Historic Townhouses

Historic Townhouses

Common elsewhere, this type of house was relatively rare in the Twin Cities

An old Italianate-style townhouse on Lyndale Ave. N. in Minneapolis, 1934; the Basilica of St. Mary’s lantern is visible behind it (Minn. Hist Soc.)

Visit any older American city and you’re likely to find quite a few historic townhouses—narrow, multi-story dwellings that often share at least one wall with an adjoining structure but can also be freestanding.

  While a goodly number old row houses, which typically consist of three or more e similar units linked together under one roof, can be found around the Twin Cities, historic townhouses are an all but extinct architectural species here. The only one I know of that still stands is the William Lee House (1887 and later) at 623-25 Ninth St. S. in downtown Minneapolis.

William Lee House, ca. 1980s; it was designed by Minneapolis’s favorite society architect of the time, William Channing Whitney (Henn. Cty. Lib.)

In densely packed cities like New York and Chicago, townhouses—some of them downright palatial—tended to be built for the very rich, especially during the late nineteenth century. By contrast, wealthy families of that period in the land-rich Twin Cities had little need for townhouses, since they could readily build mansions with spacious grounds close to downtown on streets like Summit Ave. in St. Paul and Park Ave. in Minneapolis. 

A row of deluxe 1890s-vintage townhouses in Manhattan; the five-story house on the corner undoubtedly came with an elevator and many servants

No Manhattan-style mansion townhouses, if they could be called that, were ever built in the Twin Cities. But photos reveal that at least two wonderful Victorian-era townhouses once stood in downtown St. Paul, which by virtue of its constricted site featured many buildings on narrow lots.

The three-story Jacob Hammer House may well have been the largest of its kind in St. Paul. It was built in 1887 at 380 Franklin St., which later became Auditorium St. but has now vanished from the map. Franklin ran parallel to and a block east of Washington St. near Rice Park. Hammer’s townhouse was just south of West Seventh St., on what is now the site of the Travelers Insurance Co. building. 

Jacob Hammer House, ca. 1890; visible to its right is part of a double house also built in the 1880s (Minn. Hist. Soc.) 

Hammer was a harness maker who owned his own firm in St. Paul and lived in small home on the same site before building the townhouse on what looks to have been about a 25-foot-wide lot. 

Romanesque Revival in style, the brick and brownstone house rose a full three stories beneath a tall gable. It featured a cave-like arched entryway next to a picture window, a broad second-story bay, and a charming little dormer sporting a steeply pitched roof. The result was a fine piece of Victorian architectural theater.

The townhouse was designed by Albert Zschocke, a German-born architect who enjoyed a brief but busy career in St. Paul before dying of typhoid fever at age 33 in 1892. Perhaps his greatest work was the Hotel Barteau (1889-1969), a marvelous six-story apartment building at Ninth St. and Smith Ave., only about two blocks from Hammer’s residence.

I’ve found no interior photos or plans of the townhouse, but its outline on old insurance maps suggest that it offered more than 3,000 square feet of living space. Those same maps indicate that the house was gone by 1950, when a parking lot occupied the site.

Charles Zimmerman, ca. 1890

Downtown St. Paul’s other notable townhouse, also dating to 1887, was an exotic concoction built for Charles Zimmerman at 342 Market St., overlooking Rice Park, on what is now the site of the drive-up entrance to the St. Paul Hotel.

The French-born Zimmerman—a talented photographer, artist and entrepreneur—was a well-known figure in the Twin Cities in his day. He arrived in St. Paul with his family in 1856, when he was 12. After serving in the Civil War, he established himself as one of the city’s leading photographers. By 1880 he also operated a fleet of steamboats on Lake Minnetonka, where he and his wife, Ida, maintained a summer home.

Charles Zimmerman House, ca. 1890; next to it were a pair of Gothic Revival-style “cottages” built in 1866 and razed in 1915 (Minn. Hist. Soc.)

The townhouse was an intriguing example of the so-called Moorish Revival style. Evoking the Moorish architecture of Spain, the style enjoyed a modicum of popularity in the Twin Cities in the late 1880s and again in the 1920s.

  Allen H. Stem, a prominent St. Paul architect whose surviving work includes the old St. Paul Athletic Club Building in downtown St. Paul, designed the townhouse. He incorporated horseshoe-shaped arches—an identifying feature of the Moorish Revival style—on every floor of the facade. The largest framed a picture window surrounded by stained glass, while others formed an arcaded loggia on the third floor.

Two interior views of the Zimmerman House, ca. 1890 (Minn. Hist. Soc.)

The Moorish theme continued inside with elaborately carved woodwork, stained glass, and curtains used as room dividers. The townhouse was only about 20 feet wide, so it’s likely the rooms were arranged in a single row front to back.  

It’s not clear how long Zimmerman and his wife lived in the townhouse, since city directories usually listed him as living at Lake Minnetonka. However, by 1905 he apparently lived in a house on East Seventh St. in the Dayton’s Bluff neighborhood when he wasn’t at the lake.  

Zimmerman life came to a sudden end in September 1909 after he suffered an apparent heart attack while waiting for a train near Lake Minnetonka.

The townhouse may already have been a rental property by that time. In 1922 it became a clubhouse for young working women, but that arrangement didn’t last for long, and in 1926 Zimmerman’s Moorish dream was razed after standing for just 39 years.