In 2008, Como participated in the Hennepin History Museum's celebration of Minnesota's Sesquicentennial (1858 - 2008). Como's exhibit was generously located in the window of Pete's Como Barber Shop at 1508 Como Ave SE. We featured information and photos about the history of the businesses and buildings at 15th & Como Aves SE.

“You Are Here…”

The Como neighborhood, founded in 1882 by James T. Elwell, had streetcar service from downtown Minneapolis to the corner of 15^th Avenue SE and Como Avenue by 1895. The streetcars turned around at this intersection and went back downtown. But from 1898 to 1954 the famous Como-Harriet streetcars turned east here, toward Como Lake and downtown St. Paul. This corner’s first retail shops opened in the late 1890s; one of the first was the Como Barber Shop. It has been a barbershop for 110 years, under a succession of owners to today’s Peter Kish.

There was a long-time grocery at 990 15^th Ave. SE (1907; extant but converted to a duplex), and the small clapboard storefront at 1522 Como Ave. (pre-1900; extant, but converted to apartment) was originally a tavern. Many different businesses have occupied this strip: a tailor and shoe repair shop, a confectioner, a dry goods store, an appliance store, a moving company, a plumber, a variety store, an architectural firm, a coffee shop, a video store, a second-hand store, a video repair shop, and now a newer coffee shop, a tanning salon, a Japanese bistro. The newest building, from 1963, is the curved-front yellow-brick shop that Muddsucker’s occupies.

The north side of this commercial node along the car line developed about 15 years later than the south side. This business node was part of the residential Como neighborhood, with houses that faced 15^th or 16^th Avenues, until 1914. That year, grocer Lewis Boyum constructed his mixed-use development “block”: retail stores at street level and professional offices (dentist; doctor) and apartments on the second floor. Oak’s Hardware, across the street from you, occupies a space in the Boyum Block that has been a hardware since 1914. Kustermann‘s Drug Store was on the west end for many decades, and there was a butcher shop and a grocery to the east of the hardware. The 1930s brought a gas station to today’s Como Imports auto repair site.