In the late nineteenth century, Robbinsdale was founded, platted and planned as a streetcar suburb. Andrew B. Robbins knew that reliable transit to Minneapolis was the best way to attract new residents and connect the area to the city and its attractions. By May 1891, horse-drawn streetcars were running between 32nd and Penn Avenue North and Robbinsdale’s Johnson Road (now 36th Avenue). The little four-wheeled cars, warmed by coal stoves, carried twenty passengers for three cents a ride.
Robbinsdale even became a small manufacturing hub: the Northern Car Company, located near the car barns on Hubbard Avenue, built electric streetcar bodies for systems across the Midwest, employing nearly 200 workers. It was near the car barns on Hubbard Avenue. The new factory began work on October 15, 1889, and by December 19, there were six cars ready to ship to Ohio. Expansion soon was needed, and an addition was built in 1891, but on May 7, 1892, it burned down, and it was thought best not to rebuild. Catching the bus at the Robbinsdale Library in 1956. manufactured street railway and other cars, employing 150-200 men, and could manufacture seven cars per week. The cars were equal to, if not superior to, any in the country. Robbins was president of the company.
The first self-propelled streetcar consisted of one unit with a gasoline engine mounted in front and room for passengers in back. It started operating on June 15, 1892. Turntables were installed at Penn Avenue and at Hubbard Avenue by the barns so the car could turn around and make a return trip. Some of the Village Councilmen were concerned that the streetcar frightened the horses on the road. In May 1893, a new car arrived. It had a separate car for the engine and a trailer car for the passengers, making its first run May 15th, 1893. On September 26, 1896, the car ran into a man and a team on the car tracks back of Sessing’s house, killing one horse, breaking the man’s leg. It was reported that the man was very drunk.
On January 14, 1897, the car barns burned. The next day, Mr. Garrett started driving a team from the Columbia Hotel to the streetcar line on Penn Avenue using Gus Urban’s sleigh. On January 25, he borrowed Mr. Shumway’s sled and hay rack to carry the passengers. There was a meeting that night to see about giving Mr. Robbins money to put in an electric line. A Village election was held on February 13, 1897, and the voters approved the electric streetcar with no opposition. By the last of March 1897, holes for the posts to hold the electric wires had been hand-drilled. Masons and carpenters worked on rebuilding the car barns. The new electric streetcar arrived on April 15 and started running on schedule on schedule three days later. There was a derailment on May 10, but for the most part, the service ran smoothly. The original horse-drawn car was converted into an electric one and went into service on June 11, 1898.
A Minneapolis Journal article of November 24, 1903, added a little spice to the early streetcar era. Conductors on the Robbinsdale line had been secretly charging one-dollar “late-night fares” to Minneapolis suitors escorting young ladies home, a practice dubbed a “gentlemanly hold-up system.” After an investigation by the line’s owner, the guilty employees were dismissed, the dollar refunded, and city bachelors once again found Robbinsdale “an attractive place and easy and inexpensive of access.”
The November 1, 1914, Minneapolis Tribune describes the new through street-car service just inaugurated. ‘It leaves Hennepin and Sixth Street and arrives thirty minutes later in Robbinsdale, at the end of a 3800-foot stretch of concrete pavement, replacing the old Jumper stub line, which had operated for over twenty years.” There was a gala celebration ending in a burst of oratory from various officials. Our State Representative, Thomas Girling claimed the old jumper line was a great character builder—”Getting off the Penn car late at night just in time to see the tail light of the ‘dinky’ disappearing over the hill was great schooling in the virtues of resignation, patience and self-control.”
In 1927, Robbindale Mayor H. A. Morris signed a petition applying to the state railroad and warehouse commission for a hearing. He was hoping to reduce the streetcar fare rate between Minneapolis and Robbinsdale. The petition was forwarded to the mayor when the village council passed a resolution authorizing the mayor to sign the petition. The fare to Robbinsdale from Minneapolis was 11 cents. The village claims that other suburbs of Minneapolis had an eight-cent fare for longer hauls.
By the 1930s, the Robbinsdale line was operating streamlined “one-man” trolleys—single-operator cars where the motorman also served as conductor. Times were tough. A Minneapolis Tribune story of January 14, 1933 reported that a bandit boarded a Robbinsdale streetcar near 35th and France Avenue North and held up motorman-conductor Paul Higgins at gunpoint, escaping with five dollars. The holdup went completely unnoticed by the three passengers on board until the thief vanished into the night.
Through the 1930s and ’40s, the electric trolleys remained a fixture of everyday life. Many families still got by without an automobile. The line entered downtown Robbinsdale along West Broadway and, in a peculiar bit of street planning, ran in the northbound traffic lanes in both directions. Southbound cars used the same lanes, forcing motorists to pull aside as the yellow cars clanged through the heart of town.
Despite the growing popularity of automobiles, the streetcars provided steady commuter service into Minneapolis until 1942 when a feeder bus met the Penn Avenue streetcar in Minneapolis at a terminal near 42nd and Thomas and went to Robbinsdale along 42nd, Abbott, Noble and Vera Cruz Avenues. Eventually, the buses replaced the Route 14 streetcars and the days of “Tom Trolley” and the “Little Yellow Dragons” in Robbinsdale were over.
Although the electric line stopped, one trolley found an unexpected afterlife in Robbinsdale. In 1954, Father Francis Nolan, pastor of Sacred Heart Catholic Church, purchased an old streetcar and moved it to the Sacred Heart School playground for children to play in.The trolley came in on a flatbed, townspeople watching, and even a distinguished gentleman in a top hat and tails attending the event. The Sacred Heart students appear delighted, if slightly mystified, by their new playground centerpiece. They were not allowed to climb on it or go in it.