The Lorin Cray House (also known as the Cray Mansion) is a historic structure in

Mankato, Minnesota Mankato ( ) is a city in Blue Earth County, Minnesota, Blue Earth, Nicollet County, Minnesota, Nicollet, and Le Sueur County, Minnesota, Le Sueur counties in the state of Minnesota. The population was 44,488 according to the 2020 United States ...

. Originally a private home, it was owned by the local

YWCA The Young Women's Christian Association (YWCA) is a nonprofit organization with a focus on empowerment, leadership, and rights of women, young women, and girls in more than 100 countries. The World office is currently based in Geneva, Swi ...

for just over 80 years, from late 1927 until they changed locations in early 2008. It was added to the

National Register of Historic Places The National Register of Historic Places (NRHP) is the United States federal government's official list of districts, sites, buildings, structures and objects deemed worthy of preservation for their historical significance or "great artistic v ...

on July 28, 1980.

Description and history

The Queen Anne Style brick residence was designed by Frank Thayer for Lorin P. Cray, a civic leader, judge and philanthropist. Built in 1897 at a cost of $13,000, the house is constructed of buff

brick A brick is a type of block used to build walls, pavements and other elements in masonry construction. Properly, the term ''brick'' denotes a block composed of dried clay, but is now also used informally to denote other chemically cured cons ...

, red brick,

pink granite Granite () is a coarse-grained (phaneritic) intrusive igneous rock composed mostly of quartz, alkali feldspar, and plagioclase. It forms from magma with a high content of silica and alkali metal oxides that slowly cools and solidifies undergrou ...

and

Kasota limestone Kasota limestone or simply, Kasota stone, also called Mankato stone, is a dolomitic limestone found in southern Minnesota, especially near the Minnesota River and its tributaries. This sedimentary rock is part of the Oneota Dolomite of southern M ...

. It features towers,

porch A porch (from Old French ''porche'', from Latin ''porticus'' "colonnade", from ''porta'' "passage") is a room or gallery located in front of an entrance of a building. A porch is placed in front of the facade of a building it commands, and form ...

, columns, side balcony and stained, etched and

bevel A bevelled edge (UK) or beveled edge (US) is an edge of a structure that is not perpendicular to the faces of the piece. The words bevel and chamfer overlap in usage; in general usage they are often interchanged, while in technical usage they ...

ed glass windows typical of the period. The property once included a

carriage house A carriage house, also called a remise or coach house, is an outbuilding which was originally built to house horse-drawn carriages and the related tack. In Great Britain the farm building was called a cart shed. These typically were open f ...

, which was demolished to make room for a YWCA annex.History of Cray Mansion
, Mankato YWCA, Accessed August 12, 2009. The house is approximately .Dan Linehan
Cray buyer, city at odds over rules
''Mankato Free Press'', February 16, 2008, Accessed August 12, 2009. Built adjacent to the equally lavish

Renesselaer D. Hubbard House The Rensselaer D. Hubbard House, (also known as the Hubbard House) is a historic house in Mankato, Minnesota, United States. Originally a 16-room private home, it is currently a museum. It the first private residence in Mankato to have indoor pl ...

, for several years the two owners engaged in a game of

one-upmanship One-upmanship, also called "one-upsmanship", is the art or practice of successively outdoing a competitor. The term was first used in the title of a book by Stephen Potter, published in 1952 as a follow-up to ''The Theory and Practice of Gamesmans ...

in upgrading their properties; the battle appeared to end when Cray added a top-floor

ballroom A ballroom or ballhall is a large room inside a building, the primary purpose of which is holding large formal parties called balls. Traditionally, most balls were held in private residences; many mansions and palaces, especially historic man ...

.Brian Ojanpa
Hubbard House to show off
, ''Mankato Free Press'', May 27, 2009, Accessed August 12, 2009. Both houses are listed on the NRHP. Cray was an important donor to what became the Mankato YWCA; when he and his wife died in 1927, the house and furnishings were willed to the organization along with an endowment for the upkeep of the building. The organization moved into the structure on November 12, 1927, using it initially as a communal house.History
, Mankato YWCA, Accessed August 12, 2009. The second floor housed at least eight girls until 1952.Dan Linehan
Cray still unrented
''Mankato Free Press'', April 25, 2009, Accessed August 12, 2009. The building was converted into the YWCA's offices as well as a

preschool A preschool, also known as nursery school, pre-primary school, or play school or creche, is an educational establishment or learning space offering early childhood education to children before they begin compulsory education at primary school ...

. The organization moved out in 2008; the move was prompted by expensive maintenance costs for the historic building.Dan Linehan
Fears raised for future of Cray Mansion
''Mankato Free Press'', February 11, 2008, Accessed August 12, 2009. The YWCA put the structure up for sale in 2006 for $682,400.Robb Murray
City to wind up with Cray Mansion
''Mankato Free Press'', January 11, 2007, Accessed August 12, 2009. The Mankato Area Foundation showed serious interest in purchasing the house for the city, but terms that would have allowed the YWCA to occupy the building with no other tenants for up to ten years while the city paid upkeep of $50,000 a year killed the deal.Dan Linehan
Cray mansion deal disintegrates
''Mankato Free Press'', April 4, 2007, Accessed August 12, 2009. When it became clear the structure would likely fall into private hands, historic preservationists, led by the Blue Earth County Historical Society, expressed concerns that the building might be significantly altered.Dan Linehan
Council pressured to save Cray Mansion
''Mankato Free Press'', February 12, 2008, Accessed August 12, 2009. The building sold on February 28, 2008, for $505,000; at the time its appraised value was $675,000. The buyer, a private developer, proposed to use the first floor as shared space and rent the rest as communal housing; however city ordinances prohibited a single unit from housing more than five unrelated people.Dan Linehan
Developer purchases Cray Mansion
''Mankato Free Press'', March 1, 2008, Accessed August 12, 2009. The building is now a multi-dwelling structure. After the sale of the Cray Mansion, the City of Mankato created the Heritage Preservation Commission, an official commission that can designate properties as historic and control what can and cannot be done to their exteriors.Dan Linehan
New commission on historic mission
''Mankato Free Press'', October 14, 2008, Accessed August 12, 2009.

References

{{DEFAULTSORT:Cray, Lorin, House Queen Anne architecture in Minnesota Houses completed in 1897 Houses on the National Register of Historic Places in Minnesota Neoclassical architecture in Minnesota Houses in Blue Earth County, Minnesota Mankato, Minnesota National Register of Historic Places in Blue Earth County, Minnesota 1897 establishments in Minnesota