The Pillsbury Club

Chapter I

Building the
Mansion

Modern steel bones wrapped in five-hundred-year-old skin — and the dealer who made it possible.

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The Bones of a Giant

Construction

The Pillsbury Mansion was built on a structural steel frame set upon gigantic concrete caissons. Every interior and exterior wall, and every floor, is reinforced concrete, masonry, or structural tile. It is that revolutionary technique — modern for its day — that makes the high ceilings, the gigantic windows, and the massive unsupported spans across rooms possible at all.

At 24,186 square feet, it remains the largest single building ever raised as a private residence in Minneapolis.

“Charles S. Pillsbury will resume construction begun four years ago.”

Minneapolis Journal, January 1912
Line drawing of the mansion
The mansion in line
First floor plan
First-floor plan
Construction record card
The construction record
Stone portico
The stone portico
The Architect

Edwin Hewitt & the City Beautiful

Through his firm Hewitt & Brown, Edwin Hewitt was the architect for ultra-affluent Minneapolis. His monumental design gave the Pillsbury mansion its presence on the park. The carved stone portico, the parapet friezes, and the armorial crest above the door were all part of his composition — a Tudor-Gothic envelope built to receive the English rooms that would fill it. The sculptor Charles Wells carved the Bedford-stone lions for the entry pillars, along with the portico and the parapet friezes (Star Tribune, September 1913).

Stone lion at the entrance
A guardian lion
Children before the mansion in winter
The house in winter
The mansion facade
The facade
Portrait of Edwin Hewitt
Edwin Hewitt, architect

The Interiors

Charles Duveen, “Charles of London”

Charles Joel Duveen was an unequalled dealer and interior designer who acquired entire English castle interiors — rooms, staircases, ceilings, whole estates — and reconstructed them for America’s richest clients: Getty, Hearst, Vanderbilt, and Pillsbury. He presented his clients with detailed renderings of how the Elizabethan rooms could be rebuilt within their new American homes.

For the Pillsbury mansion he dismantled the staircase, paneling, front door, and ceiling of Rotherwas Court, and — with some modifications — reinstalled them in Minneapolis. The entry ceiling shown in his original rendering ended up over the dining room. The hunting dogs once on the upper landing now stand at the foot of the stair.

The story of Charles of London →

The Scandal: the $50,000 fireplace
Just before the mansion was built, William Randolph Hearst bought an imported fireplace for $50,000 for one of his “chummy little castles.” The Pillsburys heard about it and ordered a duplicate. But their mansion was finished first — and by mistake the importer shipped the original Hearst fireplace to Minneapolis, where it was installed in the Pillsbury home. Hearst heard, sued the importer, and collected. Either way, the Pillsburys ended up with a $50,000 fireplace. (Minneapolis Star, March 1940.)
The Perfect Pantry & the Flower Room
“A striking example of the best arrangement for a pantry is in the new home of Mr. and Mrs. Charles Pillsbury. Not far from this is a separate flower room with cases for flowers and vases. A large refrigerator is always kept at the same temperature, and the flowers are placed there.” (Minneapolis Journal, August 1913.)
The Book Lovers’ Nook
“The coziest room in the house at the Pillsbury residence is a particularly attractive library. The walls of the room are entirely English oak taken from old castles.” (Star Tribune, December 1914.)
Charles Duveen
Charles Duveen
The Great Hall
The Great Hall
The library
The library
The dining room
The dining room

A Customs Curiosity

Aged English Oak, Admitted Free as Art

When the ancient woodwork reached American shores, it arrived not as lumber but as masterpiece. The English oak — “not a piece of it less than 200 years of age,” with paneling “almost priceless… of the Elizabethan period” — entered the United States without paying a cent of duty, classed as art.

“The dining room panels are of the time of Henry VIII. Each panel differs from the others… The flooring is teak wood laid in broad planks.”

Minneapolis Journal, August 1913

And in the parapets high above the street, carved friezes and an armorial crest announced to all of Minneapolis that something extraordinary had risen at 100 East 22nd Street — a building that began as the rescue of an old idea: that beauty, once made, deserves to endure.

See the treasures within →

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