Understanding old houses is an important part of my job. I have rarely met an old house that I don’t like. In fact, I think old houses make great homes.
The oldest houses in St. Paul are those that are the closest to downtown. The newest houses are on the Eastern and Western edges of the city. There are newer houses here and there and even some new construction. Half of all houses in St. Paul were built before 1920. The chart below is a screen print from a City of St. Paul planning report.
The wonderful thing about houses is they can be retrofitted and do not have to become obsolete. When my house was built in the 1860s it lacked many of the modern amenities it has today like central heating. Today it has central air and smart home technology.
If you don’t like old houses you might want to live in the suburbs or in Minneapolis.
The house I grew up in was a beautiful craftsman style in the Dayton’s Bluff neighborhood. It was built in 1926 and is the newest house I ever lived in. It had an ancient boiler that burned oil. I well remember the great oil shortage and taking turns with my dad hauling containers of diesel fuel from the local gas station and using it as fuel for the boiler. That same boiler was later converted to natural gas.
