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The Northern Pacific Railroad Office Building/Great Northern Lofts (300 Wall Street) <ul><li>This is one of three buildings constructed by James J. Hill to be featured on this tour. Hill immigrated here from Canada when he was eighteen (1856) and got his start in business by working as an office clerk in Lowertown. Over thirty years later he was on his way to becoming one of the wealthiest men in America and he decided to anchor his business, the Northern Pacific Railroad, in this Italian Renaissance Revival-style office building.</li></ul> <ul><li>Its construction reflects the Hill's obsession with the Great Chicago Fire of 1871. He insisted that his architect eschew the more common usual iron or timber frame construction in favor of fireproof steel beams enclosed in solid brick exteriors and interior masonry walls—3 feet thick in some places—and supporting heavy arched brick and clay ceiling</li></ul> <ul><li>As you can imagine, this fireproof structure makes the building incredibly heavy, which was nearly its undoing. Lowertown is located in a river valley undergirded by soft dirt rather than bedrock. The pilings driven into this unsupportive muck failed at one, causing the building's southeastern corner to settle by as much as two feet. If you look at that corner carefully you can make out repaired breaks that reveal where it sank and was jacked back up.</li></ul>

This block of Wall Street offers a glimpse of Lowertown during its economic heyday between 1880 and 1930 when these buildings hummed with the sounds of commerce and industry.  The first one you'll take a look at is the Great Northern Lofts (300 Wall Street). Stand across from it on Broadway so you can see what the building's southeast corner reveals about its history.


To view these building, begin at the SW corner of Broadway and Kellogg and walk north to the end of the block. <ul><li>The Tilsner (300 Broadway) which was built in 1894 to house a hardware wholesaler and then carton manufacturing company.</li></ul> <ul><li>The Northern Warehouse (northeast corner of Broadway and Prince) constructed to serve as the warehouse for a local grocery wholesaler and subsidiary of the Northern Pacific Railroad (1908)</li></ul> <ul><li>Lowertown Commons (northwest corner of Broadway and Fourth) built in 1905 to house a rubber factory, a grocery wholesaler, and a printing works.</li></ul> From 1880 until 1929 and the beginning of the Great Depression, businesses like these kept Lowertown humming as the neighborhood fueled the development of St. Paul.

Over the next 30 years other local manufacturers, warehouses, and wholesalers took advantage of rapid (and far lighter weight) improvements in fireproof construction and erected three other large buildings on this block so their operations would be conveniently located near Union Depot where St. Paul's manufactured goods were shipped. 




The Tilsner Building when it was the Farwell, Ozmun & Kirk Wholesale Hardware Company (1902)

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A Glimpse of Gilded Age Lowertown

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