, and the stretch where the first generation of houses was most often torn down to make way for the masonry mansions that stand there now. This two-story frame house, built in 1879, is one of the few that survived. The National Register nomination for the Historic Hill District names it the Joseph McKey House and describes it as Italianate, with bracketed cornices and gables and, unusually, panels carrying a Gothic trefoil motif. The original brackets and limestone foundation are intact.

City directories record its first owner as Charles Noyes, a druggist whose shop sold ginseng, seneca roots and beeswax. From 1882 to 1896 it was the home of Joseph McKey, whose Boston One Price Clothing House was a fixture of downtown Saint Paul retail. The house is a contributing property of the Historic Hill District, listed on the National Register in 1976, and stands directly across Summit Avenue from the James J. Hill House.

Virginia Street climbs north off Summit Avenue through the heart of Cathedral Hill, anchored at Selby by the 1887 Virginia Street Church, an early commission of Gilbert and Taylor, Cass Gilbert's first firm, before he went on to design the Minnesota State Capitol. The street's houses went up in the 1880s building boom. Ramsey County carries no recorded build date for this one, and the district survey does not single it out, so we date it to the decade rather than the year. It rises three stories, with a porte cochere, leaded glass at the door, and original woodwork and fireplaces within. No architect is recorded for the original house, and its builder remains anonymous.

For years the house wore quiet gray. The current owners saw something bolder. Working with their architect, they developed a full color study of the exterior, rendered in three dimensions before a brush was lifted, and asked us to bring it to life: deep purple siding, crisp white trim, black accents. Both the home and its architect will be part of this year's Historic Hills House Tour, where you can judge the resemblance yourself.

William Rainey Marshall arrived in Saint Paul in 1849. He was a hardware merchant, banker and newspaper publisher, a Civil War colonel of the 7th Minnesota brevetted brigadier general, and from 1866 to 1870 the fifth Governor of Minnesota. In 1856 he platted Marshall Avenue as part of Mackubin and Marshall's Addition. Local accounts associate this Queen Anne on that same avenue with Marshall in the years before he left for California in 1894, though his one documented Saint Paul house is the one he built at 415 Summit Avenue in 1880, and we have not found a primary record placing him here. We tell the story as the neighborhood tells it, and note the gap.

The National Register inventory for Woodland Park lists the house as a pivotal building of the district, singling out its polygonal corner tower, second-story spindlework portico, ornately carved pediment above the half-front porch, and banded shingle work. Its near-twin next door at 492 Marshall was built the same year by the same hand. Ramsey County records the house as built in 1884; other sources give 1891. We show the decade.

Goodrich Avenue runs through the heart of Summit Hill, the streetcar-era neighborhood of merchant and professional-class Victorians one block south of the Summit Avenue mansions. This 1891 Queen Anne is said to have been the residence of General Christopher Columbus Andrews: Civil War brevet major general, U.S. Minister to Sweden and Norway, and, after the Hinckley Fire of 1894, Minnesota's first Chief Fire Warden. Remembered as the father of Minnesota forestry, he was instrumental in the creation of the Superior National Forest, and the C.C. Andrews State Forest bears his name. He died in Saint Paul in 1922. The Historic Hill District nomination lists him among the influential residents who moved to the Hill but does not name his house, and neither does any record we have found; the link to 833 Goodrich rests on local tradition.

The street kept good company. In the early 1920s, F. Scott and Zelda Fitzgerald were renting just down the block at 626 Goodrich. No architect is recorded for the house. Its shake-work gables and shingle ornament speak for themselves.

Built around 1889 in rock-faced sandstone with granite and brownstone trim, this Queen Anne and Romanesque landmark was the permanent home of Frank B. Kellogg for nearly half a century, from 1889 until his death here in 1937. Kellogg was the trust-busting lawyer who prosecuted Standard Oil for Theodore Roosevelt, Minnesota's first popularly elected U.S. Senator, Ambassador to Great Britain, and U.S. Secretary of State under Calvin Coolidge. For the Kellogg-Briand Pact of 1928, ultimately signed by more than sixty nations renouncing war, he received the 1929 Nobel Peace Prize. Kellogg Boulevard downtown carries his name.

President Coolidge was a guest here in the 1920s, and the addition built in that era is still called the Coolidge Wing. The carriage house behind the home was converted by Kellogg himself for the automobile age, and his auto turntable remained inside decades later. The house is one of a handful of properties in Saint Paul designated a National Historic Landmark.