Minnesota Then
Discussions about building a highway to connect Minneapolis and St. Paul began in 1920 and gained momentum shortly after World War II. Rapidly increasing automobile use meant it was time to address surging gridlock on local streets, and local business groups and traffic engineers pushed for a direct east–west corridor to serve growing commercial districts. On November 1, 1945, the Pioneer Press endorsed that vision. Highway department officials locked in on St. Anthony Avenue as the preferred path, straight and familiar, running parallel to University and Marshall from downtown to the western city limit. Engineers followed what they called "desire lines," concluding that St. Anthony was where the traffic already wanted to go.
Since the 1930s, federal policy and private practice had confined Black families to a narrow corridor of St. Paul. The Home Owners' Loan Corporation had graded neighborhoods by lending risk, producing color-coded maps that marked areas with high concentrations of African American residents in red, the lowest grade, labeled "Hazardous." The Federal Housing Administration reinforced this by restricting mortgage insurance to white-only neighborhoods and encouraging racial covenants. Across the Twin Cities, developers inserted language into property deeds stipulating that premises "shall not be sold, mortgaged, or leased to or occupied by any person or persons other than members of the Caucasian race."
Black families were funneled into a single neighborhood where they could buy homes but could not secure favorable loans or expand into surrounding areas. When highway planners looked at a map in the 1940s, they saw a straight, wide corridor running east to west through St. Paul, and it ran through Rondo.
In 1953, what had long been a threat became fact when Rondo families learned their elementary school would be demolished for a freeway. The route, however, had been effectively locked in for years. Even the city's own planning director, George Herrold, who had held the position since 1920, recognized St. Paul's pattern of "slash-and-cut" planning and warned that this highway would "decimate" Rondo. He noted that the city was already divided into isolated sections by twenty-two railroad lines, and that adding a freeway through a residential corridor would only cut it further apart.
Herrold warned the project would sever the Capitol complex from downtown and leave behind a "gigantic ditch… and an unwelcome concentrator of exhaust fumes." In 1947, he had backed an alternative called the Northern Route, a four-lane roadway along existing railroad lines near what is now Pierce Butler Route. It would bypass Rondo almost entirely, minimize disruption to Prospect Park, and keep the Capitol tied to downtown, all at a cost of no more than a couple of minutes of additional commute time.
The Northern Route never had a real chance. City officials prioritized maximum traffic capacity, citing studies that placed the bulk of future freeway users south of University Avenue. Minneapolis planners and University of Minnesota administrators further entrenched this path, demanding a southern alignment for direct campus access. Additionally, the Northern Route projected higher traffic volumes on connecting streets—a financial burden of repairs and maintenance the city was unwilling to shoulder. Ultimately, the economic and political case for the St. Anthony alignment held firm, effectively prioritizing engineering efficiency over the integrity of the Rondo community.
What stood in the path of that decision was the heart of Black professional and social life in St. Paul, home to the Appeal newspaper, the Hallie Q. Brown Center, and the Credjafawn Social Club. Black-owned businesses lined Rondo Avenue: barbershops, beauty parlors, restaurants, and the Credjafawn Cooperative Store. It was a mixed-income community where doctors and lawyers lived on the same streets as porters and domestic workers, and where the St. Paul chapter of the NAACP operated. These businesses and institutions formed a self-contained social and economic infrastructure that the community had built because they were largely excluded from the rest of St. Paul. Rondo was, in essence, a city within a city.
The final blow came from Washington. President Eisenhower's Federal-Aid Highway Act of 1956 meant the federal government would cover ninety percent of construction costs—but Herrold's route was never seriously considered. City leaders deviated little from their original plan. Interstate 94 was built along the St. Anthony Route, and construction stretched across nearly a decade.
On December 9, 1968, a coalition of leaders from both cities met near Highway 280, tied ribbons together in front of roughly two hundred people, and declared the Twin Cities linked. By four o'clock that afternoon, Interstate 94 was open. It had taken more than 600 households and some 300 businesses with it, most of them from Rondo, one of the few St. Paul neighborhoods where Black families had been allowed to settle.