Legacy Town Suburbs (Hopkins, Anoka, Stillwater, Shakopee, Chaska, etc.)

[twincitizen]

For my next Map Monday post on streets.mn, I was thinking of mapping all of the metro area's "legacy towns" - towns that pre-date suburban sprawl. Hopkins, Robbinsdale, Anoka, Stillwater, Shakopee, Chaska, Hastings, etc. are the obvious big ones.

I'm struggling with some that are kind of on the bubble, where I don't know if there's enough "town" there to be counted. Particularly in Dakota County, there are several little incorporated municipalities that are barely there (Coates, Randolph, etc.) I do want to include places like Downtown Lakeville and Downtown Farmington - there's enough original town left there in both instances. Others like Prior Lake or Rosemount are pretty borderline. A few older buildings, but not really enough "town".

Help a brother out. Who's in? Who's out?
Rogers? Out
Loretto? Leaning out
St. Bonifacius? Closer, but leaning out.

I don't have strict criteria, but I guess the bare minimum should be at least a couple of streets in a grid. Having just a half dozen historic buildings strung along a main street is not enough.

[acs]

Don't forget the lake Minnetonka towns either. Wayzeta, excelsior. Further west you have waconia and a bunch more if you want to include rural Hennepin county.

[Anondson]

What kind of benchmarks does a place need to hit to get considered?

[twincitizen]

Excelsior and Wayzata are in for sure. Anything else in the lake area constitute an actual town? Mound appears to fall just short, even if you factor in that a lot of buildings have probably been lost to road widening, more recent development, etc.

In terms of scale, I'd say downtown Robbinsdale is probably the cutoff I'm looking for. Also, holy cow downtown Robbinsdale is like barely there. Like who knew downtown Osseo far exceeds downtown Robbinsdale? Robbinsdale by far has the greater reputation (in terms of local prominence, not good vs. bad reputation). Like when's the last time you ever heard Osseo mentioned? That might be the least prominent legacy town in the metro.

Downtown WBL is in for sure.

EDIT: I think I just found the perfect "minimum" example - downtown Carver. Victoria is one I'd consider very, very borderline.

[Anondson]

White Bear Lake and constellation of villages?

[VacantLuxuries]

North Saint Paul? Would have said South Saint Paul as well, but there isn't much old town left anymore.

[mattaudio]

Match this up with a 1930 or 1940 census to know how relevant these towns were. And some were definitely rural until the 80s or later (Lakeville, Rogers, etc) but some were connected to the cities long before (TCRT or a high-frequency railroad). Some places like Randolph or Vermillion still are rural... they are buffered by miles of farmland and a MUSA boundary, despite being in a metro county. It's also worthwhile to look at the presence of interurban railways that merged into TCRT that were connecting these nodes at their peak. I have a few books with plenty of maps if you'd like.

[twincitizen]

I think I just found the perfect "minimum" example - downtown Carver.

Victoria and Bethel are towns I'd consider very, very borderline. In or out?

I could also be persuaded to exclude some for simply being too far away from the cities (i.e. Forest Lake or New Prague). I don't necessarily need to include every town just because it's in the 7-county area.

[acs]

How far away are you considering too far? Outside the limit of continuous sprawl? If not Stillwater and Hastings are pretty obvious.

[twincitizen]

Naw those two are definitely in due to their size and historical significance/prominence. This could be my Washington County upbringing speaking, but neither Stillwater or Hastings are that far from St. Paul by highway. Whereas now I live in SW Mpls, but places like Jordan or hell even Shakopee seem incredibly far away.

Towns I was thinking of not including would be like Cologne or Norwood Young America. Big enough to be considered actual towns, but effectively not a part of the metro area. I don't think anyone would argue that Stillwater or Hastings lie outside of the metro area, though again, that could be my eastside bias / familiarity with those places.

Matt brought up a good point earlier about the MUSA line. Maybe the simplest answer is to only include places inside the 2040 MUSA line (growth boundary), with the exception of larger towns like Stillwater and Hastings.\



Legacy Towns by Matt Brillhart, on Flickr

This is not a final map, but please do let me know if there are any glaring mistakes or omissions. I decided not to include any of the towns in western Carver County. Getting downtown Lakeville and Farmington included will require some tinkering with census tracts, as I don't want to map the entire suburb. I might do the same for Shakopee, Chaska, etc. if it isn't too troublesome.

[EOst]

Newport and St. Paul Park both have some surprisingly old areas near the river.

I have a map generated of building ages (more or less) for the seven-county metro area, but for it to be big enough to see details it has to be massive (14k pixels square) so I can't really host it anywhere. It makes patches of older buildings really obvious against the much-later sprawl, though, so PM me if you want it and I'll try to email it.

[Anondson]

Hmmm, more consideration... Osseo?

St. Louis Park was a railroad stop before it was a street car line. Check out 1909 tops maps to see it. Maybe?

[Nick]

Newport and St. Paul Park both have some surprisingly old areas near the river.

I have a map generated of building ages (more or less) for the seven-county metro area, but for it to be big enough to see details it has to be massive (14k pixels square) so I can't really host it anywhere. It makes patches of older buildings really obvious against the much-later sprawl, though, so PM me if you want it and I'll try to email it.

!

[Navin]

New Brighton? Stockyard and rail center that seems to match the Robbinsdale and Hopkins examples. Actually just a bit older than those two.

[winterfan]

How about Rockford? I did know a few people who commuted from there when I worked in western suburbs. Maybe Wright County is too far?

[sdho]

I would definitely include Farmington (the southeast gridded portion). Ideally, for all the cities, it'd be nice if you highlighted the traditional town portion of the current city rather than the entire current municipality.

I'm not sure I'd include South St. Paul. Although it has a traditional urban form, it doesn't have a legacy as an independent town -- it was always an extension of St. Paul. I think Nick Magrino did another post highlighting traditional urban form areas, so it makes sense to limit this through a different lens.

[QuietBlue]

I'd definitely include the old downtowns of Lakeville and Farmington. Probably not Rosemount, though; like you said it just has some old buildings rather than a true old downtown. Mendota would be a fringe case -- it's always been pretty small and barely has a grid, with just one main street, but it's historically significant.

[twincitizen]

What I could really use now is a GIS shapefile of historical railroads. I'm sure I could find a current one, but so much trackage has been removed, it would be inaccurate for what I want to portray

[David Greene]

There's an old town part of Cottage Grove but it's pretty small. Some neat building there, including a pretty prominent Georgian SFH.

[mattaudio]

@mulad might have one. Otherwise I've seen an excellent online map somewhere with old alignments -- OpenStreetMap maybe?