Downtown St Paul Icon

I've featured the 1st National Bank building in a few shots during the past couple of years of the Twin Cities Daily Photo blog. For the city of St Paul, it is one of a few major, visual landmarks it offers.

I'm Gonna Break My Rusty Cage And Run

Found this very rusty tow truck located in Eagan, just off the beaten path of Highway 13. Makes me wonder if Mark's Towing is still in business.

My Daily Photo Favorites: Portland, Maine | Evry, France | Sunshine Coast, Australia | St Paul, Minnesota - on Hiatus!

Electrocardiogram

This odd looking contraption, also from the Bakken Museum, is an early 1900s, historic EKG machine used to track the electrical energy from a heart. Today's EKG machine uses disposable patches attached to wires to read the electrical pulses, the EKG machine in the photo, the hands and feet were placed in sodium chloride baths as a means of conduction. We've come a long way in medicine.

Minnesota Wild vs Colorado Avalanche Update
Series: Wild lead in the series 2-1
Game 4: Tuesday, April 15 @ 9:00 [CT]
Game 5: Thursday, April 17 @ 8:00 [CT]

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Bakken Museum

One of the more interesting places to visit in the Twin Cities is the Bakken Museum, located on just off of Lake Calhoun in Minneapolis. Earl Bakken is credited for creating the first wearable, batter powered, cardiac pacemaker and is a co-founder of Medtronics. The pacemaker is one of several medical devices and other important electronic equipment that is housed in the museum. If you visit the Twin Cities some day in the future, schedule the museum on your list of places to see.

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Hamm Building

The Hamm Building, originally owned by the Hamm Brewing family, was built in 1919 [though I've researched 1915 and 1920 as the built date]. The building rests on the original site of the St Paul Cathedral where there is a natural spring well, perfect for hand crafted beer. The Hamm Building is now on the National Register of Historic Places. From the documents I've read, the building housed one of the city's biggest illeagal gambling operations in the late 1920's to early 1930's. Today, the Hamm Building's main function is office space.

Not Your Typical View

I've seen countless photos of the Landmark Center located in downtown St Paul, including a few seen on this photo blog. I've never seen a photo of the back side of the landmark center. Here it is in all it's glory.

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I Took Me Four Attempts

Looking at yesterday's photo again, I must tell a quick story. The night I shot both today's and yesterday's photo, it took me four attempts before I timed the big "1" to be lit up as it is today. It's a three sided neon lighted sign and each bank is lit up one at a time to save energy and the cost to run all three sides at once. Getting the timing down to take a photo of it proved to be a challenge in the cold temperatures. In the end, I actually preferred the unlit photo better. It's a capture of this tower at night that I had never seen before. Plus the neon lights were very bright in the photo, but being as it was very cold out, I didn't want to tweak my camera settings any longer.

Which do you prefer?

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Night Shot Of The First National Bank

Nighttime capture of the First National Bank Building in downtown St Paul. I am at the corner of Kellogg Avenue and Wabasha Street.

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Close Up Of The Facade

Zoomed in on the entrance to the Old Pioneer Press building. I've noticed the plaque in the corner of the building since taking this photo. I'm going to have to make a return trip to this building and get a close up of the dialog on the plaque. If I want some history of this building, I would bet I can find it there.

Sunlight Stripe

This one was sort of tough to photograph. I really wanted to capture the sunlight on the old Pioneer Press building, but had to stand back far to capture it all. However, if I went too far back, I would lose the stripe into the white building. I do like the building design. It's a fairly common look on the older buildings. I'm not sure when they left this building, but they are now located about three miles from here. "Here" is downtown St Paul. I believe it's the corner of Robert Street and 4th Street if I'm not mistaken.

One More From The Historic Library

This is from the same location as yesterday's photo of the downtown St Paul Public Library. I wanted to show the front area of the entry way into the library and all of the work that went into the design.

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James J Hill Library

Named after successful business man, James J Hill, the downtown St Paul library has been around since 1921. An early settler in St Paul, James J Hill is well known for his success in the railroad industry. The library is located at 80 West 4th Street.

The view of the library is on the north east corner of the building.

The Saint Paul Hotel

Night time view of the Saint Paul Hotel building. It is the building with the lights around the edge of the roof line and all of the lights on in the penthouse level.
 

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Old Seventh Street

What you're looking at is now called Seventh Place. Where I am standing for the photo is officially called Old Seventh Street. At one point in time, there was a street running straight through Seventh Place. I don't know the exact year, but it was sometime in the 1980's the city planners moved Seventh Street over one block to Eight Street. I vaguely recall this event in time as I was rather young at the time. My suspect is they wanted to widen the road, while at the same time preserve this very part of downtown St Paul. It was at one time a thriving theater district. I had recalled this stretch of town as an abandon area of St Paul. I can still picture the theater sign that was here at in the past. Don't know what it was called off the top of my head, but it was there. The surrounding buildings had many broken windows and frankly this area made me a bit nervous to walk through.

Today however, it has been resurrected into a thriving business area of St Paul. The arch you see has to be about five years old at least. It's very new to my eyes. I will say, one block straight ahead they also build a couple of very tall buildings. Perhaps they moved Seventh Street to make way for the new buildings. Which ever the case, I welcome improved site and I applaud the city planners for their incite to preserve this small stretch of downtown. There are now many businesses that call this their home.

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My Feet On The Ground

Yesterday I showed you the penthouse level of The Saint Paul Hotel, today is the lower level, more specifically the lobby entrance.

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Quincy, Massachusetts
St Paul, Minnesota
Paris, France

Penthouse

One building I've wanted to capture a night photo of is The St Paul Hotel. As long as I can remember, this is downtown St Paul's most famous hotel. The historic value of this building, I wouldn't know where to begin. It is however within a stones throw of yesterday's Landmark Center photo.

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Miami, Florida
Saigon, Vietnam
Wichita, Kansas

Not The Red Roof In

This is historic Landmark Center, downtown St Paul. Believe it or not, over 18 years ago, I was dancing inside this building at a prom. It was my soon to be wife's prom at the time. Considering what this building was originally, for it to be used to host a prom many years later is, well, laughable.

Historic St Paul Gangster Hideout

As promised, more information on the Wabasha Cave Tours from yesterday's photo. Here is a more expanded view. It's built into the side of the cliff south of downtown St Paul in the lower Westside neighborhood. It's made of sandstone and made of easy digging when the caves were first mined back in the 1800's. The facility in it's past has been a speakeasy, a restaurant, a nightclub called the 'Castle Royal' an office building and now it serves as a tour stop on various Twin Cities tours. Back in it's hay day as a speakeasy during prohibition, it was a well known hang out for gangsters, including John Dillinger, Baby Face Nelson and Ma Barker. Some well known big bands have played here like Cab Calloway, Harry James and the Tommy Dorsey Band.

The cave tours are held Thursday, Saturday and Sunday for a small fee of $5 dollars where you can learn about the 150 year history of the caves. The secret caves were used by the gangsters to escape the law when the time arose during prohibition. There is also a gangster tour which visit many places in the Twin Cities for a fee of $22 dollars. The tour guide is dressed in clothing of the gangster era.

If you shall ever find yourself in the Twin Cities, I highly recommend one of the tours. I have not been on the tour since I've gotten my digital camera, but I will promise to go and snap some photos when I do.

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Boston, Massachusetts
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Caves? What Caves?

Do you see the caves in this photo? I'll explain what this is in tomorrows post.