By Erik Goderstad
This year on March 10th, Jen’s English class took a tour through downtown St. Paul of many places F. Scott Fitzgerald lived, worked, and played. We took this trip to support our curriculum which currently includes The Great Gatsby by F. Scott Fitzgerald, The trip was to see his boyhood home, workplace and residences while he lived in St. Paul. We also took a tour of the railroad tycoon, J.J. Hill’s, residence on Summit Avenue. We visited the Hill house to get somewhat of an idea what life was like in the roaring twenties and to see how Gatsby would have lived.
We began our trip after first hour on the first warm Friday of the year. It was an interesting start because it was Jen’s first time driving the van, but she was used to it soon after the start. We drove down to Summit and started by seeing a three-story apartment building where he lived with his parents during his sophomore year at Princeton. He also lived a few doors down, where he wrote his first book This Side of Paradise. These homes were on the less nice side of Summit Avenue.
After seeing these places, we had some time to kill so we drove by the capitol for a quick minute but there was no parking. After seeing the capitol we drove on to see the church which he was baptized in. From there we went on to the J.J. Hill House.
J.J. Hill was a railroad tycoon who began his career in the late 1800s when he and a group of investors purchased the dying St. Paul and Pacific railroad.
He worked incredibly hard to push the railroad North to Canada and into the West. By the end of his career he had amassed a significant fortune of about $36 million. With this money, he was able to build the amazing estate in St. Paul now known as simply the J.J. Hull house. The mansion was completed in 1891 and was a grand way to show his success. It was 36,000 square feet on 5 floors. It contained 13 bathrooms, 22 fireplaces 16 chandeliers, a two story sky-lit art gallery and every technological advancement of the time. We took our tour of this amazing house which lasted about an hour.
After the tour we saw one more Fitzgerald residence before continuing on to the St. Paul Academy where he attended preparatory school. This was where the tour ended. After a long day of seeing some historical sites, we took a break and went over to McDonald’s for a quick lunch. We finished eating and had some time to kill so we went over to enjoy the beautiful day at Harriet Island. We just ran around and enjoyed the day for a while before piling into the van for a final drive back to the school. This was our adventurous day of Fitzgerald and J.J. Hill which was a very successful trip.