In recent years, much has been written about the Justus Ramsey Stone House, the limestone cottage that until a year ago sat on the patio of Burger Moe’s restaurant on St. Paul’s West Seventh Street. Erected around 1857, the one-room house was owned by Justus Ramsey, brother to Alexander Ramsey, the first territorial governor of Minnesota and the state’s second official governor after Henry Hastings Sibley.
The irony?
“He never lived there,” said Frank White, a board member with Historic St. Paul, a preservation organization.
Much less has been written about the community of Black railroad workers, Red Caps, Pullman porters, commissars and construction workers who once called the Seven Corners area of St. Paul their home. Many were transplants from the south who been recruited for their labor in the years after the abolition of slavery. Some were hired to build the State Capitol.
From 1890 to 1933, the Justus Ramsey House housed at least 14 known families, all of them somehow associated with the railroad industry, which at one time owned the land it sits on.
Saved from demolition
After a vocal fight between historic preservationists and the city, the badly-damaged house was saved from demolition and taken apart, stone by stone, in February 2023 and placed in storage some 30 minutes north of the Twin Cities. The Minnesota Transportation Museum, home of the Jackson Street Roundhouse, has agreed to adopt the house and make it a cornerstone of a permanent outdoor Pullman porter exhibit, which would be installed next to its Rutledge depot.
That effort will require funding. State Rep. Samakab Hussein, DFL-St. Paul, has sponsored a bill to use $500,000 from the state’s Legacy Amendment — a longstanding state sales tax that funds arts and cultural projects, as well as water and land conservation — to back the relocation and reassembly of the Justus Ramsey House. State Sen. Sandy Pappas, DFL-St. Paul, is a co-sponsor. The bill was laid over in the House Legacy Committee for possible inclusion in a future committee bill.
“This is St. Paul history, not only African-American or Black history,” said Hussein, flanked by a coterie of the city’s Black leaders on Friday during a media event at the Rondo Commemorative Plaza off Concordia Avenue.
Aggressive timeline
The speakers included White, City Council Member Anika Bowie, Ramsey County Commissioner Rena Moran, educator-advocate Robin Hickman-Winfield and Rondo Days founder Marvin Roger Anderson, executive director of the Rondo Center of Diverse Expressions.
Hussein, who is vice chair of the House Legacy Committee, said he was optimistic the money would be appropriated and the limestone cottage will rise again, perhaps even by the end of the year.
“Once we get the funding in place, we’d like to get going right away,” said Larry Paulson, a board member with the Transportation Museum and coordinator of the Justus Ramsey project. “It’s a very aggressive timeline, but it’s possible.”
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