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The Dayton's Bluff  neighborhood profile featured here is taken from the Ramsey County Historic Site Survey Report.
 

 
District 4: Dayton's Bluff

District 4, known as Dayton's Bluff, is located along the Mississippi River bluffs extending east from downtown St. Paul. It is separated from downtown by the wide, marshy Phalen Creek/Trout Brook valley which was filled in the late nineteenth century for railroad track beds, and is now the site of Interstates 94 and 35E. District 4 is bounded by the Burlington Northern railroad tracks and Minnehaha Avenue on the north, the Burlington Northern railroad tracks and Interstate 94 on the Crest, the Mississippi River and the bluffs of Indian Astounds Park on the south, and Highway 61, Birmingham Street, and Johnson Parkway on the east.

Planning District 4 is unique because it contains a series of burial mounds identified by some scholars as having been constructed by migratory bands of Hopewellian Indians thousands of years ago. Kaposia, a large Dakota Indian village, also existed on Dayton's Bluff from the late seventeenth century until the mid-nineteenth century, and the Dakota used a bluff area as a sacred burial ground. White settlers' reports from the 1830's describe seeing burial scaffolds bearing Indian corpses on the crest of the bluffs.

The first white settlers arrived in the area in the 1830's, beginning with William Evans, a discharged soldier from Fort Snelling who staked the first claim on the Bluff. Evans was soon followed by other pioneers who established farms on the rich, hilly land. The development of the Bluff as an attractive site for residential settlement was anticipated by real estate speculator Lyman Dayton who purchased nearly five thousand acres for investment purposes in 1849. Five years later, when the city of St. Paul was incorporated, the official city limits included the portion of Dayton's Bluff extending east to Cable and Arcade Streets. The rest of District 4 was annexed by the city in 1858, 1877, and 1885. Substantial settlement, of Dayton's Bluff occurred during the 1850's and 1860's when wealthy residents of the city who sought the isolation and picturesque qualities of the area built large mansions on the bluffs, particularly near today's Indian Mounds Park. The Summit Hill area to the west soon surpassed the Bluff as a fashionable upper class neighborhood, and now most of the Civil War era mansions on Dayton's Bluff have been demolished. The much-altered houses at 334 Mounds Boulevard and 908 Mound Street (the Smith-Davidson-Scheffer House) remain as examples of this early period of development.

As the population of St. Paul grew rapidly during the 1860's through the 1880's and streetcar and railroad lines were established, the western third of District 4 expand substantial settlement. A large community of predominantly German-born, skilled working and middle class people built houses and commercial buildings in the northwest portion of the Bluff, roughly west of Mendota Street. This area contains one of the area's greatest concentrations of nineteenth century buildings, including good examples of the Italianate Eastlake, and Queen Anne styles, although many have been altered and maintained poorly. The Adolph Muench House

at 653 E. Fifth Street, now a National Register and St. Paul Heritage Preservation Commission site, and the two houses adjacent to the east, the Schoch Building at 374 N. Maria Avenue (no. 7) and the Schornstein Grocery and Saloon at 707 E. Wilson Avenue (no. 8) are among the most architecturally and historically significant buildings. The predominantly vacant land immediately west of this neighborhood was once the site of the of the "Connemara Patch", a collection of modest working class houses and businesses constructed by Irish immigrants along the edge of Phalen Creek, beneath the Third Street Bridge. This neighborhood was completely obliterated by urban renewal in the 1950's.

The residential neighborhoods around Indian Mounds Park and the area immediately north and south of E. Seventh Street were also settled during the 1870's and 1880's. Today the area still contains a number of intriguing, substantial Victorian houses, Many with spectacular views of the Mississippi River valley, including the houses scattered along Burns Avenue, the Giesen H-o-use at 85 Mound Street, the Farwell/Jameson House, circa 20 N. Bates Avenue, and the houses along Mounds Boulevard. These houses are surrounded by more modest and less intact late nineteenth and turn of the century houses. The neighborhoods north and south of E. Seventh Street developed as a result of the commercial activity along E. Seventh Street, which became a major streetcar line in the 1880's. The streets bordering E. Seventh Street contain a few basically intact Italianate houses, and a large collection of Queen Anne, "patternbook", and vernacular Victorian houses ranging in size from the modest woodframe Peter John House at 649 E. North Street on the edge of Swede Hollow to the ornate brick Henry and Hilda Defiel House at 732 E. Margaret Street. E. Seventh Street also contains an important collection of Victorian commercial buildings, although most have been altered substantially.

The remaining residential portions of District 4 were settled during the twentieth century. The central third of the district, bounded roughly by Earl Street and Johnson Parkway, contains Victorian houses and commercial buildings located along streetcar lines and other major streets, and many Colonial Revival houses dating from circa 1900 to 1920. The eastern portion of District 4, east of Johnson Parkway, was settled after World War I. It contains a large number of bungalows, Period Revival, and suburban tract houses, few of which are architecturally significant.

Industries which attracted residents to Dayton's Bluff and helped form the economic base for the community were located originally in the northern and western portions of the district along railroad lines. The Historic Sites Survey identified few nineteenth and turn of the century industrial buildings still standing. An important exception is Hamm's Brewery, now Olympia Brewery, located at7O7 E. Minnehaha Avenue, which was established on the site of the short-lived Pittsburgh Brewery in 1864. By the 1880's, when some of the present brewery buildings were constructed, Hamm's was one of the largest breweries in the Northwest. Although most of the Hamm's buildings are still standing and in use, many were altered drastically in the mid-twentieth century. Immediately south of the brewery, along the upper edge of the bluff forming "'Swede Hollow", is a large vacant lot which marks the site of the Hamm's Mansion, which was destroyed by fire in 1954. The large and somewhat altered houses across the street on Greenbrier Street were built by several of Theodore Hamm's children and principal employees, and are thus historically linked to the brewery. Another important industrial site identified by the Survey is the Minnesota Mining and Manufacturing (3M) complex at Bush Avenue and Arcade Street. The former 3M corporate headquarters building, now used by the company for other purposes, stands at 900 E. Bush Avenue.

In addition to its wealth of late nineteenth and turn of the century houses, some of which are architecturally intact, Dayton's Bluff contains several churches and other bui7dings which are historically and architecturally important. Significant churches include St. Peter's Protestant Episcopal Church at 754-758 E. Fourth Street; Evangelical Lutheran Bethlehem Church designed by the architect of the St. Paul Cathedral, Emmanuel L. MSQuery, at 661 N. Forest Street and Dolman United Methodist Church at 243 N. Bates Avenue. The oldest public school in the city standing on its original site is the Mounds Park School built in 1891 at 998 E. Pacific Street. The Bluff also contains a few examples of the Prairie style, the most important being the Mounds Park Pavilion at Indian Mounds Park (no. 10) which was built circa 1916 and designed by City Architect Charles Hausler with Percy Dwight Bentley. Other significant buildings include the Soo Line Freight Depot at 483 'L:. Seventh Street and the mildly Streamlined Moderne style Wotkoff Building at 1975 E. Hudson Road.

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