People find us three different ways. Some book a room in a historic mansion in Loring Park. Some rent a furnished studio downtown for a month. Some just want a drink inside a hundred-year-old English manor. What almost nobody realises at first is that these are the same thing — one collection of independently owned historic properties, and staying at any of them opens the others.

This is the short explanation of what the Pillsbury Club Collection actually is, and what it gets you.

Two guests seated at a table in the Pillsbury Club dining room in Minneapolis, sharing plates and drinks in front of a tall leaded stained glass window glowing amber with afternoon light — The dining room at the Pillsbury Club. The windows are original.

The short version

The Pillsbury Club is a private, members-style club in the Charles S. Pillsbury Mansion at 100 East 22nd Street — a National Register house with panelled rooms, stone fireplaces and stained glass that were shipped over from England and reassembled here. It has a bar, a dining room, private club rooms, a curated market, guided mansion tours, and a set of experiences you cannot get anywhere else in the city.

The Collection is the wider thing: a group of independently owned historic Minneapolis properties that share a philosophy rather than a corporate parent. Every property in it is nationally recognised as a historic resource, and each sits in a different neighbourhood. Stay at any one of them and you get access to the Club network.

The three places

300 Clifton — the Eugene J. Carpenter Mansion in Loring Park, run as a boutique bed and breakfast. Seven very different guest rooms, hand-painted murals, carved fireplaces, English gardens, a four-season hot tub in the garden, and a speakeasy-style video lounge in the cellar. This is the one to book for an occasion.

Oakland’s on 9th — a restored 1889 brownstone on South 9th Street, downtown, run as a furnished apartment hotel. Studios with full kitchens, no lease, and stays measured in nights, weeks or months. This is the one to book when you are here for a while: a contract, a rotation, a relocation, a renovation.

The Pillsbury Club — the mansion itself. Not a place you sleep; a place you go. Dining, the bar, tours, private rooms and events. Reservations are required, and the details are on plan your visit.

Tying them together: Minneapolis Trolley Tours, whose vintage trolleys depart from the Club’s front steps.

The bar at the Pillsbury Club in Minneapolis, with cut-glass stemware stacked on the counter against original carved oak panelling and vintage photographs on the wall — The bar, built into the mansion’s original oak panelling.

What an overnight stay actually gets you

Every overnight stay at a Collection property includes access to the Club network. In practice that means discounts on Minneapolis Trolley Tours, savings on dining at the Pillsbury Club, priority access to selected seasonal events and experiences, overnight packages available only to Collection guests, and concierge recommendations from people who actually live here.

It applies to anything on the dining room menu, and the dining room is not a normal room.

Why this is different from a hotel loyalty programme

Because it is not one. There are no points, no tiers, and no app. The Collection is small on purpose — independently owned buildings, each chosen for its history and its neighbourhood, connected because the same people care about all of them.

The practical upside is specific rather than abstract. A guest at Oakland’s on 9th who wants one genuinely memorable evening does not have to research it; they walk into the Club. A couple staying at 300 Clifton for an anniversary can put a mansion tour, dinner and a trolley into one afternoon without opening four different booking sites. And a Minneapolis local with no intention of staying anywhere can still make a reservation and come to dinner.

What to do once you are in

Start with the experiences and tours page — the guided mansion tour runs year-round, and the Club also hosts psychic readings and paranormal ghost hunts, which are exactly as good as they sound in a house this old. The dining room and the bar are open to anyone with a reservation, and the private club rooms handle everything from a birthday dinner to a company offsite.

And if you want to know what you are standing in, our History Journal has been documenting this house room by room — including the Christmas cotillion held in the Great Hall in 1917.

Keep reading: where can you get a cocktail inside a historic Minneapolis mansion? and can you tour a Minneapolis mansion at Christmas?

Come see the whole thing

Book a room at 300 Clifton or a studio at Oakland’s on 9th, then reserve a table at the Club and let us do the rest. One city, three historic buildings, and a trolley to get you between them.

Keep reading: Why Was a Teenager Filming Phantom of the Opera at the Pillsbury Mansion in 1970?