MANY MILES OF BUILDING.
The Building Frontage of St. Paul for 1888 Over 83,000 Feet.
A FIFTEEN MILE BLOCK.
It Would Make Both Sides of Seventh Street Solid for 276 ½ Blocks, or Ten Miles.
The magnitude of the building operations pursued in St. Paul this year can be better appreciated by an illustration with figures now kept on record by the building inspector. The frontage of each building for which a permit is issued is taken by the inspector. At the end of the year the total of these represents the number of feet frontage erected for twelve months.
The record for 1888 up to to-day is as follows: Total…83,489 Or, in miles…15 2/3
That is, if all the buildings were erected in St. Paul during 1888 were to be placed together and in one straight line, without cross streets, that line would be 15 2/8 miles in length. If cross streets were introduced, these buildings would build up one side of Seventh street solid for eighteen miles, or from University avenue and Arundel in St. Paul to Hopkins station, eight miles beyond Minneapolis; or from the union station, St. Paul, to Burlington railroad crossing at Hastings, or from East St. Paul to Hudson. If both sides of the street were built up, and the cross streets were sixty feet wide, this frontage would make Seventh street a solid block on both sides for nine miles, or make a solid block on both sides of the Manitoba track from its shops in St. Paul to East Minneapolis.
Built up perpendicularly, this frontage would make the highest pile ever known to man. Compactly laid out, it would make a city larger than Hastings, Fergus Falls, Moorhead or Brainerd. It would be nearly as large as Mankato or Red Wing.
On an average of four persons to a plan, it would give shelter to a city of over 13,000 inhabitants. The frontage lines alone, not taking into consideration depth, would make a solid square of 211 and a fraction feet on each side.
In other words, to all her buildings of the past, St. Paul has added this year enough new to build any town in the state outside of Duluth, Minneapolis, Stillwater and Winona. It is estimated that the brick used alone would make a solid wall ten miles long, two feet thick and eight feet high; the stone, a wall four miles long, three feet thick and ten feet high; the lumber, a fence that would enclose the combined areas of St. Paul and Minneapolis, and the nails a straight line from St. Paul to Milwaukee.
Source:
The Saint Paul Daily Globe
Sunday Morning, December 23, 1888, Volume X, Number 35,
Page 3