Grand Avenue

From Irvine Park west to the St. Paul Seminary, St. Paul (c.1945-1978-Present)

Grand Avenue ad from Lavender Magazine, 1997. Courtesy of the Jean-Nickolaus Tretter Collection.	St. Paul’s choice address for the young and hip, Grand Avenue is home to over three miles of apartment buildings, high-end shops, and subdivided single-family homes. The street lies one block south of the city’s mansion row—Summit Avenue, which is “the best preserved American example of the Victorian monumental residential boulevard.”(1)

F. Scott Fitzgerald dubbed Summit “a mausoleum of American architectural monstrosities;”(2) the homes reflect the gaudy days of St. Paul’s lumber barons and railroad tycoons.Dwellers of Summit’s mansions (or their servants) used Grand Avenue for their everyday commercial needs for many years. Students from Macalester College, the University of St. Thomas, and Concordia University also support businesses on the historic street.

These mansions and grand apartment buildings proved too expensive to upkeep and rehabilitate in the 1950s and 60s, when suburban neighborhoods with postwar appliances and freeway access were all the rage.(3) Queer people settled along Summit and Grand after the streets faded. Age allowed nearby Victorian houses and streetcar-strip buildings to achieve a level of “artifice” that appealed to gay sensibilities. Grand Avenue became an example of structural camp.(4) Local gay men, in true campy fashion, dubbed it “The Castro Street of the Upper Midwest.”

Grand Avenue during its "Castro Street" period, 1976. Image courtesy of the Minnesota Historical Society

Grand’s apartment buildings and commercial structures were affordable and (relatively) safe options for queer business and social services. Thus, bars like The Noble Roman opened near the home of Women's Advocates and remained throughout the late 60s and early 1970s. Gay businesspeople restarted Grand Old Days—a forgotten 19th-century festival—in 1973.(5)

The fledgling gay district suffered a fatal blow in 1978, when a voter-referendum—initiated by the infamous Anita Bryant—overturned a municipal gay rights clause 3-to-1. A majority of the area’s disenchanted population migrated to southwest Minneapolis, and gentrification ushered heterosexual families and young professionals in to replace them.

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(1) Sandeen, Ernest. Quoted by Millet, Larry. AIA Guide to the Twin Cities: The Essential Source on the Architecture of Minneapolis and St. Paul. St. Paul: Minnesota Historical Society Press, 2007. Page 438

(2) Schultz, Patricia. 1,000 Places to See in the U.S.A. and Canada Before You Die. New York: Workman Publishing, 2007. Page 558.

(3) Millet, Larry. AIA Guide to St. Paul's Summit Avenue and Hill district. St. Paul: Minnesota Historical Society Press, 2009. Page 46.

(4) Sontag, Susan. "Notes on Camp." Quoted by Fabio Cleto in Camp: Queer Aesthetics and the Performing Subject : A Reader Michigan: The University of Michigan Press, 1999. Page 54.

(5) Tretter, Jean-Nickolaus. Interview with the author and Jacob Gentz.

Part of Minneapolis/St. Paul, MN: 100 Queer Places in Minnesota History, (1860-1969), (1969-2010)