Washburn-Fair Oaks Mansion District | |
![]() Two mansions in the Washburn-Fair Oaks Mansion District | |
Location | 1st and 2nd Avenues, 22nd Street, and Stevens Avenue, Minneapolis, Minnesota |
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Coordinates | 44°57′40″N93°16′31″W / 44.96111°N 93.27528°W |
Area | 4 acres (1.6 ha) |
Architect | William Channing Whitney |
Architectural style | Classical Revival, Renaissance |
NRHP reference No. | 78001544 [1] |
Added to NRHP | February 17, 1978 |
The Washburn-Fair Oaks Mansion District is a historic district in the Whittier neighborhood of Minneapolis, Minnesota, United States, centered on Washburn-Fair Oaks Park. The city of Minneapolis designated a district bordered by Franklin Avenue, Fourth Avenue South, 26th Street East, and First Avenue South. A smaller district, listed on the National Register of Historic Places, includes seven mansions along and near 22nd Street East. [2]
The development in the area was spurred by the desire of prominent families to move away from the central business district and to build larger and more elegant homes along what was the edge of town. Development began around the early 1870s and continued through about 1930. The houses within the district represent a number of popular architectural revival styles. [3]
The park itself is named for a now-demolished mansion known as Fairoaks. Built in 1884 by E. Townsend Mix, Fairoaks was one of the grandest Twin Cities mansions of its era. The house itself had 40 rooms and sat on a lavishly landscape lot two square blocks in size. It was built for William D. Washburn, a lawyer who moved to Minneapolis in 1857 and amassed a fortune in the family milling business. Washburn lived in the house until his death in 1912, at which point he willed the mansion to the Minneapolis Park Board. The park board ultimately found the mansion too expensive to maintain, so it was demolished in 1924. [2]
The Minneapolis Institute of Art building is located immediately south of the park. The site was formerly occupied by the Dorilus Morrison house, built in 1858 by a lumberman who moved from Maine and became a businessman in Minneapolis, as well as the city's first mayor. Clinton Morrison agreed to donate the old family estate to the Minneapolis Society of Fine Arts. The house was demolished in 1911, and the Minneapolis Institute of Art, designed by the New York firm of McKim, Mead, and White was completed in 1915. [2]
The neighborhood surrounding the mansion district is now home to many young professionals and artists.
The Eugene Merrill House, at 2116 Second Avenue South, was built in 1884 by banker and lawyer Eugene Merrill, [2] to designs by William Channing Whitney (1851–1945). The Merrill House is the oldest mansion in the district. Its rusticated red sandstone, bold massing, polygonal tower and characteristic clustered fenestration are marks of the Richardsonian Romanesque architectural style. It is now owned by Rhett A McSweeney and is the offices of McSweeney/Langevin.
The Gale Mansion, at 2115 Stevens Avenue South, was built in 1912 to designs in the Renaissance Revival style by Ernest Kennedy of Minneapolis. In 1855, the 40-acre (16 ha) tract had been purchased for $50. Water company records indicate that several smaller houses once occupied the Stevens Avenue site. [4] The owner, Edward Chenery Gale, was the son of Minneapolis pioneer real estate broker Samuel Gale. His wife, Sara Belle Pillsbury, was a daughter of Governor John S. Pillsbury. The house, now owned by the American Association of University Women, is faced in Bedford limestone. Many modern features were part of the design: a central vacuum-cleaning unit, a kitchen at ground floor level, rather than secreted in the basement, an intercom system. The house was centrally heated with a coal furnace; the decorative fireplaces were infrequently used. [2] In the garden stands a fountain with the sculpture Boy with a Duck by Frederick MacMonnies.
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The Alfred F. Pillsbury house, at 116 22nd Street East, was designed by prominent local architect Ernest Kennedy [5] and built in a Tudor Revival style and faced with locally quarried limestone with a dense, craggy look. Alfred F. Pillsbury, the only son of John S. Pillsbury, was an art collector who collected a number of Chinese jades now on display at the Minneapolis Institute of Art. [2]
The Charles S. Pillsbury House, at 100 22nd Street East, is also in the Tudor Revival style. The house features a polygonal conservatory, bas-relief carvings, and two statues of lions guarding the entrance gate. Charles S. Pillsbury was the son of Charles Alfred Pillsbury, the founder of the Pillsbury Company. The house is now owned by an organization that provides services for the blind. [2]
The John Crosby House, at 2104 Stevens Avenue South, was built in 1904 for John Crosby, cofounder of the Washburn-Crosby Company, which later became General Mills. The house was designed in Colonial Revival style by William Channing Whitney. [5]
The Caroline Crosby House, at 2105 First Avenue South, was built by the daughter of John Crosby. The house is a brick Georgian Revival structure. [2] The house now serves as headquarters for the Institute for Agriculture and Trade Policy.
The Luther Farrington House, at 2100 Stevens Avenue South, is also in the Georgian Revival style. [3] The building is currently known as the Hartwell Center for Mentoring, named after John and Lucy Hartwell (also related to the Crosby family) who purchased the building and donated it to the Minneapolis Jaycees, which in turn sold it to Bolder Options, a locally based youth mentoring program.
The Hennepin History Museum was formerly the George H. and Leonora Christian House. It was designed by local architects Hewitt and Brown using Renaissance Revival elements such as a balustraded roof. George Christian was the manager of the Washburn-Crosby milling company in the 1860s and helped to perfect the "new process" of milling hard spring wheat to make a pure white flour. This process made Minneapolis flour highly competitive with flour from other mills. The building now houses the Hennepin History Museum. [2] The building is not listed on the National Register, but is part of the local historic district.
Before the project was finished Christian, his wife, and his son died, leaving Carolyn (also spelled Caroline) McKnight Christian, the younger Christian's widow, seven servants, and three foster children as the only occupants for the next forty years.
Saint Anthony Falls, or the Falls of Saint Anthony, located at the northeastern edge of downtown Minneapolis, Minnesota, was the only natural major waterfall on the Mississippi River. Throughout the mid-to-late 1800s, various dams were built atop the east and west faces of the falls to support the milling industry that spurred the growth of the city of Minneapolis. In 1880, the central face of the falls was reinforced with a sloping timber apron to stop the upstream erosion of the falls. In the 1950s, the apron was rebuilt with concrete, which makes up the most visible portion of the falls today. A series of locks were constructed in the 1950s and 1960s to extend navigation to points upstream.
William Drew "W.D." Washburn, Sr. was an American politician. He served in both the United States House of Representatives and the United States Senate as a Republican from Minnesota. Three of his seven brothers became politicians: Elihu B. Washburne, Cadwallader C. Washburn, and Israel Washburn, Jr. He was also cousin of Dorilus Morrison, the first mayor of Minneapolis. He served in the 46th, 47th, 48th, 51st, 52nd, and 53rd congresses.
Cadwallader Colden Washburn was an American businessman, politician, and soldier who founded a mill that later became General Mills. A member of the Washburn family of Maine, he was a U.S. congressman and governor of Wisconsin, and served as a general in the Union Army during the American Civil War.
William de la Barre was an Austrian Empire-born civil engineer who developed a new process for milling wheat into flour, using energy-saving steel rollers at the Washburn-Crosby Mills in Minneapolis, and later served as chief engineer for the first hydroelectric power station built in the United States, at Saint Anthony Falls, also in Minneapolis.
The Pillsbury A-Mill is a former flour mill located on the east bank of the Mississippi River in Minneapolis, Minnesota. It was the world's largest flour mill for 40 years. Completed in 1881, it was owned by the Pillsbury Company and operated two of the most powerful direct-drive waterwheels ever built, each capable of generating 1,200 horsepower . In 1901 one of the turbines was replaced with a 2,500 horsepower one. Both the mill and its headrace tunnel are contributing resources to the St. Anthony Falls Historic District, which is listed on the National Register of Historic Places. The mill is also independently on the NRHP. The mill was named a National Historic Landmark in 1966 and has since been converted into the A-Mill Artist Lofts.
Lakewood Cemetery is a large private, non-sectarian cemetery located in Minneapolis, Minnesota, United States. It is located at 3600 Hennepin Avenue at the southern end of the Uptown area. It is noted for its chapel which is on the National Register of Historic Places and was modeled after the Hagia Sophia in Istanbul, Turkey.
Charles Alfred Pillsbury was an American businessman, flour industrialist, and politician. He was a co-founder of the Pillsbury Company.
Minneapolis is the largest city by population in the U.S. state of Minnesota, and the county seat of Hennepin County. The origin and growth of the city was spurred by the proximity of Fort Snelling, the first major United States military presence in the area, and by its location on Saint Anthony Falls, which provided power for sawmills and flour mills.
Northwestern Consolidated Milling Company was an American flour milling company that operated about one-quarter of the mills in Minneapolis, Minnesota, when the city was the flour milling capital of the world. Formed as a business entity, Northwestern produced flour for the half-century between 1891 and 1953, when its A Mill was converted to storage and light manufacturing. At its founding, Northwestern was the city's and the world's second-largest flour milling company after Pillsbury, with what is today General Mills a close third. The company became one of three constituents of a Minneapolis oligopoly that owned almost nine percent of the country's flour and grist production and products by 1905. This occurred as a result of their attempt at a United States monopoly.
Northwestern Consolidated Milling Company Elevator A also known as the Ceresota Elevator and "The Million Bushel Elevator" was a receiving and public grain elevator built by the Northwestern Consolidated Milling Company in 1908 in Minneapolis, Minnesota in the United States. The elevator may have been the largest brick elevator ever constructed and ran on electricity. The elevator was the source for the Crown Roller Mill and Standard Mill. Those mills closed in the 1950s but the elevator continued in use for grain storage until the mid 1980s. The building is a contributing property of the St. Anthony Falls Historic District listed in the National Register of Historic Places in 1971. For this article north is toward the river.
The Mill District is an redeveloped former industrial within Minneapolis, Minnesota, United States, and a part of the larger Downtown East neighborhood. The area contains several former flour mills left over from the days when Minneapolis was the flour milling capital of the world. With almost none of the mills still active, a number of these have been converted into condominiums leading to a revitalization of the neighborhood.
The following are all the contributing resources to the Saint Anthony Falls Historic District in Minneapolis, Minnesota, United States. The District is listed on the National Register of Historic Places, thus these properties are on the NRHP. The "period of significance" of the District was 1858–1941. The district's archaeological record is considered to be one of the most-endangered historic sites in Minnesota.
King Field is a neighborhood in the Southwest community in Minneapolis, Minnesota. Its boundaries are 36th Street to the north, Interstate 35W to the east, 46th Street to the south, and Lyndale Avenue to the west. King Field, within the King Field neighborhood is a park named after Martin Luther King Jr.
Harry Wild Jones was an American architect based in Minneapolis who designed throughout the country and the world. Born two years before the start of the American Civil War, Jones, a twelfth-generation New Englander, took his place on the American architectural stage in the late 19th century. His life spanned seventy-six years, during a period of U.S. history that matched his exuberant, spirited personality. Known as an architect adept at any design technique, Jones is credited with introducing Shingle Style architecture to Minneapolis. He created an impressive portfolio from neoclassic to eclectic, reflecting his unique brand of versatility and creativity.
This list is of the properties and historic districts which are designated on the National Register of Historic Places or that were formerly so designated, in Hennepin County, Minnesota; there are 194 entries as of November 2024. A significant number of these properties are a result of the establishment of Fort Snelling, the development of water power at Saint Anthony Falls, and the thriving city of Minneapolis that developed around the falls. Many historic sites outside the Minneapolis city limits are associated with pioneers who established missions, farms, and schools in areas that are now suburbs in that metropolitan area.
The Charles J. Martin House is a house in the Lowry Hill neighborhood of Minneapolis, Minnesota, United States. The 1903 Renaissance Revival mansion and its grounds are a well-preserved example of an early-20th-century urban estate. The property was listed on the National Register of Historic Places in 1978 for having local significance in architecture.
Mill City Museum is located in the ruins of the Washburn "A" Mill next to Mill Ruins Park on the banks of the Mississippi River in Minneapolis. The museum, an entity of the Minnesota Historical Society that opened in 2003, focuses on the founding and growth of Minneapolis, especially flour milling and the other industries that used hydropower from Saint Anthony Falls. The mill complex that the museum is within, dates from the 1870s and is listed on the National Register of Historic Places. It is also part of the St. Anthony Falls Historic District and within the Mississippi National River and Recreation Area.
The Enfield Village Historic District encompasses the historic 19th century village center of Enfield, New Hampshire. The district was listed on the National Register of Historic Places in 2010. Multiple buildings of the district were added to the New Hampshire State Register of Historic Places in 2012.
William Hood Dunwoody was an American banker, merchants, miller, art patron and philanthropist. He was a partner in what is today General Mills and for thirty years a leader of Northwestern National Bank, today's Wells Fargo.
John Sargent Pillsbury Sr. was an American businessman and industrialist known for his role as CEO at Pillsbury Company. His father was Charles Alfred Pillsbury co-founder of Pillsbury Company with his uncle John S. Pillsbury after which John himself was named. John's father had served in the Minnesota State Senate and his great uncle had served as governor of Minnesota from January 7, 1876, to January 10, 1882. It was for this reason that John had wanted to pursue a career in politics upon graduating from the University of Minnesota. He had also planned to go to France at the turn of the century to study international law and the French language.
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