Once Upon a Time in Saint Paul #1: Alley 29

It was a leftover space, a sort of light court formed by the backs of surrounding buildings which faces downtown Saint Paul streets of Fifth, Wabasha, Sixth and Cedar, with a sliver of passage space connecting this twenty by forty foot space to Fifth Street. Today the shiny Osborne Building stands there, but before that, this micro area, which nobody apologized for calling ‘quaint’ was know as Alley 29.

In 1961, the owner of the alley’s surrounding buildings, Jim Barwise, conceived of the idea of borrowing the back spaces of the flanking buildings and converting them into small shops and tiny workspaces. George Raffferty of Progressive Design Associates (Now Rafferty, Rafferty, Tollefson, Lindeke Architects) took advantage of the older patina brick three story high walls surrounding the courtyard, added granite paver cobblestones and modest but distinctive signage. That carefully restrained design effort of this small space seemed to be a bit of bohemia, but many downtown people remarked, “This is what Saint Paul is all about.”

The retail spaces consisted of the Twin Cities first Japanese cafe, a bookstore, an art supply store, a tailor, a picture frame shop as well as Progressive Design Associates first offices. Barwise was pleased with his effort that came into place before the boutique retail trend.

But downtown Saint Paul saw progress as their objective. Although a City of Saint Paul 1965 planning document’s techno-utopian language envisioned “intimate environment space,” the latter pages of the document presaged high intensity development on that block, replete with office towers, parking ramps and skyway-accessible retail stores.

That was the kind of progress that made the demise of Alley 29.

Was Alley 29 considered in its time to possess any historical merit? As George Rafferty observed, “It lived during a time when that type of history wasn’t of particular value.”

[From Preservation Matters, November 1986 issue, published by the Preservation Alliance of Minnesota, written by Bob Roscoe.]

[Alley 29 in 1962.]