Como, North End
May 10, 2024 – 17.9 miles
Editor’s Note: A version of this story originally appeared in Saint Paul By Bike on July 24, 2024 and is reprinted with permission.
Calvary Cemetery is probably the foremost landmark on Front Avenue between Lexington Parkway and Dale Street. Calvary, established in 1856, is the oldest Catholic cemetery in the Twin Cities. Half Time Rec, a pub and bar with a basement bocce ball court, is another place of note. The mile-long span of Front Avenue is lined with residential properties and a smattering of small businesses.
One of those establishments is Spectrum Business Systems, at the northwest corner of Front and Kilburn Street. The building’s utilitarian exterior divulges little of the fascinating contraptions a visitor will find within.
Stepping through the threshold is like entering a time warp of sorts — back to a 1940s-era office, a mid-20th century typing pool or a museum of obsolete office equipment.
Typewriters from long-defunct brands — Fox, Olympia, Oliver and Hermes, of myriad designs and ages, spanning more than 100 years — rest on shelves and countertops. Adding machines, forerunners of the calculator, are scattered throughout. Then there are the outliers, like a time punch clock and a pinball machine. Some modern technology is around but is overwhelmed by the museum pieces.
Tori Leksen and Ryan Andrews are the co-owners of Spectrum Business Systems, as well as partners outside of work. Spectrum primarily handles IT needs for small businesses. Regular clients include about 20 small animal hospitals, an International Brotherhood of Electrical Workers local and an East Side American Legion Post.
Ryan’s responsibilities range from networking, to software and hardware. Tori is in charge of what she calls the “front-end” work: “intake of the typewriters, printers, computers and laptops. I do all of our billing. I also am in charge of answering the phone.”
The nature of Spectrum’s clients dictates that Ryan often works nights and weekends. “The IT work has to be done after hours when they close because they can’t turn their computers off or [have] their internet down. So there is a lot of that. But, you know, it comes with the territory.”
A couple of walk-in customers stop in per day on average, some with computers and others with typewriters, said Ryan. “It’s actually surprising how much street traffic or foot traffic we get, especially considering we’re not in a downtown area. We’re a little bit off the beaten path.”
Happenstance and a friend led Ryan to Spectrum in 2019. While attending Dunwoody College of Technology in Minneapolis, Ryan became friends with the son of Spectrum’s then-owner, Dave Hintze. One day his friend mentioned to Ryan that his dad was looking for help at Spectrum. Ryan said he thought, “’OK, cool. I’ll come work on computers and networking.’”
When Ryan began working at Spectrum he still believed the company exclusively provided IT services. “He [Dave] didn’t inform me, or I never asked if ‘you fix typewriters.’” Ryan considered the machines in the lobby nothing more than an exhibit. “I just thought it was a little setup displaying them. ‘No, no,’ Dave explained to Ryan, ‘We repair them and we’re one of the last remaining [typewriter repair businesses] here in Minnesota.’” (Now Spectrum is one of just two shops in the state that revive broken typewriters.)
“Before I started here, I never touched a typewriter in my whole entire life.”
Ryan Andrews, co-owner of Spectrum Business Systems
In 2019, Dave would average at most one typewriter repair a month, but it’s become a notable part of Spectrum’s business. “The typewriter side has definitely exploded.” When we talked, about 30 machines lined the shelves ready for repair. “Some of them,” Ryan said, “I can get them in and out in half an hour, 45 minutes, but sometimes I’m sitting at them for a couple hours.”
The most challenging typewriters for Ryan to restore are electric IBM Selectric models, which were primarily used by businesses. ”It’s such a complicated machine. There is not a single computer board in it, yet you hit one key and it rotates that ball and it types it in the exact key you need the exact time, every single time, and it types as fast as you do.” He added, “It is just minor adjustments that I still haven’t quite mastered.”
For the Selectrics, Ryan’s former boss still lends a hand. “Luckily the original owner, Dave, he still comes in once or twice a week to help facilitate those repairs where I’m banging my head against this. He comes and he is like, ‘You’ve just got to adjust this, this, this.’ And walks away 10 minutes later and it’s like I’ve been fighting with this for weeks.“
Finding replacement parts for typewriters that range in age from 50 to more than 100 years old can be problematic. Ryan pulls many bits from a stash of unrepairable machines in the back room. But often he’ll shop at hardware or auto parts stores and modify the components.
The paper feed roller is one part for which he’s had to come up with a modern-day substitute. “I actually found that the hose line for wiper blade sprayers actually works perfect. It’s the right size, it’s the right softness and stiffness, and it just works perfect.”
Among collectors and other aficionados, manual typewriters are the most popular by far. “The manuals, they have a little bit of a style to them. They’re not like a big beige box so a lot of people like to collect those for the pretty colors and the shapes.”
Ryan barely paused when asked about his preferred typewriter. “My favorite to use is probably the Hermes 3000,” he said. “They’re actually a Swedish-made typewriter. And they just type a little nicer than most of the manuals. They just have a smooth transition and flow to them.”
Tori is also partial to the same typewriter. “I like the Hermes 3000 because they come in the prettiest little aqua color,” she said, laughing. She went on to say, “My second favorite would be the Oliver ’cause those are the oldest ones we have in here. And they type so unique ’cause they actually type down from the top.”
Ryan’s discovered a couple of reasons that people shun computers for the click-clack of typewriters. “We have artists who use them for making art with the typewriter. They’ll take an old manual [typewriter] and actually type in spaces over and over again to give that depth of field to make portraits and pictures.”
Lovers of these mechanical wonders are not just Baby Boomers who grew up using them. Another motivation behind the resurgence is ancestry, he explained. “It’s exploded to people who’ve taken interest in not only typewriters but their family history. ‘This is my great-grandpa’s typewriter, or this has been in my family for generations.’”
Then Tori shared a story about a young woman who brought a typewriter to Spectrum. “She came all the way up from Nebraska; brought her great-grandfather’s typewriter up here. She wanted to restore it to the original state and get it up and working so that she could actually use it on a day-to-day basis. She made that journey all the way up here to drop it off and all the way up here to pick it up again. And to see the joy it brought her.”
Our conversation finished with Tori’s effusive praise for being a co-owner of Spectrum Business Systems. “It’s the most enjoyable job I’ve ever had because every customer who walks in, they’ve got their own story, their own personality, and they’re just some of the kindest people you’ll ever meet. So you get to learn a little bit more about everything each and every day and the history behind their typewriters, and about what they use them for, so that’s wonderful.”
A Lawn Ornament
From Spectrum Business Services, I pedaled north one block to Hatch Avenue and turned east, making a couple of stops in the 800 block.
Continuing east on Hatch for five blocks to Grotto Street, where Hatch ended, I turned right, and an exceedingly rare automotive relic from the 1970s came into view. At the end of the driveway at 993 Grotto sat Starsky and Hutch’s Zebra Three Ford Gran Torino! In spite of the faded and peeling red paint and scattered rust, the exterior was in good condition for a car nearly 50 years old.
Less than a block south at the intersection of Grotto and Front, stands the tallest publicly owned subsidized apartment building in St. Paul. Front Hi-Rise, a landmark in parts of the Como and North End neighborhoods, climbs 20 stories and has 151 one-bedroom apartments. It is one of 16 high-rise buildings owned and operated by the St. Paul Public Housing Agency.
Como’s Diagonal Streets
Three adjacent streets on the edge of the Como neighborhood oddly interrupt the standard east-west/north-south street grid. Of these, Como Avenue is by far the busiest and best known. It runs diagonally from Nagasaki Road, near the southeast corner of Lake Como, southeast to Dale Street. (Como’s diagonal route continues more than a mile farther, all the way to Rice Street.) According to “The Street Where You Live” by Don Empson, Como Avenue takes the same route as an early township road between Downtown and Lake Como, which is the likely explanation for the angular route. The other two diagonals, Simon and Edgar avenues, lie immediately northwest of Como.
The orientation of Como Avenue begot a triangular lot at its intersection with Jessamine Avenue. Whoever designed and built the house at 787 Como adopted the irregularly shaped lot creatively into an interesting and obviously atypical residence.
More Lawn Ornaments
Moving primarily north through Como in a haphazard way, I came to Arlington Avenue. That’s where I spotted the second large lawn ornament of the ride. The 5-foot-tall lighthouse, complete with rocky shoreline, doubles as a yard light at 878 Arlington.
A couple of blocks north, the lawn decoration went from kitschy to offbeat, even unsettling. The colossal crimson ant seemed to watch me with its unblinking charcoal eyes. Certainly the sculpture makes a statement, but I don’t know exactly what that is.
Across the street at 922 Nebraska, positioned atop a pole, is a more conventional yard adornment.
By this time, the calm azure of the morning sky had given way to interesting, mottled gray and white clouds. Being only a few blocks from Lake Como, I dashed to an overlook on the east side of the lake to capture the scene.
Some people have a knack for knowing how to use color. The charming two-tone home at 1383 Como Ave. is an excellent example. The uncommonly paired hues of lapis and cyan impart liveliness to the block. The combination of coordinating and contrasting Adirondack chairs is a bonus.
The sojourn to Spectrum Business Systems epitomized my life with office machines. The older typewriters awakened memories of my father’s black, cast-iron Underwood that I’d bang away on as a child. An Olympia shared similarities with those I learned to type on in high school and was nearly identical to those I used as a radio news writer, while the Hermes reminded me of the “portable” manual I brought to the University of Wisconsin, on which I typed four years’ worth of term papers. I got my hands on the ubiquitous IBM Selectrics and Wheelwriters in the late ‘80s, followed by the transition to many personal computers. It’s fortunate, indeed, to have people and a place in St. Paul that resurrect memories by repairing office machines.
All photos by Wolfie Browender