Hamline-Midway History Corps: a neighborhood love story

By MARGIE O’LOUGHLIN

Do you have questions about your family history?

Do you want to learn more about your neighborhood or the house you live in?

The Hamline-Midway History Corps can help you become your own best history detective. This group of amateur history enthusiasts meets at the Ginkgo Coffeehouse (721 N. Snelling Ave.) on the third Saturday of each month from 2-4pm. There is no cost to join or participate in the History Corps and the co-captains, Steve and Nancy Bailey, are so enthusiastic that they haven’t missed a meeting since assuming leadership in 2006. Steve noted, “If you’re going to commit to something, why not go all the way?”

The boundaries of the Hamline-Midway neighborhood extend from Prior Ave. on the west to Lexington Pkwy. on the east, and from University Ave. on the south to Pierce Butler Rd. on the north. It’s a small area, only 2 square miles, but has a decidedly colorful past. The Baileys have put together an encyclopedic volume they call the Book, which clearly lays out the history of the Hamline-Midway neighborhood going all the way back to 1878.

The Book consists of more than 500 fastidiously researched pages, organized into eight volumes. It is overflowing with maps drawn to scale, exquisite photographs, period illustrations and business advertisements, all of which combine to transport the reader back in time. Steve, a retired printing specialist, and Nancy, a retired office administrator, bring their unique talents to bear on the Book. In addition to being an impressive visual presentation of neighborhood history, is just plain well-written and fun to read.

Their particular interest is in tracing the history of business succession block by block. To understand how this works, consider the address of the Ginkgo Coffeehouse - the unofficial headquarters for the History Corps.

The Bailey’s findings for 721 N. Snelling Ave. begin in 1917, a year before World War I ended. Then, it was a meat market. In the nearly 100 intervening years, there were 13 separate listings including 7 grocery stores, a block ice business, 3 hardware stores, a book seller and, most recently, the Gingko Coffeehouse. The Baileys gathered this information using a combination of reverse telephone directories (where, if you have the address, you can learn a business name in a particular year), print ads in community newspapers and high school yearbooks, and research available for public use at the Minnesota Historical Society.

They are quick to point out that the Book is a product of their mutual love of history. Steve writes, Nancy edits, and they value using each other as springboards for new ideas.

In addition to collecting facts, Steve and Nancy also enjoy collecting things. Wearing one of his more than 60 Hawaiian shirts, Steve describes a few of their favorite collections with a broad smile. He says, “We love old-fashioned View Masters, depression glass and miniature rum bottles. We also believe that a bare wall is something of a sacrilege.” Nancy laughs.

Steve and Nancy are impressive history sleuths, and they have quite a history of their own. They married young and embarked on a six month honeymoon in a 1968 Dodge van, whose roof they had raised to accommodate their new “on the road” lifestyle. Heading east, they ended up in Washington DC where, true to historic form, they spent the next four weeks touring the Smithsonian Museums.

“We’re both collectors by nature,” Steve explains, “and collectors are history-minded people.”

The Baileys continued their extended honeymoon in Niagra Falls where, by chance, they visited The Houdini Museum. They stayed a few weeks, long enough to learn the basics of performing magic tricks—and slight-of-hand became their source of income for the next two years.

Eventually they landed in Southern California, and stayed there for three decades.

Both Minnesota natives, Steve and Nancy decided to return home in 2005—"for a thousand little reasons.” They now live in the 1913 house where Nancy grew up and, as Steve says with believable happiness, “Everything we do, we do together.”

This summer they’ll be celebrating fifty years of shared life (45 years of marriage) and, even after all this time, they have the easy confidence of two people still marching to the beat of the same drummer.

Steve and Nancy came to their first meeting of the History Corps in 2005, with some basic questions about the house they had just acquired from Nancy’s family. Once settled, they became interested in the grocery store on the corner, and then the grocery store on the next corner. The rest, as they, is history.