The Hill House

We walked around the cathedral and then drove around downtown looking at their cool, hip part of town in the midst of all these awesome houses.  We could see one from the Cathedral that looked particularly interesting and set out to see it on our way around.  What was amazing was that there were a ton of houses in a lot of different styles.  There was one street that looked like Rainbow Row

 in Charleston, SC, there was beautiful Victorians and then there were these awesome stone mansions that had carriage houses attached to the back and we stopped at the one of these that we saw from the Cathedral to find out that you could take tours.  This whole time driving around, we were hoping that Oscar would nap in his car seat, but he was having none of it and John thought that if they  stayed put while Tara

 and I toured the house, he would succumb to slumber.  So, Tara and I joined a tour of the Hill House.  And as I write that, I realize that it sounds like a   horror movie, but it was the tycoon J. Hill’s house.  The woodworking was amazing in this house and the little face in the pictures was the master woodworker’s face.  Everything was ornate and this man had an art gallery in the house.  All of his best pictures are hanging

 in the St. Paul art museum now, but there were two Corots still in the house and the organ was being played as a special treat for tourists on this day.  It  was a cool thing to go through and learn that his stained glass in the entry wasn’t done by Tiffany because this guy didn’t like the designs that Tiffany came up with for him….how do you not like Tiffany designs in stained glass, but I guess if you’re paying top dollar

  you want what you want and not what an artist wants for you….I’ll never know this problem….Once we got to the dining room with the leather wall coverings, Tara was getting antsy about making it to the pregame lunch that she needed to attend as an alumni, so after the library, we bugged out with some interesting photos and a kid that had still not napped.  Not a good thing for attending a lunch with alumni and then a hockey game.