What was built
- Established or development period
- 1870s–1900s
- Peak period
- 1930s–1950s
- Who built the community
- Black railroad porters, postal workers, tradespeople and professionals along Rondo Avenue.
- Black population
- Roughly 80 percent of St. Paul's Black population lived in the Rondo area.
- Businesses
- Black-owned groceries, drugstores, barbershops, restaurants and professional offices.
- Financial institutions
- Not yet documented
- Churches
- Pilgrim Baptist Church and St. James A.M.E.
- Schools
- Neighborhood schools and the Hallie Q. Brown Community Center.
- Hospitals
- Not yet documented
- Newspapers
- The St. Paul Recorder and the Minneapolis Spokesman.
- Entertainment & cultural institutions
- The Hallie Q. Brown Center, social clubs and jazz venues.
- Other community institutions
- Not yet documented
- Black land & property ownership
- Unusually high Black home ownership for a Northern city, built over three generations.
- Economic significance
- A stable Black middle- and working-class homeowning community.
What happened
- What happened?
- Construction of Interstate 94 in the 1950s and 1960s cut a trench through the center of Rondo. Roughly 700 homes and 300 businesses were destroyed and about one in eight of St. Paul's Black residents lost a home. A depressed-freeway alternative that would have spared the neighborhood was rejected.
- Trigger or precipitating event
- Selection of the St. Anthony Avenue route for Interstate 94.
- Underlying historical context
- Highway engineers chose the route through the Black neighborhood over the alternative northern alignment; residents' organized opposition was overridden.
- Method of destruction / displacement
- Highway · Eminent Domain
- Date or period of destruction
- 1956–1968
- Confirmed / documented deaths
- Not yet documented
- Estimated deaths
- Not yet documented
- People displaced
- Roughly 600–700 families, about one-eighth of St. Paul's Black population.
- Homes destroyed
- Approximately 700 homes.
- Businesses destroyed
- Approximately 300 businesses.
- Acres or property lost
- Homeowners received condemnation payments widely documented as below market value, and many could not buy elsewhere because of discriminatory lending.
Afterward
- What happened to the land?
- Interstate 94 right-of-way.
- Was compensation paid?
- Condemnation payments only; in 2015 the City of St. Paul formally apologized.
- Was the community rebuilt?
- No
- What was rebuilt?
- Not yet documented
- Destroyed or displaced again?
- Not yet documented
- Second displacement date
- Not yet documented
- Second displacement cause
- Not yet documented
- What exists there today?
- Rondo Days festival, the Rondo Commemorative Plaza and the ReConnect Rondo land-bridge project advanced by the state.
- Descendant, reparation & restoration efforts
- ReConnect Rondo, the Rondo Avenue Inc. festival, St. Paul's 2015 apology and state funding for a freeway land bridge.
- Historical significance
- The most cited Northern example of interstate highway construction destroying a Black homeowning community, and one of the few with an active restoration project.
Sources
- Source lookupFind
Minnesota Historical Society, Rondo Oral History Project
- Source lookupFind
City of Saint Paul, 2015 Rondo resolution of apology
- Source lookupFind
Minnesota Department of Transportation, I-94 project history
- Source lookupFind
Ramsey County Historical Society
"Find" opens a focused search for legacy references that do not have a stable link; "Open" goes directly to the source.
Last verified: 2026-09-20. This is a living historical collection. Additional communities and documentation will be added as research and verification continue.