The names Minneapolis lost when the streets were renamed for presidents

If Presidents Day gives you the sudden urge to walk up and down streets named for the nation’s chief executive, you’re in luck. Minneapolis abounds with venues for strolling and contemplating the lasting legacy of the 21st president, Chester Arthur.

An examination of an 1880 map of Minneapolis shows the list of streets named after presidents marching east from NE. Washington Street. You might think it was a matter of hardy pioneers laying out a new city, and engraving the land with historical names to bring the new country’s history into this distant land.

Not exactly.

With the exception of Washington, all the presidential names were the result of an 1873 ordinance that overhauled the nomenclature of Minneapolis’ roads. No doubt it caused confusion, since in the early days of the city most street names were ordinary and people were accustomed to Wood Street and Linden Street. But the ordinance imposed a numerical system that was easy to follow.

Except when it wasn’t. Some were renamed for presidents, but that shouldn’t present any difficulty — anyone who’d paid attention in grade school could tell you the order of the presidents, right?

No doubt the City Council was paying tribute to American history. But the 1873 renaming wiped away the history of the original names, the early settlers, landowners and businessmen.

These were the street names scrubbed in the makeover: Sanford, Davis, Gebhard, Lawrence, Lowell, Dover, Concord, Morse, Clayton, Wilkin, Cummings, Eastwood, Brott, Welles and Maryland.

Who were they? We can make some deductions.

There was a frontiersman, Native American agent and investor named John F.A. Sanford. He had a brother-in-law, an investor named Frederick Gebhard, and together they put some money in something called the St. Anthony Falls Water Power Co. Gebhard was a New York moneyman, and one of his business partners was Thomas E. Davis, a New York real estate mogul, so it seems reasonable that those men make up the first three names on the list.

Oh, but there’s more: Sanford owned a slave, a man named Dred Scott. The infamous Supreme Court case that denied Scott his freedom is known as Scott vs. Sandford, because the clerk who filed it misspelled the name.

Sanford street was renamed for John Adams, who opposed slavery, but did little about it.

Lowell, Dover, Concord are all cities in Massachusetts.

Brott is a unique name. “Brott’s Addition,” a property map term, shows up in old newspapers, and an 1869 story in the Minneapolis Tribune notes that “Geo. F. Brott, an old resident of St. Anthony, was recently married to a young lady from Huntsville, Alabama.” She was 22; he was 44. The paper describes him as the former sheriff of Ramsey County.

Another 1869 Tribune story records a real estate tradition undertaken by Brott and his business partner Henry Welles, so that’s probably the guy in the list of renamed streets. Henry T. Welles was the first mayor of St. Anthony, in 1855.

Brott Street was renamed for Franklin Pierce, who was president from 1853 to 1857. Welles Street was renamed for James Buchanan, who followed as the 15th president from 1857 to 1861.

The 1873 renaming stopped at Andrew Johnson, which was probably wise as naming streets after politicians who were still in office would be contentious. You need a few decades for everyone to calm down. Ulysses S. Grant was president in 1873, and he’d get his street when Minneapolis grew both north and east.

The presidential tradition continued in Northeast, all the way through the early 20th century. But there’s a problem when you get past President Herbert Hoover. There was already a Roosevelt Street, named for Teddy. So, what could be done for Franklin D. Roosevelt? The simple solution was to go with Delano Street. Just as Quincy Street referenced John Q. Adams’ middle name, so did Delano pick out FDR’s distinctive middle moniker.

There’s a Kennedy Street, but it’s east-west, not north-south like the other presidential roads. It’s south of Broadway in Northeast, between Arthur and Harding streets. There are no mentions in the newspapers prior to 1963, so it’s safe to think it might have been part of the post-assassination commemoration effort.

We have streets that could be named for presidents, but aren’t — Bush Lake Road, Ford Parkway. But you could ask, “What have they ever done to deserve a street here?” You could ask the same thing of the other presidents who were honored with a road. Here are a few:

George Washington: During his tenure, Congress created the Northwest Territory, which included the portion of Minnesota east of the Mississippi. It’s fitting that the Washington Avenue Bridge crosses the river, reminding you that it used to be an international boundary between British and French territories. The bridge first opened in 1886.

James Monroe: During his administration from 1817 to 1825, the Canadian border was established at the 49th parallel, formalizing Minnesota’s northern border.

Andrew Jackson: There’s a Minneapolis street named after him. His vice president was John C. Calhoun. The lake we now call Bde Maka Ska had been named Calhoun while he was secretary of war in the Monroe administration.

Martin Van Buren: There’s a township in northeast Minnesota, in St. Louis County, named for the president. The population is under 200 people.

William McKinley: The neighborhood in Camden, in north Minneapolis, was named for him. The neighborhood started to fill up in the 1910s, and his 1901 assassination was still fresh in the public consciousness.

Theodore Roosevelt: When he was vice president, he gave his famous “Speak softly and carry a big stick; you will go far” speech at the Minnesota State Fair in 1901.

What of Minnesota’s presidential hopefuls?

St. Paul has a Stassen Drive, but it’s named for William A. Stassen, three-time West St. Paul mayor, not his son, Harold, former governor and many-time presidential aspirant.

Hubert H. Humphrey is memorialized with a brief road called Humphrey Drive. It passes in front of Terminal 2 at Minneapolis-St. Paul International Airport. That used to be called the Humphrey Terminal, before the names were changed to Terminal 1 and Terminal 2. It’s not a lot, but it’s better than nothing.

Too bad the adjacent roads aren’t the Hubert Highway or Horatio Boulevard.