Design: Luxury on the Lake

An over-the-top Minneapolis mansion’s short and sweet existence.

Located at 2501 Lake of the Isles Parkway East, the Charles G. Gates House was the largest private residence in the history of Minneapolis.

Image credit: Once There Were Castles

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Design: Urban Renewal

Design: The House that Ugly Built

By: Larry Millett |   January 2012   |  From the print edition

In the Twin Cities’ long—and not always uplifting—annals of mansion-building, the Charles G. Gates House occupies its own special realm of folly. Built by the playboy son of notorious stock-plunger John “Bet-a-Million” Gates, the mansion, located at 2501 Lake of the Isles Parkway East, was the largest private residence in the history of Minneapolis.

Resembling an Italian Renaissance-era palace, the house offered 38,000 square feet of over-the-top luxury, including a ballroom big enough for a marching band, an 80-foot-long central gallery, two elevators and all the lavish accoutrements (marble floors, bronze doorknobs, alabaster chandeliers, a pipe organ) that money could buy. It even had central air-conditioning, possibly the first such installation in a house anywhere. Despite its grandeur, the mansion had a distressingly short life, as did its owner.

Gates built the house after marrying Florence Hopwood, who was from Minneapolis. The couple wed in 1911, not long after Gates’ father died, leaving behind a $38 million estate just waiting to be squandered. Young Charles did not disappoint. By 1912 he and Florence had hired the Chicago architectural firm of Marshall and Fox to design their new residence. The mansion, which cost well over $1 million, was nearing completion in the fall of 1913 when Gates headed to Wyoming in his private railroad car for a hunting trip with “Buffalo” Bill Cody, the Prince of Monaco and various lesser mortals. Many elk died—and so did Gates, in his rail car, of an apparent heart attack. He was 37.

His young widow inherited the house, saw to its completion in 1914, remarried a year later and moved away in 1920. It took until 1923 to sell the place, which was so costly to maintain ($60,000 a year, fully staffed) that it scared away most prospective buyers. The new owner, St. Paul lumberman Dwight Brooks, paid just $150,000 for the mansion but never actually lived in it, preferring instead to visit on occasion (and no doubt marvel at all the grandeur he’d purchased on the cheap). He died in 1930, after which his heirs tried to sell the place, but with the Great Depression grinding its way to rock bottom, there were no takers.

The mansion was razed in 1933, although many of its expensive interior features, and even portions of the stone walls, were salvaged. Several smaller houses were eventually built on the site, but today no marker exists to remind passersby of Gates’ short-lived dream.

+ Larry Millett is a journalist, critic and teacher whose books include Lost Twin Cities, AIA Guide to the Twin Cities, Twin Cities Then and Now and Once There Were Castles: Lost Mansions and Estates of the Twin Cities.