page_title: Swede Hollow, Saint Paul
section_title: Connemara Patch
hierarchical_section_title: Swede Hollow, Saint Paul / Connemara Patch
caption_attribution_description: English: A view of the Seventh Street Improvement Arches from the north side, looking south. The asphalt trail is the Bruce Vento Regional Trail.
context_page_description: Swede Hollow was a neighborhood of St. Paul, Minnesota. It was one of a large group of neighborhoods collectively known as the East Side, lying just to the east of the near-downtown Railroad Island neighborhood, and at the northwestern base of Dayton's Bluff. It was capped in the north by the sprawling Hamm's Brewery, and in the south by the historic Seventh Street Improvement Arches. Although one of the oldest settlements in the city, it was also arguably the poorest as each wave of immigrants settled in the valley. Swedes, Poles, Italians and Mexicans all at one point called the valley home. A similar community just downstream called Connemara Patch also existed for Irish immigrants.
context_section_description: Just south and downstream of Swede Hollow was a lesser-known Irish neighborhood called Connemara Patch. It was so named after the original home of its Irish settlers, who arrived in the United States under the sponsorship of Archbishop John Ireland, who settled them on prairie claims near Graceville, Minnesota. When the original rural colonization plan was aborted by the long, blizzard-wracked winter of 1880 (a season so harsh it was immortalized in the Laura Ingalls Wilder book The Long Winter), the desperate immigrants were resettled along lower Phalen Creek in the area between East Seventh and East Fourth streets as a stopgap measure—one that ultimately became permanent. The legendary Irish-language storyteller Éamon a Búrc spent several years in the district before a railroad accident took his leg, leading him to return to his village in County Galway, Ireland.
  Like Swede Hollow, Connemara Patch was eventually cleared of its inhabitants. The neighborhood's remnants were completely destroyed by urban renewal in the 1950s. Interstate 94 currently occupies a substantial portion of the old enclave. The rest of the site is largely vacant, except for a few dilapidated industrial structures.
caption: The Seventh Street Improvement Arches separated Swede Hollow from Connemara Patch. The north side (foreground) of the photograph is Swede Hollow; the area partially visible beyond the arches is the former site of Connemara Patch
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