The Riverside Hotel is a historic former hotel in St. Francis, Minnesota, United States. It was originally built around 1860 as a residence, then expanded into a hotel beginning in 1891. This period spanned the heyday of the local lumber industry that urbanized present-day

Anoka County, Minnesota Anoka County ( ) is the List of counties in Minnesota, fourth-most populous County (United States), county in the U.S. state of Minnesota. As of the 2020 United States census, 2020 census, its population was 363,887. The county seat and namesak ...

. The property was listed on the

National Register of Historic Places The National Register of Historic Places (NRHP) is the Federal government of the United States, United States federal government's official United States National Register of Historic Places listings, list of sites, buildings, structures, Hist ...

in 1979 for its local significance in the theme of commerce. It was nominated for being the only surviving commercial building dating to St. Francis's settlement as a lumber boomtown, and its association with the Woodbury family that helped found St. Francis and

Anoka, Minnesota Anoka ( ) is a city in and the county seat of Anoka County, Minnesota, United States. Its population was 17,142 at the 2010 United States Census, 2010 census. Anoka is the "Halloween Capital of the World" because it hosted one of the first Hal ...

. With . The building is now a restaurant called the Rum River Inn.

Origin

In 1855, Dwight Woodbury immigrated west to Anoka to join his son, Albert, who had preceded him. Dwight would go on to build the Woodbury House in Anoka, but he first made his mark in St. Francis. Members of the Woodbury family

plat In the United States, a plat ( or ) (plan) is a cadastral map, drawn to scale, showing the divisions of a piece of land. United States General Land Office surveyors drafted township plats of Public Lands Survey System, Public Lands Surveys to ...

ted both cities and built dams and

sawmill A sawmill (saw mill, saw-mill) or lumber mill is a facility where logging, logs are cut into lumber. Modern sawmills use a motorized saw to cut logs lengthwise to make long pieces, and crosswise to length depending on standard or custom sizes ...

s at both locations. Woodbury built a house overlooking the

Rum River The Rum River is a slow, meandering stream that connects Minnesota's Mille Lacs Lake with the Mississippi River. It runs for U.S. Geological Survey. National Hydrography Dataset high-resolution flowline dataThe National Map accessed October 5, ...

for himself and his family in about 1860. The two-story,

Gothic Revival Gothic Revival (also referred to as Victorian Gothic or neo-Gothic) is an Architectural style, architectural movement that after a gradual build-up beginning in the second half of the 17th century became a widespread movement in the first half ...

building has

clapboard Clapboard (), also called bevel siding, lap siding, and weatherboard, with regional variation in the definition of those terms, is wooden siding of a building in the form of horizontal boards, often overlapping. ''Clapboard'', in modern Am ...

siding with a

gable A gable is the generally triangular portion of a wall between the edges of intersecting roof pitches. The shape of the gable and how it is detailed depends on the structural system used, which reflects climate, material availability, and aesth ...

on the front façade, which makes an "L" shape. According to the National Register of Historic Places nomination form submitted in 1979, "the original architectural design features are limited to the semi-circular windows in the east gable end and in the front projecting gable" and brick now covers a portion of the building façade.

Conversion to inn

After Dwight Woodbury's death in 1884, his son John Woodbury moved to St. Francis. In 1891, he built a large

gristmill A gristmill (also: grist mill, corn mill, flour mill, feed mill or feedmill) grinds cereal grain into flour and Wheat middlings, middlings. The term can refer to either the grinding mechanism or the building that holds it. Grist is grain that h ...

in town to produce all types of flour, then expanded the family home and began to rent rooms to seasonal workers at his mill. The population of St. Francis peaked at the turn of the 20th century, which corresponded with the period of highest demand for industrial laborers' housing, when local industries included Shaddick Creamery, St. Francis Mill, St. Francis Starch Factory, and the St. Francis Canning factory. It was during this time the home took on the name of Riverside Inn. Contemporary newspaper advertisements indicate that different owners ran the hotel after 1900, with a J. H. Space the proprietor in 1906, and an Alex Simpson advertising his new ownership at another time. The inn continued to provide lodging to workers until the mill's closure in 1923.

References

{{National Register of Historic Places in Minnesota 1860 establishments in Minnesota 1891 establishments in Minnesota Hotel buildings completed in 1891 Hotel buildings on the National Register of Historic Places in Minnesota Houses completed in 1860 National Register of Historic Places in Anoka County, Minnesota

Origin

Conversion to inn

See also

References