Hamline Midway Memories
#1 in a Series by Nancy & Steve Bailey
Author's Note: This will be an ongoing project and we welcome any and all contributions. Even if you’ve only been in the area for a short time you may very well know of places that have come and gone and even if you do not know the exact dates, a general time frame would be helpful. You will sometimes notice a year in parenthesis after an address; this is the year the building was built. Please email any information you may have to bailey[at]csp.edu and use "Hamline Midway" as the subject line.
As I grew up here in the fifties and sixties and I met Steve in 1965, we’ve decided to do an article on our memories of the Hamline Midway area and sort of reconstruct the neighborhood as we knew it.
We also asked my older brother what he remembered about the area because he was born in 1941 and lived here through the 70’s. We talked about long gone places, some I never knew existed, and some that I did know but are also gone.
As we drove by them, we could see that what had been a corner store was now a house. Others were still viable businesses, although of a different nature. Some had been torn down, some had been renovated and some still look a lot like they used to while others have had cheap facades put on. Some buildings that were businesses by themselves have been made into multiple businesses.
Getting wrapped up in the research, some of the dates will be going back farther than any of us remember, as well as more recent dates, but that’s what makes it fascinating, finding out how the neighborhood has changed.
To begin our stroll, we will be going roughly from our house at Edmund and Griggs to Albert, then to Thomas, next to Dunlap, then to Minnehaha and Hamline. This will cover the inner core that we knew best.
As we leave the house we first come to Harlans, a corner store by Galtier, on the SE corner of Syndicate and Edmund. Being across the street from a grade school, they had a very large variety of 1 & 2 cent candies.
On the SE corner of Edmund and Albert was Cournoyer’s, another corner store. The owner had cats running around in her store. One time my brother had to use the bathroom and it was in the basement. When he went down there he found large metal signs that said Lucky Strike Green has gone off to war. There were about 30-40 of them. Another time the owner asked my brother if he had seen her son’s car and when he said no, she took him to the garage, opened it and under a tarp was a 1940 Chevrolet. She said her son had bought it brand new and she was holding it for him until he came back so my brother asked her when he was coming back and she said he went off to war and he was buried in Belgium. He asked her if she wanted him to get rid of the car and she said, “No, I told my son I’d hold on to it until he came back.”
The building at 1340 Thomas, at the SW corner of Hamline, and its neighboring stores have undergone many transformations.
Cecil’s Fruit Stand used to be in another building that was attached to the west side of the 2 story building that is currently there. It was a one story building with no basement. You can see where the building was by the patterns on the sidewalk and the side of the building. To the west of this was a small empty lot. When Cecil’s was torn down, they expanded the lot to full size and moved a house onto it from the Northern Pacific Hospital area which, by that time, had became Good Samaritan Hospital.
In the 50’s, at 1346 Thomas, was Cohen groceries which was run by Hyman Cohen. My brother and his friends use to alter signs that were painted on the windows, such as “red grapes” became “red apes”. In 1992 this became Hartland’s Shoe Repair for a year and half, after which he moved to his current location at 591 Hamline. This went on to become a photography studio and is currently part of a coffee shop.
To the east, at 1344, is J & S Bean Factory. Sometime in the 70’s, there was a yarn shop called Happy Hooker (the book came out in 1971 and the movie in 1975) here. After the Happy Hooker was a sign shop, then idWay arts and Dadders Coffee from 2003-2004. In 2005 J & S Bean Factory moved in and in 2007 they took over 1346 Thomas and devoted it to web access WiFi.
There was a beauty parlor upstairs, at 1342, some time in the 70’s – 80’s.
In the corner building at 1340 Thomas, in the 50’s and 60’s, was Kemps Drugstore. I remember it had nice old wooden floors and a tin ceiling. The tin ceiling is still there but, alas, the floors have been updated to a newer type wood floor. Inside the door on the left was a soda fountain and stools with a couple of booths in the back. The pharmacy was on the west wall. At the end of the pharmacy, in the back of the store, was a counter that had a machine where you could test tubes from your radio or TV and replacements were in back of the machine. I used to like to get out the new ones, plug them in, and watch them light up.
After Kemps Drugstore moved out it became Bruce Davern TV Repair Shop and, at the end, they also repaired walkie talkie sets like Target uses. From 2002 – 2003 there was a home restoration / remodeling business that never really got under way and in 2004 this became the Borealis Yarn Shop.
Next to Kemps, in the same building, around the corner at 595 Hamline, was Kaiser’s barber shop in the 50’s and later was a different barber shop. This is now Wage Peace. Next to this is a tunnel which went between Kemps’ and the next building. There were two doors in the tunnel, the one on Kemps side went upstairs for people who lived above the store and the other was a back entrance to the shop next door.
The one story building to the south, at 593 & 591 Hamline has also housed a number of businesses. At 593 was a stamp store in the 50’s & 60’s and later became a baseball card shop. The baseball card shop was there until around 2004. The tunnel was closed some years ago and in 2006 the Borealis Yarn expanded into that store with a new connection between them.
At 591, in the 50’s, there was something that was related to the Bowling Association. This became a coin shop that was there until 1993. Hartland’s Shoe Repair bought out Dom’s Shoe Repair at Hamline and Minnehaha in 1988 and moved to 1346 Thomas in 1992 and this location in the middle of 1993 and is currently there.
On the NE corner was Felners Shell service station. We remember that this became a Super America in the late 60’s, because they were giving away free glasses with an eight gallon purchase and we were collecting them. Gas had to be about 30 cents a gallon because we remember that during the oil embargo of 1972, gas shot up to 42 cents, and we felt that we were being robbed then. This was a 7-11 around 1976, and is now a Super USA store.
The half timber building on the SE corner, at 600 Hamline, was Westlund’s Meat Market. Next door around the corner, at 1336 Thomas, was Hetzenecker Grocery. The two stores were interconnected at the back of the store. Westlund’s also had a store on the SW corner of Snelling & Thomas. Westlund’s went on to become a video store, Sandy’s Professional Dog & Cat Grooming and a mortgage company with phone banks upstairs, all in the 90’s. It is vacant now, last being used by lawyers. Hetzenecker Grocery is now Dino’s Gourmet Pizza
Next door at 1332 Thomas was Thors bakery, a two story building that had large plate glass windows. They had the best elephant ears. It has since been replaced by a one story cinder block building and is Peak Printing. This was a State Farm Insurance office for a while.
On the SE corner of Griggs and Thomas was Janssens which occupied the entire building. They were full service with a meat counter against the south wall and offered free delivery up until the very end. They had the best penny candy selection and would split your popsicles for you on the counter. My friend’s family had a tab going with them and they would just add to it by hand on their sheet. We always paid in cash but usually only got bread or milk if we ran out. My mother would send me to the store and any pennies left over I got to spend. Of course, choosing the candy took more time than choosing the bread. Lunch bars, sevenUp bars, Nik-L-Nips, wax lips, Pixy Sticks or …. Janssens split into CMX Sausages and Monas. Mona’s then became an African food specialty store in 2005. That became Old’s Gold, an antique consignment shop in 2006. You can still see the Janssen’s sign painted on the east side of the building.
On the east side of Griggs mid block between Thomas and Lafond was a small grocery store. It was open 7 days a week and stayed open until 10:00 at night, much later than the other corner stores, and had things like squirt guns, comic books, cap pistols and kites, as well as penny candy.
The store on the SE corner of Dunlap and Thomas was Baltes - now A Corner On Health. My brother, who is 7 years older than I said when he was young, you could bring a note saying you were buying cigarettes for your mother or father and he would sell them to you. When I was in my early teens, you could just stop in and he would sell you cigarettes, no questions asked. All the kids in the neighborhood knew it and you would usually only stop in there for that. Everything else you could get at other corner stores but those other corner stores wouldn’t sell you cigarettes.
Next we go south 3 blocks to the NW corner of Sherburne and Dunlap. This was Schroeders, a small corner store.
Heading back north on Dunlap we turn west on Minnehaha and go to Hamline. On the NE corner was Jack’s Fried Ice Cream, a caterer that also sold ice cream molded into many different shapes. I remember our grade school class getting little turkey shaped ice creams one time, probably for some special occasion. It became a business called Aaron’s and is now Fields of Hair.
The building at the SE corner housed a Laundromat as it does today. At the far east end of the building was Dom’s shoe repair with a barber shop next door. My brother used to get his ice skates sharpened at Dom’s. Today there is only Jon’s Barber Stylist and it is where Dom’s used to be. Dom’s was there for 45 years and was originally Arthurs Bootery which started in the 20’s.
On the SW corner was a combination drug store/grocery store.
As we head back south on Hamline we come to Dreamland Arts at 677 Hamline. In the 50’s this was Rieder’s TV and Radio Repair, with a workshop in the basement. It was owned by the father of a girl that attended Wilson High School at the same time my brother did. One time my brother brought in a shortwave radio that he had made from a Heath kit and the owner said that the IF transformer was shot and he should send it back. My brother asked how much he would charge to fix it and he said $1.25 installed. Needless to say, he had him repair it. Rieder’s closed around 1959 or 1960, and became Hedtke Electric for a time. There is a tunnel that connects the business with the house next door.
Our next leg of the trip will be along University Avenue from Lexington to Snelling.
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