Rondo

Temple of Aaron Hebrew School, St. Paul

In 1916, the newly formed Conservative synagogue, Temple of Aaron, located at Ashland and Grotto, established a Hebrew School to provide a Jewish education to the children of descendants of Eastern Europe Jewry, many of whom had initially settled on Saint Paul’s West Side River Flats.  The school...

St. Philip Episcopal Church, St. Paul

There appears to be some confusion regarding the organization of St. Philip’s Episcopal Church.  Two “founding” versions exist.  According to the church’s history, it was founded in 1888 as a mission church of St. Mark’s Episcopal Church (now Cathedral) in Minneapolis to serve St. Paul’s African...

St. Paul Independent Baptist Church, Saint Paul

In 1922, 125 members broke from Memorial Baptist Church (est. 1914) to establish St. Paul Independent Baptist Church. The congregation first met in Reverend T. J. Carr’s home at 499 St. Anthony Avenue before moving to a tent in his backyard and later to a storefront location on Rondo Avenue and Kent...

St. James African Methodist Episcopal, St. Paul

The organization date for this congregation is uncertain, but it was organized under Thomas Wise from Chicago in order to create a group in Saint Paul under the Indiana Conference. William H. Brown, another important person in the church's history, had been a slave, soldier in a Black regiment, and...

Rondo, St. Paul

Like a gash lacerating the landscape, the construction of I-94 in the 1960s lacerated the historic Rondo neighborhood, nearly obliterating it from the map. But highway construction and urban renewal failed to obliterate the memory of Rondo from the minds of those who once lived there.  Thanks to...

Pilgrim Baptist Church

Pilgrim Baptist was founded by a group of ex-slave African Americans who arrived in St. Paul on May 6, 1863. They had been found adrift on the Mississippi River by the crew of the steamboat “Northerner.”  The group had first stayed at Fort Snelling, but the complete story of their arrival in St...

Olivet Baptist Church

In 1922, 125 members broke from Memorial Baptist Church (est. 1914) to establish St. Paul Independent Baptist Church. The congregation first met in Reverend T. J. Carr’s home at 499 St. Anthony Avenue before moving to a tent in his backyard and later to a storefront location on Rondo Avenue and Kent...

Lutheran Church of the Redeemer

Germans living in Saint Paul who wanted the Lutheran liturgy to be conducted in English were the impetus behind the formation of an English-speaking Lutheran Church in St. Paul.  An all-English service was first conducted in 1888 at St. John’s Lutheran Church located at 8th and Locust.  Two years...

Christian Center

A schism occurred in Pilgrim Baptist Church in 1914 with the result that nearly two hundred of its members left and formed Memorial Baptist Church.  The congregation under the leadership of Reverend Joseph Walter Harris purchased Central Swedish Baptist Church  [location?] and set about remodeling...