Book Recommendation



Recently I wrote to support Donald L. Empson’s book The Street Where You Live: A Guide to the Place Names of St. Paul for a 2006 Award of Merit from the American Association for State and Local History. As the Acquisition Librarian at the Minnesota Historical Society for the past 28 years, I am very familiar with works of local history and Empson’s work is one of the most interesting, informative, and entertaining books I have read in a long time.
In December of 1974 Empson began a daily column in the St. Paul Dispatch with the title “The Street Where You Live”. Based on these columns and the author’s work as a reference librarian at the Minnesota Historical Society, the first edition of this history was published by Empson’s vanity press the Witsend in 1975. The subtitle of the first edition (A Guide to the Street Names of St. Paul) points out its more limited scope. When the author was approached by the University of Minnesota Press to reprint the local gazetteer, Empson suggested expanding the subject to all St. Paul place names. The result of those additions was an additional 141 pages, much more history, and a more useful reference tool. The new edition also integrates appropriate photographs and sidebars. One such sidebar on the paving of the city streets is titled “The Bedraggled Harlot” referring to an 1882 article in the St. Paul Pioneer Press.
The first edition was quickly out of print but had gained a cult following. I, for one, bought every copy I came across and gave them away to ignorant Minneapolitans and Saint Paul chauvinists. Saint Paulites will long remember former Governor Jesse Ventura on the David Letterman show, miming a habitual tippler and stating that the Irish laid out the streets of our saintly city. True, the city isn’t a grid of ABCs and 123s, but therein lays the eccentric and wonderful history of this town that this book captures so well.
Empson understands the importance of local history which, as he states in his preface, “provides a context for the space around our lives: it gives us a perspective on who we are and how we relate to those who lived here before us and those who will occupy our house and place in the next generation”. He provides that context by telling us about the people behind the names that we come across all day every day. The entry for McMurray Field, for example, tells us not only who McMurray was but about how the civic philanthropy of William McMurray left him broke and quotes him saying “I guess I was just in business for the fun of it anyway”.
The Street Where You Live surprises the reader in that it is full of the author’s personality. Where facts alone would normally suffice we are given opinion [under the entry for Bruce Vento Nature Sanctuary we are told that Congressman Vento “… found it difficult to put a period to his rambling sentences”], poetry [the entry for Larry Ho Drive quotes a poem by Mayor Larry Hodgson about St. Paul’s most famous madam, Nina Clifford. “No longer do gay lights their welcome convey/ Inviting the wayfarer in/ To choose from the bevy, his favorite lay/ To dally a while and sin.], and humor [“While we would all agree Mother Teresa was a laudable woman, the local significance of the name escapes us” or Zimmerman Place is “noteworthy as the only entry in this book beginning with the letter Z”].
My only complaint about the book is that when it is sitting out in plain view there is a subconscious inclination to walk around humming the Loewe and Learner tune of the same title. For you bratz under 40, that is from the Broadway musical My Fair Lady based on the Shaw play Pygmalion.
I recommend The Street Where You Live to you as well as to the AASLH. It is a must have reference work for anyone interested in the history of St. Paul, Minnesota.