page_title: Riverview Corridor
section_title: West Seventh neighborhood
hierarchical_section_title: Riverview Corridor / Geography of corridor / West Seventh neighborhood
caption_attribution_description: Ramsey and Seventh Streets; Liberty Bonds billboard on corner, St. Paul.
context_page_description: The Riverview Corridor is a transit corridor connecting Downtown Saint Paul and the Mall of America in Bloomington via the Minneapolis-Saint Paul International Airport. The corridor serves an area from the Saint Paul Union Depot to the Mall via parts of the METRO Green Line and the METRO Blue Line, and a route running parallel to West 7th Street, which runs southwest from Downtown Saint Paul. The corridor creates a triangle connecting opposite ends of the Blue Line and Green Line. In December of 2017, a modern streetcar system similar to systems in Portland, Kansas City, and Detroit was selected as the locally preferred alternative with an alignment along West Seventh Street and MN-5.
context_section_description: The West Seventh neighborhood is one of the oldest in Saint Paul. The neighborhood follows along West Seventh Street and is bound on the north by I-35E or the River Bluffs and by the Mississippi River to the South. It formed in the late 1830s from discharged soldiers and other pioneers building houses along the Mississippi River. Later, a boat dock south of Fort Snelling known as the Upper Landing became an important landing spot for dropping off settlers and supplies. The neighborhood grew as waves of settlers and immigrant came to the area to farm or work for local industrial sites. A sizable amount of industry is located between the Mississippi River and south of West Seventh Street. Workers built their houses close to local industry and different ethnic enclaves developed with the different waves of immigrants.
  Development tended to spread southwest from the Upper Landing, later known as Uppertown, southwest to Fort Snelling along Fort Road. By 1884 a horse drawn street car line traveled along a portion of West Seventh Street. The streetcar line later became electrified by 1891. The line extended to Tuscarora Street by 1890 and to river bluff by 1891. Four other lines also traveled partially along the corridor on their path to Downtown. The line stopped just short of Fort Snelling on the Saint Paul side of Fort Road Bridge. The lack of an extension to Fort Snelling became undesirable to soldiers who wanted an easy connection to the city and civilians who worked on the military reservation. After a new bridge was constructed in 1909 the line was extended to the other side of the river.  A free streetcar shuttle was constructed in Fort Snelling that met with the West Seventh line and then traveled in a single track in Fort Snelling. The Fort Snelling shuttle stopped operating in 1952 and the streetcar line was converted to a bus line in 1952 along with the rest of the Twin Cities transit system.
  The Minneapolis-Saint Paul International Airport was constructed near Fort Snelling in 1921. When it became a major transit hub the corridor was extended to the airport. In the 1989 a county transit plan for Ramsey County was made. The corridor between the airport and Downtown Saint Paul was considered an important corridor. When the Mall of America was constructed the corridor was extended to the mall. The route was first named the Riverview Corridor in February 1997 after the Ramsey County board unanimously voted the corridor as a higher priority than the Central Corridor.
caption: Streetcars run along West Seventh Street in 1918.
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