Until recently, the limestone building at 445 Smith Avenue North, St. Paul, Minnesota, United States, was known in surveys and local architectural history books as the Anthony Waldman House. However, recent research and analysis of the building has revealed that the Waldman House was not in fact built by Waldman, and was not originally a "house" either. Instead, the structure was a small commercial building with residential quarters on the second floor. Evidence of this commercial design include a side porch/loading dock facing the alley to the north (since removed); obvious stone in-filling of the first-floor shop-front windows; a large structural beam above the one-time shop front that supported the second-story stonework; photographic evidence from the 1940s of remnants of the original first-floor commercial cornice (see enlarged image below); physical evidence of a central entrance step into the shop; and wooden sleepers that served as nailers for decorative wooden pilasters or perhaps signs at either side of the shop windows below the cornice. Documentary evidence suggests that the stone portion of the building dates to the late fall of 1857, coinciding with the onset of the Panic of 1857. Another unexpected discovery is that parts of the wood-frame addition to the rear of the stone building actually predate the stone portion, making the latter the true "addition." The research is ongoing, and no doubt the Waldman House has more stories to tell.
The house was nominated to the National Register of Historic Places (NRHP) in 1983 as part of the West Seventh Street Early Limestone Houses Thematic Resource, along with the Joseph Brings House and Martin Weber House. The Waldman House received an NRHP reference number, #83004866, but the listing was never finalized. None of the three buildings are officially on the National Register. It was listed with listing code DR, meaning "Date Received" and nomination pending, in 1983.
Before the Stone House: Wild Land Speculation The Waldman House lies in the southwest block of Leech's Addition to the City of St. Paul (legally described as the NE1/4 of SE1/4 Section 1, Township 28, Range 23). Leech's Addition was platted by developer Samuel Leach in 1849 as a perfectly symmetric nine-block square of streets and alleys extending southwest from the earliest-settled core of St. Paul. Leech's Addition was bounded by Wilkin Street to the east, Douglas Street to the west, Ramsey Street to the north, and Goodrich Street to the south. Notably, Fort Road (today's West Seventh Street) ended at Ramsey Street and did not extend into Leech's Addition until 1859, after the stone portion of the Waldman House was built (more on this timing below). Before then, the historic thoroughfare to the Fort Snelling ferry and the Minnesota River valley beyond meandered along the Mississippi bluff line in unplatted land to the south of Goodrich Street, labeled on early maps as “Bluff Street.”
The lot occupied by the Waldman House was just paces away from Bluff Street. The lot spanned the area between block nine's alley to the north and Goodrich to the south, and faced Forbes Street (renamed Smith Avenue in 1887) to the east. Prior to 1853 this lot was bought and sold as an undifferentiated part of the quarter-section, and later block, by such early and avid land speculators as Henry Sibley, Samuel Leech, James McClellan Boal ("McBoal"), William Forbes and Justus Ramsey. The lot was first individually mentioned in a December 1853 deed when it was sold by Indian trader Louis Roberts along with eleven other lots to local investor William McCarty for $1,500. Eight months later McCarty more than doubled his money by selling six of these lots—-including the stone house lot—-to Toronto investor John Eastwood for $2,000. Eastwood immediately split up his purchase and sold the stone house lot by itself to A. Vance Brown one month later for $350, making a small profit on this parcel and perhaps larger profits on the remaining parcels. Four months later, by deed dated December 8, 1854, Brown then resold the lot to Charles Fuchs (aka Fox) for $420. Taking this single year of sales in total and adjusting for inflation, the value of the lot had increased more than 275% in the single year between Louis Roberts’ sale and Charles Fuchs' ultimate purchase.
Charles Fuchs: Original Stone House Owner It was during Fuchs' ownership that the stone portion of building at 445 Smith was constructed. Fuchs was a carpenter/contractor who emigrated from Wurttenburg, Germany in 1849. Fuchs married Sophia Daveneck in St. Louis, Missouri in May 1849 and moved to St. Paul with their son Charles in 1852. In March 1852 Fuchs purchased the lot at the southwest corner of Fort Road and Walnut Street, which he expanded by purchase of the northwest corner in June 1853, and the adjacent northwest corner of Walnut and Oak Street (now Smith Avenue N.) in November 1854. The $420 price paid by Fuchs for the stone house lot only one month later (December 1854) suggests there may already have been a small wood-frame structure there. Fuchs' stature as a contractor is shown by the fact that he was hired to build the Athenaeum in 1859, one of the most prominent public buildings in Uppertown at the time, and also by the $6,000 in real estate he had amassed by 1860—at a time when vacant lots in Uppertown could be acquired for as little as $300.
A saloon Fuchs' home was several blocks away at 148 Walnut Street and his business was based from Fort Road and Walnut, so it would appear that the stone house was an investment property. The question is, what was it used for? The Minnesota statehood census lists Edward and Sarah Shingles as residing on the lot in November 1857, and intriguingly, Edward's occupation is listed as "saloon." Both Shingles (aka Shindell and Shendle) and the building's owner after 1860, Anthony Waldman, paid the City of St. Paul for liquor licenses in March 1858. By May of that year Shingles is listed as the proprietor of the Winnebago Saloon on Jackson Street near St. Paul's lower levee (today's Lowertown), so if in fact Shingles operated an earlier saloon from the stone house it could not have been for long. Waldman, who purchased the stone house in October 1860, is listed as the owner of a lager beer saloon in the 1860 federal census. To add to the brewing connections, in October 1859 Waldman received a mortgage to the Stahlmann Cave Brewery (present-day Schmidt Brewery site) on West 7th Street as security for a $500 loan to Henry and Christoph Stahlmann, fellow Bavarians who were among St. Paul's earliest and most successful brewers. Notably, there were a growing number of German lager houses and saloons in the immediate vicinity of the stone house prior to the Civil War. Immediately across the alley to the north on Forbes, John Fetzer ran a lager beer saloon from 1856 to 1860, and the notorious “Cave House” saloon and brothel operated a few blocks further down Bluff Street. All of this points to a possible intended use of the stone building as a saloon, perhaps first by Shingles and then by Waldman.
Panic of 1857 If the Waldman "House" was in fact originally built for use as a saloon, the Panic of 1857 and shifting development patterns soon aborted this enterprise. St. Paul's early historian J. Fletcher Williams was an eye-witness to Minnesota's first economic crisis, which he described in his History of St. Paul first published in 1876:
Saint Paul was said by travelers, to be the fastest and liveliest town on the Mississippi River. Emigration was pouring in astonishingly, several boats landing daily loaded with passengers. Those intending to go back in the country, usually purchased their supplies here, and the stores were almost overtaxed, so profitable was their trade. The hotels and boarding houses were crowded to overflowing. The principal business streets fairly hummed with the rush of busy life. Building was never so brisk; an army of workman and mechanics labored night and day to keep up with the demand for dwellings and stores. That season they coined money.
On August 24, occurred the failure of the Ohio Life Insurance and Trust Company, of New York, which gave rise to the memorable panic or financial revulsion of that year. To St. Paul, this pricking of the bubble of speculation was more ruinous and dire in its consequences than perhaps to any other city in the west. Everything had been so inflated and unreal--values purely fictitious, all classes in debt, with but little real wealth, honest industry neglected, and everything speculative and feverish—-that the blow fell with ruinous force. Business was paralyzed, real estate actually valueless and unsaleable at any price, and but little good money in circulation. Ruin stared all classes in the face. The note secured by mortgages must be paid, but all values were destroyed. No device would raise money, for no one had any to lend. Everybody was struggling to save himself. The banking houses closed their doors—-nearly all the mercantile stores suspended or made assignments. All works of improvement ceased, and general gloom and despondency settled down on the community. In a few days, from the top waive of prosperity, it was plunged into the slough of despond.
And now the ‘hard times’ commenced in earnest. No description of this terrible and gloomy period will convey any idea of it. With many, even those who had but shortly before imagined themselves wealthy, there was a terrible struggle between pride and want. But few had saved anything, so generally had the reckless spirit of the times infected all classes. The humble poor, of course, suffered; but the keenest suffering was among those who experienced the fall from affluence to poverty. The papers were crowded for months with foreclosures of mortgages, executions, and other results of the crash. Not one in five of the business houses or firms weathered the storm, despite the most desperate struggles. The population of the City fell off almost 50 percent, and stores would scarcely rent at any price.”
The Mystery of the Jacob Amos Store After Shingles, Jacob Amos is listed as the next occupant of the stone house in the 1858-9 St. Paul City Directory (the content of which was compiled prior to May 1858). Amos was a stonemason from Hesse Darmstadt, Germany, where he was born in 1824. Amos and his sometime business partner Christian Rhinehardt constructed numerous other limestone structures in Uppertown, including 202 McBoal Street (Martin Webber House, 1867). Jacob and his wife Elizabeth were married in Franklin County in southeastern Indiana on April 19, 1852. Elizabeth (née Seidenthaler) was born in Ohio about 1834. They had two children in Indiana (Jacob, b. 1852; George, b. 1855) before moving to Minnesota Territory by 1856, where their first daughter (Louisa) was born in 1856. They had five more children in St. Paul (Rosina, 1858; Phillipp, 1862; Frank, 1865; Charles, 1866; Ida, 1874). The first record of Amos in St. Paul is his listing in the 1856/7 City Directory as a “mason” living on Bluff Street, two blocks south of the stone building.