LIVING THROUGH CHANGE
From the Re-Echo, December 2009

Although it sometimes seems that technology is changing too fast to keep up with, can you imagine what it would have been like to be born in St. Louis Park in 1900? Things like electricity, telephones, automobiles, and indoor plumbing would have come into being seemingly all at once. Let’s explore what you might have experienced, all before World War II.

First of all, you would have been born either at home or in a hospital in Minneapolis, as there were no hospitals in the suburbs. Your family would have probably lived in one of five distinct neighborhoods: Center (south of Hwy 7, north of Excelsior, west of Wooddale, east of Louisiana), North Side (collections of houses along Cedar Lake Road and Wayzata Blvd.), Oak Hill (west of the Creosote factory, either side of Highway 7), Fern Hill (by City Hall), or Manhattan Park (31st and France). If you lived in Oak Hill you may have lived in a “Walker House,” a funny two-story house with the front door on the side. Plumbing was on the outside, of course.

At five, there were four schools you could attend: North Side, Fern Hill, Oak Hill, and Lincoln in the Center neighborhood. Going to school meant a lot of walking, although you may have been driven in a horse-drawn sleigh in the wintertime. There were two churches: T.B. Walker’s Methodist Church on Brownlow, and Union Congregational. You might have had a bicycle, as they were all the rage, although improved roads were almost nonexistent.

At age 11, electric lights were available for your home for the first time. The village replaced the 24 gasoline lamps that had lighted streets since 1899. If your family could afford it, you could also get a telephone installed in your home for the first time that same year.

We know from Esther Johnson’s diary that the games that children played in 1912 included: Last Couple Out, Farmer in the Dell, Cat and Rat, Drop the Handkerchief, Spin the Platter, Marching to Jerusalem, Tug of War, London Bridge, Judge and Jury, and “Kittenball,” an early form of softball.

When you were 14, the new high school was built on Walker Street. (That building was replaced by the western wing of the Central building.) The next year you may have attended the new Brookside Community Church. (The first residents moved into the Brookside neighborhood when you were about 7.) You and your family probably attended the band concerts held at what is now Jorvig Park.

When you were 17, your family could have purchased its first automobile; evidence of Park’s first gas station appears during that year. If you were a boy, you might have gone to war in France during World War I.     

At age 18, you were scared to death of catching the Spanish Flu, a worldwide pandemic.

At 20, just when you neared legal age, prohibition hit. Liquor could be had, though, and you might have frequented Excelsior Blvd.’s “chicken shacks” on occasion.   Indoor plumbing was starting to be available when you were 24 years old.   In your mid 20s, when you are ready to start your own family, additional churches First Lutheran Church, St. Luke’s, Holy Family, and North Side Sunday School were organized.

To get to your job in Minneapolis, you used the Greyhound Bus down Superior (Wayzata) Blvd. (North Side), T.B. Walker’s streetcar up Lake Street, or the 44th Street streetcar (Brookside and Browndale).   Also during your 20s, radio broke upon the scene, and you may have used your crystal set to listen to early stations WLAG (which became WCCO), WDGY, and WAMD, which became KSTP.   When you were 27, natural gas was first available to you to heat your home, replacing coal and oil.

You were 29 when the stock market crashed, leading to the Great Depression. If you worked at the Creosote factory you might have been laid off or your hours cut. Monitor Drill moved to Hopkins at the same time.

At age 30, your kids may be ready to go to school. Depending on where you lived, the choices were Brookside, Eliot (formerly North Side), Lenox, Fern Hill, and Oak Hill. A Model T bus served the whole village until the mid 1930s when an increased school population merited the first fleet of buses. Also at 30, your house may have been connected to the village’s new sewer system. Water was still obtained from Minneapolis – early attempts to drill for water in the Park rendered too much creosote.   On April 4, 1933, you could have your first legal drink, as 3.2 beer was adjudged to be “non-intoxicating.” Prohibition was officially repealed and hard liquor approved for sale by the village in December 1934. Bars popped up overnight, especially on Excelsior Blvd.   Highway 7 was built when you were 34, Highway 100 when you were 39.  

Today many of us wouldn’t be able to function without a computer in one form or another; just imagine being without indoor plumbing or a phone. 110 years is not really so long ago. Even though we still haven’t perfected the jet pack, we’ve surely come a long way.

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This information comes from a variety of sources: newspapers, books, yearbooks, phone directories, interviews, etc. Given the varied sources, we cannot guarantee that all of this information is correct, and welcome any additions and corrections. Please contact us with your contributions and comments.