Summit Avenue is America’s best-preserved Victorian boulevard, and its crown is the James J. Hill House — 36,000 square feet of Richardsonian Romanesque grandeur built in 1891 for the “Empire Builder” of the Great Northern Railway. The Minnesota Historical Society’s tours reveal a mansion engineered like a railroad: cutting-edge heating, a two-story pipe organ gallery’s worth of art space, and woodwork carved so fine it looks like lace.
Hill’s story — immigrant clerk to railroad titan — unfolds through servants’ quarters, a 200-seat reception hall and family rooms that humanize the legend. The house faces the St. Paul Cathedral and anchors Summit’s parade of 373 Victorian homes.
Come at Christmas, when the house dresses in Gilded Age holiday style, or for summer’s concerts on the lawn. St. Paul’s grandest address still impresses on purpose.
