OLD ST. LOUIS PARK
From the Re-ECHO, by Bob Reiss

The City of St. Louis Park has approved the building of a 78,000 sq. ft. office/showroom on Lake Street just south of Highway 7. This building is being built on the “ruins” of the original Village.

In T.B. Walker’s original Plan, formulated in the early 1890’s, Walker Street was to be the main street. The streetcar line from Minneapolis terminated at Walker and Lake Street. At that time, Highway 7 and the nearby Dan Patch Railroad did not exist. Walker’s dream for the Park was that it was to be a company town with company ownership of the jobs, homes and retail stores.

The Monitor Drill Company was the first manufacturing plant to provide the jobs for the town. It was built on the site of this new building. The company had moved from Horicon, Wisconsin, with 25 families. When Monitor moved to the Park, it built 18 homes for its workers. Because they were built in a swamp they had to be moved: some to Oak Hill and some to the Centre (Elmwood) area. Walker’s dream for a company town died with the Crash of 1893. Nevertheless, Monitor was a major employer until 1929, when the plant burned to the ground and all of the manufacturing was moved to Hopkins.

In 1934, the vacant site was taken over by the National Lead Company. National Lead removed impurities from lead plates, car batteries, and lead containers and poured it into 5x24 inch “pigs.” About 40 people were employed until the plant ceased operations in 1981. In 1983, the site was declared a federally-designated Superfund site. The water was to be cleaned up and monitored, and the plant site was capped with asphalt.

The Golden brothers applied for a permit for a junk yard (“Golden Auto Parts”) on a 4-1/2 acre site on the front part of the National Lead property in 1963 (now the pawn shop on Highway 7 at Louisiana). They fenced an area for about 75 cars. The Goldens closed the lot on November 24, 1982. An adjacent site to this property is now an Excel Energy substation. An area of the substation was donated and built into a Little League baseball field by the St. Louis Park Lion’s Club, but was only used for a year before it had to be abandoned for high levels of lead.

The new development calls for further remediation of the affected site, but dirt will not be moved, as that would cause a worse hazard. Thus the old becomes new and the area is revitalized for future generations.

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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.