100 East 22nd Street · Minneapolis
The Pillsbury
Mansion
An authentic Elizabethan manor on the Minnesota prairie — built of English oak that crossed an ocean, and stories that crossed five centuries.
A House Unlike Any Other
The Grandest House in the Midwest
When Charles Stinson Pillsbury set out to build his home on the edge of Washburn–Fair Oaks Park, he did not commission a mansion in the ordinary sense. He summoned England across the Atlantic. Whole paneled rooms saved from thousand-year-old English estates as they were being pulled down, a carved oak staircase a King had walked, a stone fireplace that survived the Great Fire of London, and stained glass that once glowed in an English cathedral — all of it shipped by steamer, hauled by rail and buggy, and reassembled here, in Minneapolis.
What rose at 100 East 22nd Street in 1916 was not a copy of a great English house. In many rooms, it was a great English house — its genuine, centuries-old fabric resurrected on the prairie. Today it stands as the last grand survivor of a vanished avenue of empire-builders’ homes, and quite possibly the most remarkable residence ever raised in the American Midwest.
*The Rotherwas estate, source of the staircase and paneling, was chronicled in the Domesday Book of 1086.
Five Centuries, One House
A Timeline
Domesday Book
Rotherwas Court — future source of the staircase and oak rooms — is recorded in William the Conqueror’s great survey of England.
A Guildhall Fireplace
The Tallow Chandlers carve a stone chimneypiece for their London hall. It will survive the Great Fire of London in 1666.
The Walrond Marriage
John Walrond and Jane Hatch lavish a remodel on Bovey House, commissioning a fireplace crowned with their joined crests.
Duveen Strips Rotherwas
Dealer Charles Duveen dismantles the famous oak rooms, staircase and ceilings of Rotherwas — to England’s anguish — and ships them to America.
The Mansion Rises
Charles S. Pillsbury builds his steel-framed manor at 100 East 22nd Street, reassembling the English interiors within.
Saving the Company
Charles rescues the Pillsbury Company from bankruptcy and reinvents American food marketing.
A Seminary
After Charles’s death, the home is sold and becomes a Lutheran theological seminary — its racier stained glass quietly removed.
Saved from the Wrecker
An anonymous donor helps the Society of Fine Arts rescue four threatened mansions; all four enter the National Register together in 1974.
Carmichael Lynch
The advertising agency restores and occupies the mansion through the 1980s and early ’90s.
BLIND, Inc.
The mansion becomes home to BLIND, Incorporated, a training center for people who are blind or visually impaired, for three decades.
The Pillsbury Club
The house enters a new chapter — its history finally told in full.
Explore the House
Five Chapters
Building the Mansion
Steel bones, a master architect, and a dealer who sold England to America.
The Pillsbury Family
Charles and Nelle, four remarkable children, and a daughter who shaped the United Nations.
The Pillsbury Company
From a single mill to Betty Crocker’s rival, the Doughboy, and a global brand.
The Splendors
The treasures within — Rotherwas oak, a King’s staircase, ancient glass, and priceless fireplaces.
The Owners
Pillsburys, priests, art patrons, ad men — and the lost mansions that did not survive.
If These Walls Could Talk
Three Stories Hiding in Plain Sight
The $50,000 Fireplace Switcheroo
“Not Everyone Can Come to Rotherwas”
The Glass the Priests Removed
Go Deeper
Featured Stories
Mary Pillsbury Lord
Married at the mansion door — and Eleanor Roosevelt’s successor at the United Nations.
Charles of London
The man who stripped Rotherwas Court and shipped its treasures to Minneapolis.
The Duveen Brothers
The art-dealing family that sold Europe’s masterpieces to Gilded Age America.