Summit Avenue

I watched Season 5 of Rehab Addict last night, Nicole Curtis was working on a 9000 square foot house on Summit Avenue in Saint Paul. That's in Minnesota for those who may not know. This is my old neighborhood. I lived on the next block north, Portland Avenue, for thirteen years. I knew this house the minute I saw it. This is a Historic District and Summit Avenue has some enormous homes, it's where the robber barons and other tycoons built the tributes to their wealth. Starting at the beginning of Summit on the Mississippi River bluffs overlooking downtown are the oldest homes. James J. Hill built a giant house there. F. Scott Fitzgerald lived in a row house on Summit. Sinclair Lewis had a grand but not huge house know as The Lemon Meringue House. This house is in my part of the Hill District, Summit Hill. I enjoyed watching this show mainly because it was a walk down memory lane. Thirteen years of taking walks along the avenue, watching the area change. The governor's mansion is a couple of houses west of this house and is diagonal from my former house one block up. My son went trick or treating  at the governors residence.

Lest you think I lived in that grandeur, this is a photo of my former house I pulled from Zillow. It is a nice house but not even close to the other. It's not really visible, it's a three story brick house, built in 1906. It was a wonderful place to live but the call of the horses pulled me away. I didn't want to visit them at the stable, I wanted to have them with me. So we packed up dogs, cats and horses and moved to the end of the world.