Burbank-Livingston-Griggs House, St. Paul

The Burbank-Livingston-Griggs house, the second-oldest on Summit Avenue, was designed for a wealthy transportation entrepreneur by Chicago architect Otis L. Wheelock in 1862. Later, four significant local architects left their mark on the landmark structure.

The earliest trained architects came to St. Paul in 1857 but left the conservative city after a few years in search of more business. Summit Avenue was still only an oxcart trail five years later, when Wheelock arrived to build this Civil War-era mansion at the top of a steep hill. The picturesque country estate high on the Mississippi River bluff was constructed of massive blocks of limestone quarried across the river in Mendota.

The site at 432 Summit Avenue overlooked the town, where owner James Crawford Burbank’s steamboats and stagecoaches carried mail, passengers, and goods. Burbank had come to St. Paul from Vermont in 1850 and built a financial empire from scratch, then reorganized the St. Paul Fire & Marine Insurance Company and served as its president. He was active in civic affairs, founding the chamber of commerce, establishing Como Park, and constructing a streetcar system. He served in public office as a Ramsey County commissioner and state representative.

In addition to Burbank, the house is named after two important owners who led the early growth and development of the capital city: Crawford Livingston and Theodore Wright Griggs. Mary Potts Livingston, the wife of Crawford Livingston, was a niece of Henry H. Sibley, Minnesota’s first governor.

Considered one of the finest examples of Italianate architecture in the state, the picturesque home features arched windows, a bracketed cornice, and a cupola topped with a finial. The floor plan is open and spacious, with the first wood parquet floor in the state as well as steam heat, hot and cold running water, and gas lighting. The rat-proof interior walls are lined with a layer of brick, providing an air chamber to insulate the house from the harsh winter cold. A stairway leads to the glass-enclosed cupola on the roof. Servants, including three maids, a coachman, a driver, and a gardener, originally lived on the third floor.

In 1884, twenty years after the house was built, the Livingston family worked with architect Clarence H. Johnston, Sr., to replace the single window on the stairs with three arched windows of stained glass and install elaborately carved oak paneling in the entry. After those improvements, the home was relatively unchanged for many years.

Mary Livingston Griggs inherited the house from her parents in 1925. She worked with architect Allen H. Stem to expand the living space with a two-story limestone addition and remodel the living room in the style of a seventeenth-century English Renaissance chamber. Her love for history and antiques inspired her to install whole rooms brought over from elegant French and Italian houses in Europe and furnished with antiques from the period.

When Stem retired, Magnus Jemne began installing late-eighteenth-century French panels in the grand salon and bedroom suite. Edwin Lundie completed the complicated task of fitting the antique interiors in the dining room, two bedrooms, two sitting rooms, wardrobe rooms, and a small hallway. In the basement, he designed a glass-walled ballroom in the latest Art Deco style for the Griggs’s children.

In 1968, Mary Griggs’s daughter, Mary Griggs Burke, donated the house to the Minnesota Historical Society and the St. Paul Junior League, which operated a house museum for many years with the assistance of the Minneapolis Institute of Arts.

The building was one of the first Minnesota properties nominated to the National Register of Historic Places, in 1970. It is also considered a contributing structure for the local Historic Hill District.

In 1996, the Burbank-Livingston-Griggs House was sold and turned into three separate furnished apartments, once again becoming a unique place to live with a view and an impressive address.