Main Streets

Primary Source Set
by Grace Onsrud, Minnesota Digital Library Volunteer

Architecture Business and Industry Transportation

A main street is a part of the central business district of a city or town that has retail stores, banks, and other businesses that draw people to the area for work or leisure. Minnesota’s main streets have weathered many changes alongside changes in transportation technology, industry, and town needs. Towns that formed their main street along a railroad are now more likely to face a highway. Main streets built for horses and carts adapted to new forms of transportation such as streetcar systems, cars and buses. One primary source from 1916 shows construction of streetcar tracks on Chicago Avenue in Minneapolis, and a later source shows workers removing them from the Broadway Avenue Bridge in 1951. Stillwater began as a lumber town, with a main street filled with grocery stores, hardware stores, and other businesses that supported locally-based industry. As the lumbering died out, the main street filled with antique shops catering more to visitors than residents. 

Changing ideas about the purpose and value of main streets have had real-life impacts on the way these streets look and function. Should the main street be like a highway, designed to transport you from one place to another as efficiently as possible? Or is it a place for pedestrians to wander and window-shop? Should it support small businesses or large chains? Is it a place for work or for leisure and entertainment? The images in this set capture views of some of the same main streets in different historical periods, serving different purposes. Photographs show St. Germain Street in St. Cloud lined with businesses and horse-drawn vehicles in 1907, with cars and paved roads in 1949, and under construction in 1972 as it was converted to a pedestrian mall. The street has since opened up to cars again. 

Larger towns and cities often have more than one main street. Individual neighborhoods within cities have different areas where businesses cluster. Which main streets a city prioritizes has historically depended on the race or class of the people who have businesses and homes there. Rondo Avenue was a busy main street in a St. Paul neighborhood that was once home to eighty percent of St. Paul’s Black population. Rondo Avenue, along with much of the rest of the neighborhood, was demolished with the construction of I-94 in the 1950s-1960s. The community continues to commemorate Rondo with an annual festival, and there are efforts to repair the area by building a land bridge across the highway.

The meaning of main streets remain up for interpretation today as the way Minnesotans shop, work, and socialize continues to change. It is clear that whatever form a main street takes, it has a deep impact on community identity in cities and towns.