Carol Carey fought the wrecking ball in St. Paul. She won, a hundred times.

Often, historic preservation focuses on saving from demolition the grand, stately properties of the long-ago elite. To Carol Carey, preserving history also meant infusing new life into scores of St. Paul’s working-class houses and storefronts, one humble address at a time.

From Dayton’s Bluff to West 7th, Frogtown to Payne-Phalen, Carey’s work at the helm of Historic St. Paul focused on resurrecting old houses into new affordable housing in some of the capital city’s oldest neighborhoods. After 20 years leading nonprofit Historic St. Paul, Carey is retiring.

“Her work was not just about preserving properties. She has rekindled the history of the working-class families that made Frogtown what it is,” said Caty Royce, co-director of the Frogtown Neighborhood Association.

Jim Sazevich, a St. Paul housing historian who credits Carey for helping save his family’s home in Frogtown, said such properties are often overlooked. Not on Carey’s watch.

“She sees the potential in so many of the ugly ducklings. Preserving working-family homes is important because that is our history, our immigrant history,” he said. “She always had the ability to see the big picture.”

Carey has no training in preservation or development, she said. She became interested in preservation after moving into her husband’s Swede Hollow-area house after they got married, and she learned about aging homeowners who were thinking of selling their historic homes to developers with plans to demolish.

“We started finding like-minded people interested in older houses who appreciated what was here,” Carey said. “We viewed [history] as an asset, as opposed to a liability.”

Rallying neighborhood support, residents helped create a heritage preservation district — St. Paul’s first in a working-class neighborhood, Carey said. In the years since, a number of historic properties have not only been saved from demolition but transformed into new commercial uses and affordable housing.

“Historic preservation is about more than saving wealthy museum pieces,” she said. “At its core, preservation is maintenance.”

In the past 20-plus years, Carey has helped transform Historic St. Paul from a preservation ally into a developer and matchmaker, connecting property owners with loans, grants and financing to save and repurpose properties in the city’s oldest neighborhoods. She estimates she’s had a hand in rescuing 95 to 100 properties.

Aaron Rubenstein got to know Carey in the 1990s, when he was a staff person for the city’s Heritage Preservation Commission. She was a volunteer member of the board. Her curiosity and “a keen interest in understanding urban dynamics” has made her an effective champion of preservation, he said.

“The stories that get the most attention are those pitting the preservationists against the bulldozers,” Rubenstein said. “Carol’s work was much quieter, such as working with homeowners and commercial property owners on façade rehab.”

Joe and Stan’s Pub and Grill on W. 7th is an example. With help from Historic St. Paul, Rubenstein said, the 1940s storefront was remodeled with huge new windows to make the space brighter and more inviting. Carey also worked to survey historic properties along the Green Line light rail route on University Avenue, partnering with the Frogtown Neighborhood Association to marshal support to redevelop the old Victoria Theater into an arts center.

Former St. Paul City Council Member Jane Prince is a neighbor of Carey’s. In 2016, the city had purchased seven buildings in the Dayton’s Bluff historic district that were in various states of disrepair, Prince said. Demolition permits were issued. Instead, Carey helped launch a big marketing push that resulted in the city receiving 14 viable proposals.

“Carol is really gifted,” Prince said. “When I was on the council, and I’d see Carol’s name on my phone, I’d think: ‘Oh, God, Carol’s got another idea. Do I really want to pick up the phone?’ But everything she suggests is really successful.”

Not everything. Despite many victories, Carey counts the recent battle to save the Justus Ramsey House as a defeat. Preservationists had sought to prevent the owner of Burger Moe’s restaurant from demolishing the 1852 stone house on the restaurant patio. In a city-brokered compromise, the building was disassembled and its stones catalogued and moved to be rebuilt elsewhere.

“It would have been so much better to preserve it at its original site,” she said.

Although she has stepped away from Historic St. Paul, Carey admits she’s likely to stay involved in preservation on some level. “I’m not certain that it’s something I can just quit cold turkey,” she said.