He worked fast, making eye contact as he sliced. He told me about the history of the building, once a hotel where Scott and Zelda lived until the birth of their daughter in 1921. The newly renovated bar sits below what are now apartment units, but the bar itself, a former speakeasy when the Fitzgeralds lived there during Prohibition, is the centerpiece. When you walk up to the building, even the signs asking you not to let your dog use the grass as a bathroom are in the same Art Deco font that you see on the famous “Gatsby” cover by Francis Cugat. The drinks on the menu, featuring cocktails made before and during the nationwide ban on alcohol, are almost “85 to 90 percent” made with spirits “from within a bootlegger’s distance,” Mr. Davis said.

A time-tested classic that somehow survived a 1978 natural gas explosion that destroyed almost everything in the space and injured dozens, the bar itself lacks stools but has an old brass rail across the front for patrons loaded on gin and tonics to hold on to. Mr. Davis kicked the bar. “See that,” he said. “It’s got all that weathering.” He mentions that besides the Fitzgeralds, Hemingway drank there (although he couldn’t confirm if it was with his friend and rival Fitzgerald), as did Al Capone, Ma Barker and nearly every other gangster who has entered American folklore. A Jazz Age hot spot in a city not exactly known for its jazz or wild parties, the bar stayed open after Prohibition was repealed in 1933, but fell out of fashion, along with the entire neighborhood. The great houses emptied out as people moved to the suburbs. Today, the newly remodeled Commodore is a tribute to a former glory that seems to be returning to the neighborhood.

Image Fitzgerald spent his youth in St. Paul, going to school, beginning to write and living with his wife and new daughter. Credit... Bettmann/Getty Images

The splendor the area once had, while not the bright lights and tall buildings of Manhattan or the movable feast of Paris, must have been attractive to Fitzgerald. There was still danger, and undesirables: bootleggers coming down from Canada and hiding their barrels. St. Paul had a pulse, and he was familiar with it. (And his parents still lived there.)

“That coffee shop across the street,” said Matt Sutton, the senior manager at W. A. Frost and Company, a bar and restaurant a few blocks away from the Commodore that looks as if it hasn’t been changed much since the late 1970s (in the best way possible). “That used to be a brothel when Fitzgerald lived here. The tunnels went under there, to under here, to the church, to the river,” providing a route for bootleggers. The tunnels are mostly sealed off now, although the basement of the bar was part of the tunnels. I made my way down the stairs and found a cozy, chilly, dimly lit and somewhat spooky space, where one can drink wine or whiskey, legally now, around a fireplace.

Coincidentally, the building W. A. Frost and Company occupies is where the pharmacy of William A. Frost was located at the turn of the century, and will probably get a mention from any local Fitzgerald tours if you pass by. It’s where Fitzgerald used to get his cigarettes, the bartender told me.