Short version: the Gilded Age Mansion Tour runs all year and takes you inside two of the city’s great houses — the Eugene J. Carpenter Mansion at 300 Clifton and the Charles S. Pillsbury Mansion on East 22nd Street. The Christmas version of that tour only exists for a few weeks in December, and it is a genuinely different experience. Here is what changes, and why December is trickier than you would think.
The year-round tour: two houses, two fortunes, one afternoon
Minneapolis has plenty of Gilded Age mansions you can admire from the sidewalk. The number you can actually walk into is much smaller — which is the whole reason this tour exists. We covered the sidewalk-versus-front-door distinction in what you actually see on a Minneapolis mansion tour.
300 Clifton — the Carpenter Mansion
Built in 1887 and then almost entirely rebuilt in 1906, when Eugene and Merrette Carpenter hired architect Edwin H. Hewitt to reshape it into the symmetrical brick Georgian you see today. It is widely described as the finest Georgian architecture in Minnesota, it went on the National Register in 1977, and the city made it a Minneapolis landmark in 1978.
It also has a decent claim to being the birthplace of the arts in Minneapolis: Eugene J. Carpenter chaired the Minneapolis Society of Fine Arts from 1911 to 1922 — the organization that grew into the Minneapolis Institute of Art. Designer John S. Bradstreet did the interiors, which is why the woodwork rewards standing still for a minute.
100 East 22nd — the mansion flour built
Charles S. Pillsbury, son of the Pillsbury Company’s co-founder, hired Hewitt and Brown to build his house between 1912 and 1914. The result is English Gothic Revival in gray Bedford limestone, with Tudor and Jacobean touches, and it is also a designated Minneapolis landmark. Today it operates as the Pillsbury Club, and it is where our trolleys depart from.
Two houses, two different Minneapolis fortunes — lumber and flour — and two completely different ideas about what a rich man’s house should look like. If you want the architectural side of that argument, see the difference between the Pillsbury and Carpenter mansions.
The Christmas mansion tour: same houses, different building
In December both houses get decorated, and a historic house in full holiday dress is not the same house. Garland on a carved staircase, a tree in a room that was designed for one, low winter light through leaded glass by four in the afternoon — the rooms read completely differently than they do in July.
The Pillsbury Mansion also fills its main floor with a holiday market of Minnesota makers during the season, so a Christmas mansion tour tends to turn into shopping and a drink whether you planned on it or not. Pair it with the Holiday Light Ride and you have an entire evening: mansion, market, heated trolley, lights. The Pillsbury Club wrote up how to spend the hour before that ride, which is worth reading before you book.
Why December is a hard month to get inside a Minneapolis mansion
Here is the wrinkle most visitors do not expect. The city’s best-known mansion museum, the Turnblad Mansion at the American Swedish Institute, pauses its regular guided mansion tours during its annual holiday exhibition — the rooms are given over to the Nordic holiday displays instead. Check ASI’s tours page for current dates before you plan around it.
So the month when everyone wants to see a decorated historic house is also the month when the options thin out. The Carpenter and Pillsbury mansions are two of the few in Minneapolis you can still walk through in December — which is also why those dates go first. We keep a running list in which Minneapolis mansions you can go inside during the holidays.
The one you can tour and then sleep in
This is the part that surprises people. 300 Clifton is a working bed and breakfast, which makes it the only mansion in Minneapolis you can tour during the day and then check into that night. The estate runs to about 20,000 square feet and is still furnished with original 1906 lighting, paintings and furniture. Guests get a hot tub, a movie room, and a house with a documented haunting or two. Touring a house and then sleeping in it is a strange and excellent feeling.
If you need a longer stay downtown rather than a night, Oakland’s on 9th does furnished month-to-month studios a few blocks away.
Planning the rest of the day
A mansion tour slots neatly into a bigger day out. Our local Top-5 lists are built for exactly this: the best Minneapolis landmarks, the best Minneapolis museums, and — because an old house at dusk is a strong move — the best Minneapolis date ideas. Meet Minneapolis also keeps an up-to-date holiday guide if you are building a December itinerary.
Book it
Any month of the year, the Gilded Age Mansion Tour is the thing to do in Minneapolis if you have ever wanted to know what is behind those front doors. In December, book early — the decorated dates sell out well before the lights do.
Keep reading: Where Are the Most Haunted Places in Minneapolis?