Okay, it’s time to admit that I’m hooked on history. Now that I’ve embarked with my company, Stahl Construction, on the adventure of restoring and conserving some of the ghost signs in Lowertown, my interest in the local history of St. Paul has grown even stronger. I find myself frequently browsing the internet for any tidbits of information that will paint a clearer picture of the city as it once was. History for me isn’t about dry dates and dull chronologies of historical events. I see history as the best works of drama or literary fiction and the finest examples of physical art. History is not only filled with colorful stories of interesting characters but is also a physical legacy that surrounds us everywhere; a giant museum of elegant Victorian houses, slender Italianate columns, fanciful cast-iron soffits, monumental public statues, colorful building murals, intricate in-laid floors, ornate fountains, somber tombstones, massive cathedral domes, and other miracles of the past. The ghost signs on the back of the J.H. Mahler Building (258-260 East Fifth Street) keep drawing me back to a time when life was markedly different in St. Paul and yet similar in many ways. Recently, I discovered a page of advertisements from the Sunday edition of a newspaper—this one from the St. Paul Globe printing on May 6, 1883. The St. Paul Globe was the city’s Democratic newspaper, widely read and unapologetically partisan in its touting of political candidates. St. Paul was a bustling, growing city with a population around 125,000. Near the head of the Mississippi River in navigable waters, the city was a commercial hub where people took business risks and fortunes were made and lost just as they are today. On the page of advertisements within the St. Paul Globe is a quarter-column advertisement of carriages and buggies by Mahler & Thomson. In 1883, the building housing James Mahler’s buggy business had just been built. Smaller than many of its future neighbors in Lowertown, it was nonetheless an attractive edifice with tall, elegant windows and decorative columns made of cast iron from the local Adams & Isher foundry. At the time, Mahler’s dealership – which would later collapse into bankruptcy – was successful and thriving, and the carriage houses behind most of the large homes in St. Paul were actually being used for carriages and the horses that pulled them … imagine that! Surrounding Mahler’s newspaper advertisement are loads of others that I must mention. Mann & Benedict on 420-422 Wabashaw (sic) Street boasts the handsomest line of lawns, sateens, ginghams, cambrics, cretonne, prints, and many novelties in dress goods. Gustave Heinemann on the corner of Seventh and Jackson Streets announces a twenty percent discount on all silks, satins, and velvets. Mannheimer Bros. on Third and Minnesota Streets say they have just added large importations of spring hosiery and summer underwear, with the greatest variety of silk, lisle, balbriggan, and cotton hosiery. Are these companies speaking a foreign language? Imagine Target or Macy’s advertising the latest in cambric and cretonne dresses or the finest balbriggan hosiery. The 1883 character of St. Paul isn’t something you think about in everyday life but hints of it are everywhere. I’m pleased and excited that some of the Mahler signs for carriages and harnesses still exist today on the company’s building on Fifth Street. Heck, I’m equally surprised that the building itself still exists as so many great, old buildings weren’t so lucky! I understand that times change, businesses come and go, and commercial billboards and signs will change with them. Yet, the present and future of any place is influenced by its past, and the historical character of St. Paul clearly colors its current personality. I’m happy to have a small part in preserving and celebrating a few physical connections between the city’s past and its current shape surviving in Lowertown.