Rice Park

While on temporary assignment in St. Paul, I walk through Rice Park twice a day to get to the office.
It’s a very nice green oasis in the heart of downtown, between the library, civic center, and St. Paul Hotel. You can enjoy the many benches, statues, Peanuts Gang sculptures, and gorgeous fountain. There is a hot dog vendor near the bus stop if you have a hunger pang.
There are the occasional sketchy types and panhandlers lounging on the benches, so be aware.

Rice Park is a hidden little gem across from the Saint Paul Hotel. You must visit during the holidays and Winter Carnival. Ice sculptures, skating rink, twinkling lights — so fun and festive.

Rice park is a hidden gem of a park in many ways: 1) you can enjoy the playful peanuts character sculptures featured throughout the park; 2) you can stroll the park in the evening, hand in hand, with the ones you love after enjoying a dinner downtown; and 3) it comes alive in the winter with light-​bedazzled trees and public skating; and 4) It’s home to the Ice Palace — an actual palace sculpted in ice, during the St Paul winter carnival. You can also enjoy the public library, landmark center, St Paul Hotel and Ordway theater.
It’s a great place to have a picnic lunch in the summer, with good proximity to Chipotle, Erbert & Gerberts, Subway, and many local restaurants. It’s also close to the Wednesday, Food Truck Court located at 52 West Kellogg Boulevard in Saint Paul, during the summer.

Skating at Rice Park is something I had never done before. Considering my girlfriend and I were going to be downtown for the Swarm game that night, seemed like a great afternoon kind of thing to do before hand.
It was. It was a great time. The ice will never win any awards for being the best quality of ice. In fact, of all the outdoor rinks I’ve ever skated on (and that’s A LOT of them), this may have been the worst ice.
But, you’re not there to practice backward cross overs or in tight turns. You’re there for two things:
1. People watch/​laugh at people who fall (I hate saying it, but, foreigners on ice skates is downright f*cking hysterical).
2. Be all romantic like with your special someone in the cold, under the lights, while you avoid flying by little kids showing off.
Parking is a mess, as you’d expect for Rice Park. Hit a ramp up and walk or try and wait to catch someone leaving for a meter nearby the park.
There is a warming house with coffee and cocoa as well. So you can get your skates on without freezing your fingers off. Watch the first step getting onto the ice though, it’s a doozy with how terrible the ice is and you don’t want people to laugh at you right away: D
If you want a fun, romantic thing to do — for free even (minus parking) — this is a great winter date idea. Plus, you can always hit up some fantastic dining right around the area.

Yes, I have to admit it. We visited this park just to see the Peanuts characters. I have been a fan of the Peanuts gang, especially Snoopy since I was a child. And I could never miss the chance to see this guys face to face! We spent over ½ hour posing the the statues. It was definitely worth going out of our way to visit.

Rice park is beautiful during Christmas time!

When I think of Rice Park, I always picture it in the winter with the lights twinkling, ice sculptures, skating rink… it’s like magic.
Though it’s not quite as bustling, there’s a beautiful town square feel to it like a European plaza. It’s flanked by some of the most historic buildings in St. Paul (the library, St. Paul Hotel, Ordway and Landmark Center).
I’ll keep this short, but I urge you to put this park on your wintertime to-​do list. :)

Rice Park and its surroundings carry so many great memories. It’s such an enchanting little park DT St. Paul especially at night. The park is a nice bonus to being in St. Paul. It’s charming!
Christmas tree lighting, ice rink, white lights, and the Peanuts characters all make this such a lovely spot in the winter time.
Can’t forget the view of the beautiful good old LandMark Center where my prom was held back in High School. Nice memories, even if my date wasn’t the most fondest of memories.

This park is lovely, spacious, with a beautiful fountain in the middle. My husband and I were married in a very small ceremony here. I could not have asked for a better setting.

Nice formal park in the center of the city to stop and take a break.

Beautiful park in Downtown St. Paul. I love all the Peanuts characters around town but the ones in rice park are pretty cute too! A gorgeous fountain in the park as well.
Perfect for a summer /​fall stroll.

Yeah, what Gilbert said.

I have yet to see this place without the blanket of white snow everywhere. But with the harsh, cold wind against your cheek and the crisp January air, it’s perfect time to check out the Winter Fest that goes on during this time of year. In checking out the ice sculptures that were carved in one of the coldest times of the year, I am amazed that people could bare the freezing cold to carve some amazing sculptures.
I loved the fact that Rice Park is nestled in downtown, yet it seems as if it was strategically tucked away in some corner. It’s almost like a secret hiding place; a good place to collect your thoughts or read a book or perhaps enjoy a good cup of joe. Rice Park is surrounded by some great architecture that canvases the sky. For instance, the Landmark Center isn’t a far walk at all, and the architecture is very charming as well as other surrounding buildings. It’s great that it’s very close to some places that I will one day check out (Ordway Center, Xcel Energy, etc.). I’m sure I’ll go back during the warmer weather where you can actually walk around a while instead of not being able to feel your fingers and such.

I love this place in the winter. The christmas tree and ice rink are awesome and usually not overcrowded. Skating is free (along with rentals if you have a wells fargo card) which is inline with the holiday spirit.
The rest of the year is pretty good too. The park is well kept and just located in a nice area.

Intimate with an old-​world charm that one finds in cities across Europe, St. Paul’s Rice Park is the heart and savior of an otherwise dull and spiritless downtown. Under the strain of torpid city planners who lack any sense of vision, the park lingers in the unrealized potential of a world-​class town square.
A number of formidable St. Paul institutions frame the block-​shaped Rice Park. Oldest among these is the north facing Landmark Center, a Romanesque Revivalist jewel that houses several Twin Cities arts organizations. The luxurious, crescent shaped St. Paul Hotel faces the park from the southeast, blending well with its Renaissance Revival neighbor, the St. Paul Central Library. Rounding out this quartet of magnificent architecture is the Ordway Center for Performing Arts, the primary stage of the St. Paul Chamber Orchestra, Minnesota Opera, Schubert Club, and a host of Broadway plays. Constructed in respectable scale, this modern, copper-​lined and glass-​paneled building avoids disrupting the integrity of the surrounding designs.
Though adorned with a pleasant fountain at its center and a generous supply of built-​in benches, Rice Park is looked at less as a destination than as a pathway for those venturing into or out of the area’s attractions (the Science Museum and Xcel Energy Center are also nearby). Its heaviest usage comes during the St. Paul Winter Carnival, when sculptors, in what must be described as a labor of love, brave the cold January air, crafting images and shapes out of ice.
Winter is also the season when the trees in the park are laced with an intricate web of lights. At night the scene evokes a kind of Nordic grace that seems inspired by Helsinki, Copenhagen or Oslo, helping us forget about the staid, impersonal modernism that typifies most American cities west of the Mississippi.
The stone-​lined roads of the park’s perimeter are connected to half a dozen arterial streets pulling away from the park, leading outward to the many points of (dis)interest in downtown St. Paul. If you follow the road north of the hotel, you’ll find a cozy Caribou Coffee tucked away at an angle, though it really ought to be facing the park directly.
My amateur-​designer impulse would find room for a book store somewhere along the park, as well as a New York style deli that can create a culture of newspaper stands and late night snacking. Of course, to generate this demand more housing is needed in the vicinity, and St. Paul has exiled much of its residential units to the eastern edge of the downtown, several blocks away.
Despite its imperfections (none of the intrinsic), Rice Park possesses the basic tools for St. Paul to be elevated to greatness, offering us glimpses of an urban cosmopolitanism that we all seem to long for.