Swede Hollow: A hidden world of immigrant beginnings.
Swede Hollow is framed at one end by the stone 7th Street Improvement arches and the abandoned Hamm’s Brewery on the other end. As you pass through, imagine this space crowded with houses, which were homes to hundreds of people.
Hidden among the interstates, parking lots, and businesses of east St. Paul, MN, is a quiet wooded ravine that looks like it somehow escaped the relentless urban development. This is Swede Hollow Park. This peaceful place, however, is far from untouched and has been home to thousands of immigrants who formed an isolated community where residents preserved their foreign roots while making the transition to being American.
From the fur trade to new settlers
The area in and around Swede Hollow Park has been, and still is, the homeland of the Dakota people and it was trade with the Native residents that first brought non-native people to the region. One of these newcomers was Edward Phalen, an Irish immigrant and discharged soldier form Fort Snelling known for trouble controlling his temper.
Phalen had staked a claim on a plot that now lies beneath the city of St. Paul, but in 1839 he was charged with murder. He was acquitted, but while away on trial someone jumped his claim. Phalen was only convinced to avoid violent retribution by offering him 160 acres in the area now occupied by the park. Phalen’s troubles weren’t over, however, and he was charged with perjury. While attempting to flee to California he was murdered by his travelling companions who claimed self-defense. Despite Phalen’s less than stellar life choices, a park, creek, and lake have been named after him.
The population of St. Paul was growing rapidly as the fur trade declined and industries like timber and the railroads were hungry for workers. At the same time many people in Sweden were struggling simply to survive. The Swedish population had doubled between 1750 and 1850 while land and resources remained unchanged. Between 1845 and 1930 roughly 1.25 million Swedes came to the United States seeking new opportunities and more came to Minnesota than any other state.
Recreating home in a foreign land
The first Swedish settlers arriving in the Hollow in the late 1850s were mostly men hoping to establish a foothold before sending for their families. They began squatting in the shacks left behind by the fur traders and started scavenging building material to expand the shacks or start new houses. The wooded ravine reminded them so much of Sweden that they began calling it Svenska Dalen, the Swedish Valley or Swede Hollow.
The houses that went up in Swede Hollow were never inhibited by regulations, building codes, or urban planning. They faced whichever direction was preferred by the builder with some near the creek and others clinging to the ravine walls and using caves as storage cellars. The structures crowded next to each other and left little room for privacy. An observer described, “homemade houses that looked as if they were built from scraps like a family quilt, but they had an intimate aspect, for each man had put his house together like a piece of embroidery, with the color of an old sign and a flash of tin.” (LeSueur)
The women of the Hollow took pride in these houses and used what resources were available to decorate the interiors while doing their best to recreate Swedish culture. A bright advertising poster could be used to decorate walls, and a bit of lace added a refined touch to roughhewn windows. The men worked in nearby industries such as the Hamm’s Brewery at the end of the Hollow and women also contributed to the family income. Some worked from home doing laundry or canning while others found jobs as maids for well to do families who favored Swedes for being hard working, Protestant, and white. Swede Hollow was not all charm, however. While there were springs for fresh water there were also outhouses perched across the creek that ran through the middle of the community.
Swede Hollow welcomes Italian and Mexican immigrants
As quaint as Swede Hollow appeared to some, it was still a place of poverty. The goal of most families was to raise enough money to move “up on the street”. As they left the Hollow a new group of immigrants moved in. By 1910 sixty Italian families had settled in the ravine after fleeing the crushing poverty of their homeland. Italian replaced Swedish as the language and culture of the Hollow.
Part of the richness of life in Swede Hollow was the case of characters. The fortune teller, the midwife, the traditional healer, the hermit, the aging actress with her pets, Old Peg Leg who ruled over the dump with a stick and a sling shot, and Zia Nicolina, the community’s de facto mayor, power broker, and fixer. It was not always clear who owned the ravine, but records suggest that residents owned their houses and paid a few dollars in rent for the land.
Like the Swedes before them, Italians faced anti-immigrant bias but also faced prejudice based on the belief that immigrants from Southern Europe were dirtier, lazier, and less intelligent than those from Northern Europe. Once again, the Hollow provided a refuge as families made enough money to move up on the street. Some residents didn’t move far and the Yarusso family established a restaurant just across the street form Swede Hollow which still exists as a neighborhood favorite complete with black and white portraits of immigrant ancestors.
The houses left behind by the Italians were quickly occupied by new immigrants from Mexico and the ravine continued to offer a safe space where traditions could be preserved. In the 1950s the Garner family moved to the Hollow and built a new house. It would be the last home built in Swede Hollow. The modern world had no place for this quirkily little community.
The fiery end of the Swede Hollow immigrant community
In 1947 the Minnesota State Legislature established the Housing and Redevelopment Authority charged with removing slums. Other laws soon followed targeting “undesirable” neighborhoods. Swede Hollow was declared unfit for human habitation and condemned. At the time 85 people, making up 16 families lived in the Hollow and were given little warning before being driven from their homes with no compensation.
On December 11, 1956, the Saint Paul Fire Department burned the homes in Swede Hollow to the ground. A group of Mexican Americans with buckets of water made a futile attempt to save their home as it was engulfed in flames. The next day residents were seen wandering in the ashes looking for pieces of their past lives before abandoning Swede Hollow for good.
Swede Hollow became a place to dump trash and construction debris. There was talk of filling in the entire site to create room for more industry. The fate of Swede Hollow looked dim and the people who once lived there seemed forgotten until one former resident decided to tell his story.
Swede Hollow gets a voice
Nels Hokanson lived in Swede Hollow as a young child from 1889 into the 1890s. in 1969 he published an article in the Minnesota Historical Society magazine sharing his memories of growing up in the Hollow. His article drew the attention of the St. Paul Garden Club and others and volunteers descended on the ravine to clean it up. The railroad tracks were replaced by a paved trail and the site which had been used as a dump for decades became a welcoming park and home to wildlife.
There is one Swede Hollow house that was not engulfed by flames. It was pulled up over the steep walls of the ravine by a team of strong horses and still exists, boarded up and abandoned. There is no signage to identify its origins and no Historic Registry designation to protect it. Just another empty house in an old neighborhood that has so many stories to tell. If only you chose to listen.
Quote from Meridel LeSueur, “Beer Town,” Life in the United States: A Collection of Narratives of Contemporary American Life from First-Hand Experience or Observation (Charles Scribner’s Sons, 1933); pages 31–33, 40.