Joe Soucheray: Grand Avenue is changing … once again

Joe Soucheray, Pioneer Press
Updated ·2 min read
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Streets change and times change and we must change with them or be left behind, but it seems that St. Paul’s Grand Avenue has suddenly disappeared and we don’t know where it went. Tavern on Grand just announced a June closing.

Salut Bar Americain is closing. High-end retail stores are gone. COVID is blamed, COVID apparently having resulted in less foot traffic. Leases are up in certain cases and distant teachers union pension fund managers have apparently not rushed in to manufacture more agreeable deals for their bricks-and-mortar investments on Grand.

It might be of small consolation in the short run, but Grand Avenue has always changed and then always rebounded to hold its place of pleasant distinction. It began its existence as a corridor of blacksmiths and bakeries and purveyors of hardware and food and leather goods and rough wear. James J. Hill probably sent his people down there to get a carriage wheel trued or a saddle stitched up.

Many of us remember automobile dealerships on Grand … Berry Chevrolet, Datsun, Grand Avenue Ford, Twin City Auto on Grand and Hamline that sold MGs. I struck out on my calls but I’m willing to be set straight. I believe Grand Avenue Ford was at Victoria and Grand, in the building now occupied by Cafe Latte. That same building features the word Studebaker on the brick front facing Grand.

There came a night every fall when there was either a spooky air raid underway or Grand Avenue Ford was about to pull the canvases off the new models. Searchlights crisscrossed the sky and we followed the lights so my father could gawk in wonder.

Years later, I bought a car there, a school-bus-orange Pinto station wagon with what I remember as questionable build quality. It was raining the day I got it and when I tapped the brakes, she did a 360 right in the middle of the Lake Street Bridge.

I worked on Grand Avenue, for a florist. I crossed Grand Avenue to get to school. I debuted a book on Grand Avenue, at Odegard’s Books. The youngest kid I used to have got married at The Lexington. We attended the first ever Grand Old Days.

Going way back, we rode our bikes to an appliance store called McGowan’s on Grand Avenue. You didn’t know rock ‘n’ roll until you listened to Sheb Wooley’s “The Purple People Eater” from inside a record booth in an appliance store.

The same memories can be made of every other main street in St. Paul, Rice, Payne, Arcade, Robert. It is disconcerting to see Grand Avenue change so significantly, but it has before. And it will again.

In fact, considering the people we’ve managed to elect, maybe Grand Avenue will return to the days of the blacksmith shop.

Joe Soucheray can be reached at jsoucheray@pioneerpress.com. Soucheray’s “Garage Logic” podcast can be heard at garagelogic.com.

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