St. Paul unveils street signs restoring Rondo Avenue to its original name

Rondo Avenue is officially back on the map in St. Paul.

City officials unveiled new street signs on Tuesday restoring a portion of Concordia Avenue to its original name: Rondo Avenue. The St. Paul City Council approved the change in December for the portion of Concordia Avenue between Griggs Street and Mackubin Avenue.

The street was once a hub for Black business in Minnesota’s capitol city until the construction of Interstate 94 in the mid-20th century fractured the neighborhood. In 1964, the St. Paul City Council adopted a resolution to rename it after Concordia University.

Now, 60 years later, the city has taken another step toward restoring the neighborhood to its former glory.

St. Paul Mayor Melvin Carter — the city’s first Black mayor, whose family’s roots in the Rondo neighborhood go back more than a century — personally unveiled the newly installed street sign at the corner of what is now Rondo Avenue and Fisk Street.

“I was excited when I was young and we started putting up those ‘Old Rondo,’ those ‘Historic Rondo,’ those memorial Rondo street signs,” Carter said at a ceremony at the Rondo Commemorative Plaza. “But I’m even more excited to take them down.”