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The the North End neighborhood profile featured here is taken from the Ramsey County Historic Site Survey Report.

 District 6: The North End

District 6, the North End, is located in the north central part of St. Paul, north of downtown. It encompasses a large area bounded by the southern shore of Lake Como, Maryland Avenue, and the city limits at Larpenteur Avenue on the north, Lexington Parkway on the west, the Burlington Northern Railroad tracks on the south, and Interstate 35E on the east. The district is comprised largely of the neighborhood known as the North End (east of Dale Street), but also includes the Warrendale area south of Lake Como. It contains three large cemeteries: Oakland, founded in 1853 as a city cemetery and planned by prominent landscape architect Horace W.S. Cleveland; Elmhurst, established in 1865 as a German Lutheran cemetery; and Calvary, a Catholic cemetery initiated on this site in 1866. The district also contains some industry located along two Burlington Northern railroad lines and one set of Soo Line tracks, and major commercial strips along Rice and Jackson Streets with additional smaller business districts along Dale Street, Front Avenue, and Larpenteur Avenue.

The North End, traditionally a working class neighborhood, was settled extensively in the 1870's and 1880's by German, Austrian, and Swedish immigrants who found jobs in the railroad shops and related industries located in the area. After the turn of the century, eastern Europeans, particularly Romanians joined the earlier residents of the North End. The area was annexed by the city of St. Paul when the city limits were changed in 1872, 1873, 1885, and 1887. Several of the district's major traffic arteries, including Rice Street, Como Avenue, Jackson Street, and Dale Street, were serviced by streetcars built between 1887 and 1923.

The Historic Sites Survey of the North End identified large concentrations of Victorian working class homes, most of wood frame construction built from 1880 to 1900, in the area south of Arlington Avenue. Many of the oldest homes are located around Oakland Cemetery in the southeast corner of the district. This neighborhood was probably developed soon after the Jackson Street railroad shops were established just south of District 6 near Jackson Street in 1882. Simple 1 to 1 1/2, story wood frame "mechanics' cottages" are located in large numbers along Agate and Sylvan Streets and Lyton Place. Working class housing was also concentrated along Cottage Avenue near a second set of Burlington Northern tracks running east and west, just north of Maryland Avenue. Although most of the modest Victorian housing in the North End has been altered with the addition of asbestos siding and is therefore not as significant as the working class housing in Districts 7 and 9, several houses including those at 271 W. Burgess Street, 93 W. Atwater Street, 823 N. Stellar Place, and 798 N. Park Street are basically intact. The Historic Sites Survey staff discovered a few small houses constructed of soft, common brick, and several houses that are now situated either above or below the present street level, indicating that they were constructed before the streets were graded at their present level .

In addition to the large concentration of small, somewhat altered nineteenth century houses, the area south of Arlington Avenue contains a sprinkling of larger houses. These include a row of speculator built patternbook houses on West Burgess Street (the most intact being 294 W. Burgess Street); the home of German hardware dealer Hiller Hoffman at 118 W. Manitoba; and a group of pressed brick houses located in the neighborhood of Albemarle and Geranium Streets.

The northern portion of the North End neighborhood, above Arlington Avenue and east of Dale Street, is primarily a residential neighborhood developed between 1910 and 1950. The Survey staff did identify a few houses which predate their neighbors and may be early farmhouses. These houses include 198 E. Arlington Avenue, 1265 N. Mackubin Street, and 583 W. Maryland Avenue. With the exception of these houses, the Charles Elwood designed small bungalow at 1286 N. Dale Street, and a few interesting bungalows and period revival houses such as those located along Wheelock Parkway, most of the houses in the northern portion are undistinguished, post-World War II suburban tract houses.

District 6 west of Dale Street contains an interesting mixture of structures illustrating several phases of settlement. There are a few late nineteenth century homes of modest size located in the neighborhood of Front Avenue, immediately north of Calvary cemetery. These may have been built by employees of the nearby railroad shops and other industries. The most important of these are the largely intact neighboring houses at 1010, 1012, and 1014 Front Avenue. North and east of this area are a number of bungalows and mildly Colonial Revival houses, the largest and some of the oldest located along Como Avenue. Finally, in the westernmost corner of District 6 is Warrendale, a fifty-two acre area on the southern shore of Lake Como, platted in 1884 as an exclusive residential suburb. Although Warrendale did not become the large fashionable suburb which developers envisioned, a number of ornate Queen Anne style mansions were constructed on W. Como Boulevard and Van Slyke Avenue in the 1880's and 1890's. Several of these were designed by St. Paul architects Augustus Gauger and Charles Wallingford who both lived in Warrendale.  

With the exception of a few scattered neighborhood corner commercial blocks, most nineteenth century commercial buildings in the North End are located along Jackson and Rice Streets. Interesting Victorian buildings still standing on Jackson Street include the ornate brick Ackermann Block at the southeast corner of Jackson and Sycamore (1886), and the wood frame Joseph Wimmer. Building at 1052 N. Jackson Street (1884). Rice Street contains a greater concentration of Victorian and turn of the century commercial buildings ranging from several wood frame Italianate buildings to large brick commercial blocks with massive pressed metal cornices. The buildings at 884-887 Rice Street and 1888 Rice Street are interesting examples of wood frame commercial buildings constructed circa 1890.

Examples of the types of industry which attracted immigrant workers to the North End where also identified by the Historic Sites Survey, including two railroad shop complexes important to the settlement of the area, the previously mentioned Jackson Street Shops and the Great Northern Dale Street shops located at Dale and Minnehaha, which are both located technically in District 7, south of the North End. Other North End industrial complexes which remain from the turn of the century include the Northwestern Twine and Cordage Company at 509 Front Avenue near Kent Street, and the St. Paul Foundry Company  whose headquarters buildings at 500 W. Como Avenue were designed by Clarence H. Johnston, Sr., in 1901.

Finally, the Historic Sites Survey staff identified a number of churches and other institutions in District 6 which are historically or architecturally interesting. These include the Church of St. Bernard, at 197 W. Geranium Street , a sophisticated and unusual German Catholic church designed by architect John Jager and built in 1905; St. Mary's Romanian Orthodox Church at 854 Woodbridqe Street, a concrete block church with characteristic eastern European onion dome built in 1914; the Zion German Evangelical Church at 776 N. Jackson Street which was designed by Augustus Gauger and built in 1888; and the chapels at Elmhurst and Oakland Cemeteries. In addition, the Survey staff discovered that the stucco-covered building at 786 N. Agate Street was built circa 1889 to serve as the St. Paul Homeopathic Hospital, and later became the first campus of Concordia College. District 6 contains one historically significant fire station, Engine Company #22 at 293 W. Front Avenue built in 1887.