Robbinsdale

By Peter James Ward Richie

Robbinsdale was named for entrepreneur, politician, and real estate developer Andrew B. Robbins. While serving in the Minnesota State Senate, Robbins often passed through the area just north of Minneapolis by train. Impressed by the landscape, he purchased 90 acres of rolling hills and lakes. In 1887, he platted a tract called Robbinsdale Park. Five years later, the development was incorporated as a village bearing his name. Robbins worked tirelessly to attract residents, business, and industry. When the transit company refused to extend a streetcar line to the area, he built his own. City dwellers came out in droves to enjoy hunting, fishing, boating, and the bathing beaches on Robbinsdale’s lakes. In the 1920s, the village gained notoriety with every new issue of Captain Billy’s Whiz Bang. Created by local veteran Wilford Hamilton Fawcett, the little humor magazine launched a publishing empire. Along with the rest of the country, Robbinsdale grew up in the 20th century, but the first suburb of Minneapolis still feels like the small town Andrew B. Robbins dreamed up more than a century ago.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Arcadia Publishing
• Release date: Jul 7, 2014
• ISBN: 9781439646106

Peter James Ward Richie

Author Pete Richie grew up memorizing jokes from Captain Billy's Whiz Bang. His previous book, Images of America: Robbinsdale, showcased Whiz Bang's hometown. This volume draws on the photographic collection of Captain Billy's historic Breezy Point Resort, the City of Breezy Point, and the Crow Wing County Historical Society.

Book preview

Robbins.

INTRODUCTION

A couple months after the Minnesota Territorial Legislative Assembly created Hennepin County in 1852, John C. Bohanon filed the first claim in the township of Crystal Lake. Settling of the area north of Minneapolis was described by the city’s father, Col. John H. Stevens, as being as uneventful, and prosaic as that of any new community could possibly be. The settlers simply came in, took claims and made farms. Excepting the grasshopper raid of 1857, there was little to annoy, trouble them or make them afraid. The railroads did not reach the area until 1880. A flag station was established near the farm of Alfred Parker, and six years later he donated three acres for the construction of a depot. The community that grew around it came to be known as Parker’s Station. Farms in the area prospered and spacious homes were built. When Minneapolis made an effort to secure more taxable property by annexing neighboring townships, the pioneers who had spent the last couple decades toiling the earth had enough money and were organized enough to thwart the city’s intentions. Strings were pulled, favors were called in, and the Village of Crystal was incorporated under a special act of the legislature on January 11, 1887. Later that year, St. Paul entrepreneur and real estate developer Andrew B. Robbins came to Parker’s Station to take a look at the area for an Illinois business interest. He liked what he saw and told a reporter from the Minneapolis Tribune, Looking out across the lake and away to the east, the view was so beautiful that I determined to build a home upon that spot. This visit led to the investment which I afterwards made and to the effort which I have put forth to build at Robbinsdale, a suburb where the natural conditions are so attractive and every feature of the place contributes to make it a suburb of ideal homes.

Robbins had a nose for opportunity, and as a former state senator and the brother-in-law of lumber baron Thomas Barlow Walker, he was well connected and well financed. Robbins purchased 90 acres to the west of Lower Twin Lake. He platted much of the area as the Robbinsdale Park subdivision, but reserved 20 acres of lake shore for his estate. The summer of 1888 brought the first land boom. New industries moved in and a large Lutheran Seminary was built. Architect L.J. Nasset was recruited to design the Crystal Village Town Hall. His brother, Lars Nasset, purchased land from Robbins and opened a general store just down the street. Haakon Christensen, a Norwegian immigrant who came to town to see the opening of the seminary, decided to stay and open a blacksmith shop. In October 1888, Robbins began work on his Northern Car Company. The trolley-manufacturing firm would eventually employ 150 people.

In 1890, Robbins built a 16-room, Queen Anne–style fantasy of turrets, porches, and dormers. The house had five fireplaces, electricity, and indoor plumbing. Robbins landscaped the estate with eight acres of lawn, walks, fountains, shrubs, and two tree-lined entrance roads. Inspired by Richard Chute, who purchased 2,000 trees for the village of St. Anthony in 1858, Robbins lined the streets of his Robbinsdale Park subdivision with willows, white curl leaf birch, oaks, and elms. He worked tirelessly to grow the village into the sort of suburb he imagined lay outside the great cities of the east. That same year, he moved his family to Robbinsdale, gathered investors, and built the Hubbard Specialty Manufacturing Company. The firm made chairs and wheelbarrows. Despite his connections, Robbins was unable to persuade the Minneapolis Street Railway Company to extend a streetcar line up West Broadway Avenue. In 1891, he organized the North Side Street Railway Company and built his own line from the Minneapolis city limits to Robbinsdale Park. The streetcars were pulled by horses until the line was converted to electricity in 1897.

Eventually, Robbins’s development efforts and proposed improvements led to some tension between residents near the business portion of the village and farm families on the outskirts. On March 24, 1893, a special election was held, and a vote to dissolve the Village of Crystal carried unanimously. On April 19 of the same year, the new 2.9-square-mile village of Robbinsdale was organized, with A.B. Robins as the first village council president. A couple months after Robbinsdale was born, the Northern Car Company shops and the Hubbard Manufacturing Building were destroyed by a fire. The depression of 1893 slowed growth in the area, and Robbins was forced to rent out many of the homes in his new subdivision for less than $2 a month.

In 1895, Thomas Girling became mayor after Robbins waged a low-key campaign and was elected to the Minnesota House of Representatives. A week after he took up the office, the Lutheran Seminary in Robbinsdale burned to the ground. Classes were held and students were housed at the new Hotel Georgia on West Broadway Avenue until the Lutheran Seminary relocated to St. Paul. Girling served a single term as mayor before he started a bus line between Minneapolis and Anoka via Robbinsdale and Osseo. After Robbins finished his term as a state representative, he was appointed to the position of state surveyor general; Girling took over his seat in the legislature.

Robbins was fond of Memorial Day, and on May 5, 1903, he put on his Civil War uniform, mounted a white horse, and headed Robbinsdale’s first parade. By that time, Robbinsdale’s main street had a grocery, hardware