Some people already own every scarf, candle and gadget a store can sell. For them, the best Christmas gift in Minneapolis is a door they’ve never walked through. A Gilded Age Mansion Tour, boarding here at the Pillsbury Club, hands them a winter evening inside the houses that flour and lumber money built, and a story they’ll repeat at every holiday dinner after.

Is a mansion tour a good Christmas gift?

For the history buff, the old-house lover, the parent who reads every historical marker, or the couple who “doesn’t need anything this year,” yes. A mansion tour is an experience gift that doesn’t need dusting, and because the tour runs year-round, you can plan the evening for December or save it for a quiet night in the new year. It also gives you an excuse to go along.

The tour is a Minneapolis Trolley Tours experience that looks at the city’s great houses from the outside and from the inside. The vintage trolley rolls past the mansions of Park Avenue, Mount Curve and the streets around Loring Park, while a guide sorts out who made a fortune in what. Two houses anchor the story.

The Pillsbury Mansion: the mansion flour built

You begin here, at 100 East 22nd Street. The Charles S. Pillsbury House was designed by Hewitt and Brown and built from 1912 to 1914 in the English Gothic Revival style, all gray Bedford limestone, carved oak and leaded glass. It is listed on the National Register of Historic Places and is a Minneapolis landmark. Charles S. Pillsbury was born into the milling family whose story you can trace at the Minnesota Historical Society’s Mill City Museum, and the house still feels like a manor that wandered over from England and decided to stay.

300 Clifton: the birthplace of the arts in Minneapolis

300 Clifton, the Eugene J. Carpenter House in Loring Park, is often called the finest Georgian architecture in Minnesota. The Carpenters bought the house in 1905 and hired a young Edwin Hewitt to turn it from Victorian into Georgian Revival, with interiors by the celebrated designer John S. Bradstreet. Eugene Carpenter chaired the Minneapolis Society of Fine Arts from 1911 to 1922, the organization that became the Minneapolis Institute of Art. That’s why 300 Clifton calls itself the birthplace of the arts in Minneapolis. It’s listed on the National Register (1977) and was named a city landmark in 1978. It’s also the only mansion in Minneapolis you can tour and then sleep in.

Is there a Christmas mansion tour in Minneapolis?

Yes, and fewer than you’d think. The American Swedish Institute’s Turnblad Mansion is a beloved holiday stop, but ASI notes that its public guided tours are not available during the Holiday Exhibition. That makes the Gilded Age Mansion Tour one of the few guided historic house tours running in Minneapolis through December. Christmas at the mansion here means carved oak by firelight, limestone dusted with snow, and the holiday market filling the club with work from Minnesota artists. Our earlier guide, Can You Tour a Mansion in Minneapolis at Christmas?, walks through the season in more detail.

How to make the gift feel bigger

A ticket is a gift. A whole evening is a memory. A few ways to build one around the tour:

• Arrive early and linger. The Pillsbury Club is a private, members-style club open to guests with a reservation. Have a seasonal drink at the bar, or reserve a table through our dining room. Plan your visit before you go.
• Add a night in a mansion. Pair the tour with a stay at 300 Clifton so the history lesson ends with a nightcap in one of the houses you just learned about.
• Add the lights. In December the club is also the boarding point for the Holiday Light Ride: the all-ages Nice ride (from $30) or the 21+ BYOB Naughty ride (from $75), where you carry your drinks straight onto a heated trolley instead of hauling a cooler to a bar parking lot.
• Make it a getaway. Out-of-town recipients staying longer can settle into a furnished studio at Oakland’s on 9th downtown.

New to the club? Our first-timer’s guide answers the questions most guests ask before their first visit.

Give them a house with a story

Old houses keep secrets, and the best ones share a few with guests who ask nicely. Book the Gilded Age Mansion Tour, browse our other experiences and tours, and give someone you love an evening in the Gilded Age. We’ll leave a candle burning.

Keep reading: Why Does a Bundt Pan Company Own Minnesota’s Most Famous Grain Elevator? Peavey’s Folly and the Pillsbury Bake-Off