Minneapolis has one of the great collections of Gilded Age houses in the Midwest. The frustrating part is how few of them you can actually walk into — and the list gets shorter, not longer, once the holidays arrive. Here is what stays open in November and December, and how to get inside more than one house in a single evening.
Why the list shrinks in December
The Turnblad Mansion at the American Swedish Institute is the house most people name first, and its holiday exhibition is worth seeing. But the guided mansion tour steps aside to make room for it. The Institute’s own tours page says so directly: tours are not available during the Holiday Exhibition. Plan around it and you will not be disappointed at the door.
That leaves two mansions in Minneapolis still welcoming the public through the holidays — and, happily, they are about two miles apart.
1. The Pillsbury Club, 100 East 22nd Street
Charles Stinson Pillsbury lost a coin toss to his twin brother over the family house on East 22nd Street, so he built his own across the road. What went up between 1912 and 1914 is English Gothic Revival stone by the architects Hewitt and Brown, put up by the H. N. Leighton Company, with interiors by Charles Duveen of London — every detail of which is on the City of Minneapolis landmark record. Hooded windows, ornate chimneys, oak panelling and painted glass.
Today it is the Pillsbury Club, a private club open to guests with a reservation, and it is where every one of our trolleys departs from. Come early and you are inside a mansion before the tour even starts.
2. 300 Clifton, Loring Park
300 Clifton is the Eugene J. Carpenter Mansion — on the National Register of Historic Places since 1977, a designated Minneapolis landmark, and generally called the finest Georgian house in Minnesota. Eugene Carpenter chaired the Minneapolis Society of Fine Arts from 1911 to 1922, the organisation that grew into the Minneapolis Institute of Art, which is why the house is known as the birthplace of the arts in Minneapolis.
It has one distinction no other mansion in the city can claim: you can tour it and then book a room in it. Most historic houses show you the door at closing time. This one gives you a key and a hot tub in the garden.
The detail that makes seeing both worth it
Edwin Hawley Hewitt co-designed the Pillsbury house in English Gothic Revival stone. He is also the architect who, in 1906, reworked the Carpenter property into the Georgian mansion standing there now. One architect, six years apart, two completely opposite ideas of what a great Minneapolis house should be. Seeing them back to back in one night is the fastest architecture lesson in the city — and if you want more on the men behind the drawings, we covered who designed the mansions you see on a Minneapolis mansion tour and the difference between the Pillsbury and Carpenter mansions.
What the Gilded Age Mansion Tour shows you
Our Gilded Age Mansion Tour runs year-round from the Pillsbury Club, and it does the thing most architecture tours will not: it goes inside, not just past. The route rolls through Park Avenue, Lowry Hill and Mount Curve — Van Dusen, Semple, Gale, Harrington, McKnight, Winton — with the lumber, flour and grain fortunes that paid for each one explained as you go. Seats currently start around $69.
The holiday version
From late November the club fills with a holiday market carrying handmade work from more than fifty Minnesota artists, and the Holiday Light Ride boards from the same front hall. The all-ages NICE ride runs about an hour at roughly $27; the 21-and-over NAUGHTY ride is BYOB, runs about two hours, and lists around $69. Parking is free across the street, which in a Minneapolis December counts as a gift.
Building the rest of the day around it
Mansion tours pair well with a slow afternoon. Warm up first at one of the best coffee shops in Minneapolis, book a table at one of the restaurants with the best atmosphere, and if the group skews younger, our list of the best family activities in Minneapolis will fill the gap before an evening ride. Staying more than a few days? Oakland’s on 9th has furnished month-to-month studios downtown.
Get inside before the season closes
December dates fill quickly, and the mansion tour is capped by how many people a historic staircase can comfortably hold. Pick your date on the Gilded Age Mansion Tour page and come see what flour, lumber and one lost coin toss built.
Keep reading: What Should You Do in Minneapolis If You Only Have One Day?