The Empire Builder

(May 28, 2016 – St Paul, MN)

On this Memorial Day weekend I toured the home of James J. Hill, the force behind the Great Northern Railway and St. Paul’s historic Summit Avenue. The sky was overcast but my day was very bright. May 29, 2016 is the 100^th Anniversary of Hill’s death.

The American Continent came of age in the nineteenth century. The nation’s development was hastened and enhanced by railroads. Railroads were the largest business in America during the 1800s. In his book, “Highways to Progress”, (1909) James J. Hill stated, “When the history of transportation is written it will be equivalent to a history of civilization.”

James Jerome Hill was born in 1838 in Canada and settled in St. Paul, Minnesota at the age of eighteen. It would be two years before Minnesota would be admitted  as a State into the Union. He began working as a bookkeeping clerk for freight transportation, primarily steamboats on the Mississippi River. Hill was a keen student and learned the freight and transportation business. He was also a shrewd businessman and soon began his own enterprise. Thereafter he partnered and began dealing in coal and expanded his transportation activities to include the Red River in addition to the Mississippi. As a result of the Panic of 1873 several northwestern railroads took bankruptcy and Hill and his partners purchased the St. Paul and Pacific railroad.

Hill was a tireless workhorse and he expanded his railroad to the northwest. In 1890 he built westward with the opening of the Marias Pass. In1893 the railroad became a transcontinental railroad running from St. Paul to Seattle. The transcontinental was renamed the Great Northern Railroad. The Great Northern had many rail lines across Wisconsin, Minnesota, North Dakota, and Montana. Hill also extended his financial empire by acquiring large parts of the Mesabi Range iron-mining district.

As a result Hill became one of the wealthiest men in America. In 1888 he decided to build a home worthy of his status. For a quick read about his fascinating life, see his obituary from the New York Times:

http://www.nytimes.com/learning/general/onthisday/bday/0916.html

This is one of the most extensive obituaries I have ever read. Certainly it highlights Hill’s stature. 

The site of the Hill home is the prime location overlooking the City of St Paul and the Mississippi River scape, a very broad vista. The home sits on a three-acre lot and is 36,000 square feet in size on five floors. Like Hill the house is strong and rugged. Construction began in 1888 and was finished in1891 at a cost of $931,275.01. This amount included the furnishings that were custom made.

The home contains “13 bathrooms, 22 fireplaces, 16 crystal chandeliers, a two-story skylit art gallery.” The home includes wood trim that was hand carved. The modern home included the most advanced utility systems available including electricity, gas, plumbing, ventilation, security, and communications. The coal bin held a train carload of coal to fuel the two boilers in the home.

A few random facts I find interesting. Hill also maintained residences on his farm, North Oaks, ten miles north of 240 Summit Avenue, an apartment on Fifth Avenue in New York City, a home on Jekyll Island, Georgia, and an apartment on the Champ-Elysees in Paris. The iconic Stone Arch Bridge (Great Northern Railroad) crossing the Mississippi River at Saint Anthony Falls in Minneapolis was built at Hill’s direction in 1890 at the time Hill was completing his home.  The bridge cost $650,000.

A tribute to James J. Hill’s stature is in the final efforts to save Mr. Hill’s life, surgery was performed in St. Paul on Mr. Hill by brothers Drs. William James Mayo and Charles Horace Mayo. This was the only surgery the brothers ever performed outside their own clinic in Rochester, Minnesota.

Another Hill quote I like and find amusing is “Give me enough Swedes and enough snoose and I’ll build a railroad to hell.”

This home screams the success of James J Hill. It was a wonderful ninety-minute tour.

Throughout the day the docents  and tour guides spoke to the business, cultural, and social lives of the successful and wealthy of St. Paul’s society.  These men were all self made and few if any were University educated. Over just two generations many established business and family connections. Hills close neighbors were his son, Louis, next door and George Weyerhaeuser.

Of the many facts I love is connected to an exhibit in one of the girl’s bedrooms on the third floor. There, several headless mannequins displayed clothing belonging to the Hill family. Beyond Mr. Hill’s tuxedo, hunting suit, and a day period dress for Mrs. Hill, was a single University of Minnesota football jersey.

The jersey Belonged to Egil Boeckmann a star football player at the University of Minnesota. Boeckmann would later marry Hill’s daughter, Rachel, and become a prominent surgeon in St. Paul.

The significance of the jersey is that late in a game between Minnesota and the University of Michigan played in 1903, with two minutes left to play Egil Boeckmann scored the touchdown for the Minnesota Gophers that tied the game. The Minnesota fans went wild and stormed the field. Thus the game was over with two minutes left on the clock and ended in a tie 6 to 6. The Michigan coach left the field during the pandemonium forgetting his water jug.

As legend goes when he asked for it back, he was told that Michigan would have to beat Minnesota to retrieve it. Thus became the tradition of the Little Brown Jug, the first trophy in American College Football.

In the afternoon, I took the Summit Avenue walking tour. Very interesting! In many ways it put James J Hill, and the industrial development on the upper Midwest into a more nuanced perspective. Summit Avenue is grand. The neighborhood was designed to see and be seen. The sidewalks are wide. The street is wide, designed as a promenade. Much of the street has park boulevards in the center.

Summit Avenue is four and a half miles long. While few of the homes are the size of the Hill home, there are several above 10,000 square feet and 4,000 to 5,000 square feet common and probably slightly less than average. Though some homes fell in disrepair over time, today the area has been close to 100 percent restored. Some homes have been converted to condominiums.

Of note: One of the other most famous residents of Summit Avenue was F Scott Fitzgerald. Scott lived there off and on as a young boy and when returning from Princeton. Our walking tour guide seemed to take great pride in Fitzgerald though he didn’t see fit to stay in St. Paul. Brief research shows that F. Scott was named after Francis Scott Key his father’s famous second cousin three times removed. Also F. Scott was a first cousin once removed from Mary Surratt who was hanged for conspiring to murder Abraham Lincoln.

Personal  - My Grandfather was born (1889) in St. Paul during the time of Hill. His father arrived in St. Paul prior to 1885. Grandpa's father was a Shochet, a Jewish Ritual Slaughterer, who went to St. Paul a meat packing center to learn the meat packing trade. Once he was established, the Shochet brought his father, a Rabbi, to St. Paul from Lithuania. Several years ago the Minnesota Historical Journal wrote about my Great Great Grandfather Barnett Rosenthal. Below is the Journal article and a photo I took of the parking lot his home became in downtown St. Paul.