Why was I-94 built through St. Paul's Rondo neighborhood?
The highway connected Minneapolis and St. Paul, but its construction tore a hole through a thriving, historic Black neighborhood.
December 18, 2020 — 8:49am
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Floyd Smaller was a junior walking home from Mechanic Arts High School in the late 1950s when he saw bulldozers and cranes start moving dirt in his beloved Rondo neighborhood. By the time he was a senior, St. Paul's Rondo resembled a battlefield.
"There were big holes and trenches. It looked like World War I," said Smaller, 84. Over the next decade, a huge swath of land on either side of Rondo Avenue became No Man's Land, as more than 600 homes and 300 businesses — many of them Black-owned — were razed or moved to clear the way for Interstate Hwy. 94 connecting St. Paul and Minneapolis.