Informative Essay: A Brief History Of The Foshay Tower

In downtown Minneapolis, the Foshay Tower stands as an important part of Minnesotan history, as a building once distinct in its height. Located on Marquette Avenue, it was once considered the tallest building in Minneapolis, before being surpassed by skyscrapers that were constructed years later. The building was constructed largely by Wilbur Foshay, who made a name for himself first in buying water and electric utilities throughout the midwest, and later by being convicted of mail fraud. The building itself holds a unique history: one of criminal activity, inopportune timing, and of a building constructed to extreme heights.

The Foshay Tower, designed by Wilbur Foshay in conjunction with Léon Eugène Arnal—the chief designer for architectural firm Magney & Tusler—was opened in August 1929. The building, modeled after the Washington Monument, is representative of art deco design which was most popular in the 1920s. As is noted in the Architectural Guide to the Twin Cities,

“The tower, clad in Indiana limestone…[rises] from a

broad two-story base lined with storefronts [and] features four identical windows per floor on each side of the tower” (32). One of the faults with the building itself was that the structure had an inward slant, making windows slightly different on every floor, which made ordering drapes a difficult task. For decades and even now, The Foshay Tower has stood as a paramount example of art deco design in the Twin Cities.
When visiting the Foshay Tower in class, the interior design of the building looked very
different than it would have initially. As it has recently been converted into a luxury hotel, the lobby was bathed in luminescent pink and purple lights, creating a distinct mood. The observation deck at the top of the building seems very similar to the building’s original design: perhaps restored, but not noticeably renovated. The deck provides a fantastic and encompassing view of the Twin Cities, and it is at this altitude that one can see exactly how tall the Foshay Tower is and how it was once the tallest building in Minneapolis.
With its thirty-two floors, the Foshay Tower became the tallest building in Minneapolis and representative of Foshay’s empire.

Previously, the tallest building was the Rand Tower; the Foshay Tower loomed over it by 137 feet. The building took Foshay and Arnal three years to develop and build, but the success of the building was short-lived. Prior to the opening of the building, Foshay contacted John Philip Sousa to write and conduct a march for the building’s opening. Although the march was written, Sousa refused to have it performed. The $20,000 check, written from Foshay to Sousa, bounced as the result of the newly-arrived Great Depression. The building was opened at an extremely inopportune time, as a short two months after its completion, the United States experienced the devastating effects of the stock market crash. This was the downfall of the building, and because of the stock market crash, the building would soon go into

receivership.
The Foshay Tower, although steeped in a history of art deco glamor and record-breaking heights, also contained a history of criminal activity. In 1932, a few years after the stock market crash, Foshay was imprisoned due to mail fraud and creating a pyramid scheme with his stocks. The original court order sentenced Foshay to fifteen years in Prison, but President Franklin Roosevelt reduced the sentence to five years. Ultimately, Foshay served a mere three years in prison, being released early for good behavior. Following his release from prison, Foshay received a pardon from President Harry Truman, but ultimately left the Twin Cities in a move to Colorado. The building went into receivership after the stock market crash, which meant it was not necessarily in Foshay’s control any longer. Businesses continued to operate out of the tower for a number of decades, until the tower closed to remodel into a hotel—in which event, almost every business operating inside of the tower moved out.
As is often the case with a metropolitan environment, the city built up. As Larry Millett notes in Lost Twin Cities, “the drive to build higher was frustrated for many years by the one-hundred-foot height limit imposed in 1890...Five years later came the nineteen-story, 252-foot-high First National-Soo Line Building…[which] reigned over the city’s skyline until 1929 when it was eclipsed first by the twenty-seven-story Rand Tower and then by that fabulous skyscraper-cum-obelisk, the Foshay Tower (242). Indeed, in recent decades, Minneapolis, contrasting to Saint Paul, has made a habit of building upwards in competing heights. The Foshay Tower, which was once the tallest building by 1920s standards, was eventually overshadowed by newer skyscrapers, such as the Wells Fargo Center, the IDS Center, and the Capella Tower. The Foshay Tower remained the tallest building in Minneapolis for several decades, until the IDS Center opened in 1973. The IDS, the tallest building in Minneapolis, currently stands at 792 feet tall, 344 more than the Foshay Tower. What was once the city’s tallest building soon became minuscule compared to the rest. The Foshay Tower was added to the National Register of Historic Places in 1978, and later converted to the W Hotel in 2006, which opened two years later in August 2008.
The Foshay Tower stands as a building integral to Minnesota’s history. It stands as a legacy, a building once the tallest Minneapolis skyscraper, and although its height has been far surpassed by more modern structures, its history has not been diminished. The observation deck allows for an all-encompassing view of the city, and perhaps also a view of what Foshay’s empire once was. Although the inopportune timing of the building’s construction left the tower to go into receivership, the building still stands as an integral part of the designed environment: now, not as office space, but as an elegant hotel, sustaining the historical impact and legacy of the building.