About Frogtown/Summit-U

Click here for a downloadable pdf version of the census report. Here are a few facts taken from Wikipedia.

Frogtown/ Thomas-Dale:

History: Settled in 1880s as a working-class neighborhood. Attracted newly arrived immigrants during the early 1900s from Austria and Germany, with some Poles, Swedes and Hungarians.
Present: Dominated by University Avenue, Thomas-Dale is traditionally (and more commonly) known as "Frogtown" to the locals, and has been regarded as a neighborhood in transition for decades. Throughout transition, one thing remaining in this neighborhood is the rich culture and diversity.

Summit-University:

History: Summit-University also includes the historic and gentrifying Cathedral Hill neighborhood, as well as what remains of old "Rondo" - once a full-fledged neighborhood of the city in its own right. Lower Rondo (known to the locals as "Cornbread Valley") served as the center of St. Paul's tiny but thriving African-American community dating back to the Civil War, but was nearly obliterated by the construction of Interstate 94 in the late 1950's.
Present: Another neighborhood in transition, "Summit-Uni" is the heart of the local Hmong community as well as the city's other Asian communities, of whom Vietnamese, Laotians and Cambodians are represented in large numbers.

Who’s Who From FSU

LeRoy Neiman, artist
Jim Lange, original TV host of "The Dating Game"
Frederick McGhee, first black criminal lawyer west of the Mississippi River
Warren Spannaus, former Minnesota attorney general
F. Scott Fitzgerald, writer
Dave Winfield, Baseball Hall of Fame left fielder
Charles M. Schultz, author of the Peanuts comic strip
Gordon Parks, photographer, filmmaker, and writer
Jawed Karim, co-founder of YouTube
Cy Thao, first Hmong-American politician to serve as a Representative in the legislature
Toni Carter, first African-American to serve as a Ramsey Country Commissioner in Minnesota

Some titles available through Amazon.com

"Frogtown: Photographs and Conversations in an Urban Neighborhood," by Wing Young Huie, Minnesota Historical Society Press, 1996.
"Where We Live,'' by Judith Martin and David Lanegran, Minnesota Historical Society Press, 1983.
"St. Paul: The First 150 years," by Virginia Brainard Kunz, The Saint Paul Foundation, 1991
“Voices of Rondo: Oral Histories of Saint Paul's Historic Black Community,” by Kateleen Jill Hope Cavett and David Vassar Taylor, Syren Book Company, 2005
“The Days of Rondo,” Evelyn Fairbanks, Minnesota Historical Society Press, 1990

On the web