Local History

I've learned about this building by several names: the Paul Martin House, the Riverside Hospital, and now the Saint Paul German hospital. This first picture is when it was the Saint Paul German Hospital. I'm pretty sure it's significant that the date of this photo is ~1910. After hostilities with the Germans and WWI—well, I'm guessing that that was when they renamed it.

The whole thing is gone today. I'm not sure exactly when the building was pulled down, but it used to be a near neighbor. It was a grand building, set on grounds that backed onto the West Side bluff of the Mississippi, to the south of the city as the river wends its way through St. Paul.

It got an addition sometime before the 1930s. Here's the same side of the the house, with the porch removed and the gracious arch balcony on the third floor where the nurses are standing (above), bricked in:

And a final photo—this one dated to ~1888. This was when the building was Paul Martin's private residence. I wish I knew where north is in this photo! Did that great tower face out over the river bluff, or did it stand in the opposite direction?

There is only a single building of this grandeur in my neighborhood today, and the buildings all around—they are overshadowed by mature trees. The culture that built this house—it is utterly vanished and gone.