The St. Paul Fire Department found itself in the unusual position of starting house fires instead of fighting them in Swede Hollow on Dec. 11, 1956.

One of the city’s oldest neighborhoods, Swede Hollow once boasted more than 100 crudely constructed homes, but only 13 remained when local health officials condemned them all in 1956 and tasked the fire department with burning them down, according to coverage in that afternoon’s issue of the St. Paul Dispatch.

The mostly immigrant families who still occupied the East Side enclave lived without electricity or indoor plumbing, relying on outhouses along Phalen Creek.

“Yet, according to figures compiled by Boris Levitch of the health department, many of the 85 persons in the 16 families in Swede Hollow lived there apparently not because of the $5-a-month rent but because they liked it,” the Dispatch report said.

Nonetheless, they were forced to find new homes elsewhere in the city, or were relocated to public housing developments.

The first St. Paulite to settle in what would later become Swede Hollow was local ne’er-do-well Edward Phelan, who built a shack in 1839 at the head of a ravine carved out by the creek that would later bear his name, according to the Minnesota Historical Society.

Phelan was soon followed by waves of Swedish immigrants, who began arriving in St. Paul in the 1850s. They called their new neighborhood “Svenska Dalen,” which was roughly translated to “Swede Hollow.” The name stuck, even after the Swedes were replaced by immigrants of other nationalities.

Despite Swede Hollow’s sub-standard living conditions, the tight-knit community that called it home remembered it fondly and kept in touch after it was leveled. The neighborhood’s colorful history was affectionately recounted by Pioneer Press columnist Don Boxmeyer in 1999.

By 1956, St. Paul was working to modernize the living conditions of its residents, and the city’s health department deemed Swede Hollow unsafe and ordered its destruction. The valley is now a public park.