Get Pre-Approved for a Mortgage in St. Paul, MN

Saint Paul was a bootlegger’s settlement before a French priest gave it a better name

Pierre “Pig’s Eye” Parrant was a retired French-Canadian fur trader with a distinctive bad eye — a white ring around the pupil that earned him the nickname. When Fort Snelling banned liquor sales in 1838, Parrant moved his whiskey operation five miles downstream to Fountain Cave, near what is now West Seventh Street, and established Pig’s Eye Landing. The settlement attracted other French Canadians, Métis trappers, and various people evicted from the fort’s reservation. In September 1841, Father Lucien Galtier — the first Roman Catholic priest to serve Minnesota — asked Catholic settlers to build a log chapel on the bluffs above the river landings. They did it in part, Galtier recorded, so they wouldn’t have to paddle their canoes all the way to church in Mendota. On November 1, 1841, Galtier consecrated the chapel and the surrounding settlement as Saint Paul. “The nucleus of St. Paul was formed,” Galtier wrote.

The Minnesota Territory was formalized in 1849 with Saint Paul as its capital. In 1857, the territorial legislature voted to move the capital south to Saint Peter. Joe Rolette, a colorful territorial legislator, stole the physical text of the approved bill and went into hiding until the bill-passing season expired. The capital never moved. On May 11, 1858, Minnesota was admitted to the Union as the 32nd state with Saint Paul as the state capital. By then the city had shed its Pig’s Eye past entirely — the railroad had arrived, James J. Hill had begun building his empire, and Lowertown’s stone commercial blocks were rising above the river bluffs. Hill’s Great Northern Railway headquarters was built here in 1887. His 36,000 sq ft mansion at 240 Summit Avenue, completed in 1891, with 13 bathrooms and 22 fireplaces, cost $931,275 at the time — equivalent to roughly $22 million today.

Summit Avenue — 4.5 miles of Victorian mansions, the longest such avenue in the United States — was where the Gilded Age money went to live. F. Scott Fitzgerald called it “a mausoleum of American architectural monstrosities.” Frank Lloyd Wright called it “the worst collection of architecture in the world.” Fitzgerald was born in St. Paul in 1896, grew up nearby, and in the summer of 1919 rented a townhouse at 599 Summit Avenue, where he finished This Side of Paradise — his debut novel, published 1920. Minnesota Mining and Manufacturing Company — which became 3M — moved to St. Paul in 1906. Charles M. Schulz, the creator of Peanuts, was born in Minneapolis but grew up in St. Paul’s Merriam Park neighborhood. Saint Paul has a population of 311,527 (2020), making it the second-largest city in Minnesota and one of the most culturally diverse — with the largest Hmong population of any city in the United States. The Minnesota State Capitol, designed by St. Paul resident Cass Gilbert and completed in 1905, has a dome modeled on St. Peter’s Basilica in Vatican City. The Cathedral of Saint Paul, built 1906–1915 to the design of Emmanuel Louis Masqueray — the chief architect of the 1904 World’s Fair in St. Louis — commands the city’s skyline from Cathedral Hill. Saint Paul is the oldest city in Minnesota, founded seven years before Minneapolis, and it looks and feels the part.

Who buys in St. Paul — and what each profile needs

What to gather — program confirmed first, documents second

A state government worker, a Macalester professor on academic contract, a Regions Hospital nurse with shift differentials, and a Lowertown condo buyer each need different documentation. The 20-minute initial call confirms the exact list — then you gather what is actually needed, not everything possible.

Every step from verified letter to keys in hand

What St. Paul buyers ask about getting pre-approved