Opened in 1884, the West Hotel was Minneapolis's first grand hotel. It had 407 luxuriously furnished rooms, 140 baths, and featured an immense and opulent lobby which was claimed to be the largest in the nation. These elements combined to make what was considered for a time to be the most luxurious hotel west of Chicago. The West was designed by LeRoy Buffington and built on land that was once owned by the first resident of Minneapolis, John H. Stevens. Buffington created the West in the Queen Anne style that was quite popular in the last decades of the 19th century.
The Queen Anne style featured an elaborate architectural look that included gable roofs, projecting bay windows, towers, and dormer windows. The West combined most of these concepts into a grand, larger than life look that seems graceless to some modern observers but was a popular building style at the time, a style that was introduced in 1876 at the Centennial Exposition in Philadelphia.
The West hotel was situated on the southwest corner of the intersection of Hennepin Avenue and Fifth Street (the site currently occupied, in part, by the Shubert Theatre, moved there in 1999), in the center of a burgeoning entertainment district that started coming together in the 1880s and was a temporary home to such well-known public figures as Mark Twain and Winston Churchill. It also catered to delegates of the 1892 Republican National Convention (held at the Exposition Building across the Mississippi River). It was Minneapolis's largest and most luxurious hotel for many years after its construction.
In 1906 a large fire burned through the hotel killing 10 people. [1] The adjacent Unique Theater was used as a morgue. That and a general business downturn caused the West to go through a period of decline and finally in 1940 the West Hotel was demolished.
Hennepin County is a county in the U.S. state of Minnesota. Its county seat is Minneapolis, the state's most populous city. The county is named for the 17th-century explorer Louis Hennepin. It extends from Minneapolis to the suburbs and outlying cities in the western part of the county. Its natural areas are covered by extensive woods, hills, and lakes. As of the 2020 census, the population was 1,281,565. It is Minnesota's most populous county and the 34th-most populous county in the U.S.; more than one in five Minnesotans live in Hennepin County. It is included in the Minneapolis–Saint Paul–Bloomington Metropolitan Statistical Area.
The North Loop is a neighborhood in the Central community of Minneapolis.
Lowry Hill is a neighborhood within the Calhoun-Isles community in Minneapolis, Minnesota. The neighborhood is regarded as being one of the city’s most upscale and wealthy neighborhoods. It was historically the home of Minneapolis’s most prominent milling and lumber families.
Lowry Hill East, also known as the Wedge because of its wedge-like shape, is a neighborhood in southwest Minneapolis, Minnesota, United States, part of the Calhoun Isles community. It is bounded on the east by Lyndale Avenue, on the west by Hennepin Avenue and on the south by Lake Street. Lyndale and Hennepin intersect on the northern side at Interstate 94. This creates a neighborhood roughly triangular in shape.
The Federal Reserve Bank of Minneapolis, located in Minneapolis, Minnesota, in the United States, covers the 9th District of the Federal Reserve, which is made up of Minnesota, Montana, North and South Dakota, northwestern Wisconsin, and the Upper Peninsula of Michigan. Although its geographical territory is the third largest of the 12 Federal Reserve banks, it serves the smallest population base of the system. It has one branch, which is in Helena, Montana.
Big Island Park was a popular tourist destination that existed near Minneapolis, Minnesota between 1906 and 1911 on Lake Minnetonka's Big Island. Today the property is a municipal nature park owned by the City of Orono, sometimes referred to as Big Island Nature Park to distinguish it from the former amusement park.
Downtown West is an official neighborhood in Minneapolis, part of the larger Central community. It is the heart of downtown Minneapolis, containing the bulk of high-rise office buildings in the city, and is what comes to mind when most Minneapolitans think of "downtown". The neighborhood is split between Wards 3 and 7 of the Minneapolis City Council, represented by Michael Rainville and Katie Cashman, respectively.
Como is a neighborhood within the Southeast quadrant of Minneapolis. The neighborhood is also sometimes referred to as Southeast Como to help differentiate it from the Como Park neighborhood in neighboring Saint Paul. Its boundaries are East Hennepin Avenue to the north, 33rd Avenue Southeast to the east, the Southeast Industrial Area to the south, and Interstate 35W to the west. Como is also part of the University District in Minneapolis, with its location near the main Minneapolis campus of the University of Minnesota.
Mayo Clinic Square on Block E in downtown Minneapolis, is a building bounded by Hennepin Avenue, North 6th Street, North 7th Street, and 1st Avenue North. It is part of the Downtown West neighborhood in Minneapolis, historically known as the Warehouse District. It is one block south of the Warehouse District/Hennepin Avenue light rail station on the METRO Blue and Green lines. "Block E" is a City planning department designation of the block; other blocks have similar designations
The Gateway District of Minneapolis is centered at the convergence of Hennepin Avenue, Nicollet Avenue, and Washington Avenue. Its borders are not officially designated or recognized, but are visible as the Mississippi River to the northeast, Cedar Lake Trail and the railroad tracks to the northwest, Fifth Avenue South to the southeast. and Fourth Street South to the southwest. The district includes a significant part of the Downtown West neighborhood and abuts the North Loop.
The Lumber Exchange Building was the first skyscraper built in Minneapolis, Minnesota, United States, dating to 1885. It was designed in the Richardsonian Romanesque style by Franklin B. Long and Frederick Kees and was billed as one of the first fireproof buildings in the country. It is the oldest high-rise building standing in Minneapolis, and is the oldest building outside of New York City with 12 or more floors.
The University of Minnesota Old Campus Historic District is a historic district located in Minneapolis, Minnesota. Listed in the National Register of Historic Places since 1984, it includes a number of historic buildings that were constructed during the late 1800s and early 1900s, and represents the oldest extant section of the University of Minnesota campus. The general area was designed by landscape architect Horace W. S. Cleveland, who envisioned a park-like University. His plan, that he presented to the Board of Regents, went on to help form the Historic District. It is located directly to the north of the University's Northrop Mall Historic District.
Summit Avenue is a street in St. Paul, Minnesota, United States, known for being the longest avenue of Victorian homes in the country, having a number of historic houses, churches, synagogues, and schools. The street starts just west of downtown St. Paul and continues four and a half miles west to the Mississippi River where Saint Paul meets Minneapolis. Other cities have similar streets, such as Prairie Avenue in Chicago, Euclid Avenue in Cleveland, and Fifth Avenue in New York City. Summit Avenue is notable for having preserved its historic character and mix of buildings, as compared to these other examples. Historian Ernest R. Sandeen described Summit Avenue as "the best preserved example of the Victorian monumental residential boulevard."
The Unique Theater was an 830-seat vaudeville theater, built in 1904 on Hennepin Avenue in downtown Minneapolis, Minnesota. It was built in the Renaissance Revival style, and situated between the Hennepin Center for the Arts and the West Hotel.
East Lake Library is one of 41 branch libraries in the Hennepin County Library System, one of 15 branch libraries formerly in the Minneapolis Public Library System in Minneapolis, Minnesota, United States. Three different buildings have housed the library since 1924.
The Bardwell–Ferrant House is a house in the Phillips West neighborhood of Minneapolis, Minnesota, United States. It was built in 1883 at 1800 Park Avenue for its first owner, Charles Bardwell, and its original plan was in the Queen Anne style. In 1890 its second owner, Emil Ferrant, had the house remodeled in the Moorish Revival style that was popular at the time. Norwegian-born architect Carl F. Struck added two onion domed towers, a wraparound porch with spindlework columns, ogee arches, and deep-toned stained glass windows. The house was later moved to its present location at 2500 Portland Ave. S. in 1898 to make way for a bank building.
Harvey Ellis was an American architect, perspective renderer, painter and furniture designer. He worked in Rochester, New York; Utica, New York; St. Paul, Minnesota; Minneapolis, Minnesota; St. Joseph, Missouri; St. Louis, Missouri and Syracuse, New York.
The architecture of St. John's, in Newfoundland and Labrador, Canada, has a style distinct from that of the rest of Canada, and its major buildings are remnants of its history and prestige as the first British colonial capital. The city of St. John's has had a long history, with inhabitation dating to the 16th century onwards. As the city grew, so, too, did the landscape. Buildings took a variety of styles according to the styles and means available to build the structures. Starting as a fishing outpost for European fishermen, St. John's consisted mostly of the homes of fishermen, sheds, storage shacks, and wharves. Of course, these structures were small and constructed out of wood. Like many other cities of the time, as the Industrial Revolution took hold and new methods and materials for construction were introduced, the landscape changed as the city grew in width and height. The Great Fire of 1892 destroyed most of the downtown core, and most residential and other wood-frame buildings date from this period. Often compared to San Francisco because of its hilly terrain and steep maze of residential streets, housing in St. John's is typically painted in bright colours, unlike most other parts of Canada.
The State Theatre is an historic theatre in Minneapolis, Minnesota, USA. It is one of four restored theatres in the Hennepin Theatre District. It is one of four restored theaters on Hennepin Avenue, along with the Orpheum Theatre, the Pantages Theatre, and the Shubert Theatre.
In the New World, Queen Anne Revival was a historicist architectural style of the late 19th and early 20th centuries. It was popular in the United States, Canada, Australia, and other countries. In Australia, it is also called Federation architecture.
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