Streetcar lines along Marshall Avenue (which becomes Lake Street in Minneapolis), Selby Avenue, and Snelling Avenue helped propel development in the neighborhood, which grew a tightly-knit and largely Catholic community around St. Mark's Church. The neighborhood remained stable into the middle part of the twentieth century, when plans to build a section of Interstate 94 through the neighborhood drew intense community activism. Although the freeway was ultimately built along the original alignment, the fight galvanized the formation of the area's strong neighborhood organizations, many of which continue to operate to this day.
