The Redstone’s architecture

The Redstone was originally designed as a double house, with a brick wall through the middle of the structure from the floor of the basement to the top of the attic. Each side was virtually the same, with the exception of the curved windows in the front of the west side and the straight windows with wood wainscoting beneath them on the east side. Each side of the building had separate entrances, furnaces and sewer lines.

The building was converted by the Congdon family into nine small apartments in 1919. It stayed that way until it was renovated by HTK in 1986.

The tile floors in each entryway are original. The entrance area is wainscoted in quarter-sawn oak, a wood that was used considerably during the late 1800s.

The original parlor of the east side of the house is still used as a parlor. The woodwork in this room is cherry. A few of the doors and trim (those that were added during the apartment conversion in 1919) are birch. The front windows of this room form a bay, which is in contrast to the front parlor of the west side of the house (now our conference room), where the windows are curved. Our conference room, with the exception of its curved windows, was originally identical to the east-side parlor.

During the 1919 conversion, a lavatory was added in the west side entryway. It includes the only original piece of plumbing left in the building, the marble-top sink. The legs for the sink are from the Board of Trade Building, which was also designed by Oliver Traphagen. The high-top toilets on the main floor are also antique, but not original to the house. They were completely rebuilt with original parts.

The interior of the building has ten fireplaces, all but one of which still have the original tile. All have the original mantles, although parts of some are missing. The fireplaces were made for burning coal. They have all been capped off for heating and insurance purposes.

All of the light fixtures in the building are antique, except the fluorescent lights on the second and third floors (and the ceiling fans). Most of the antique lights are combination gas and electric fixtures, popular when the Redstone was built because electricity was relatively new and not well trusted. These fixtures were collected throughout the United States, but many were found in northern Minnesota.

There are many hardwood floors in the building. Originally, all the floors were quarter-sawn oak, but some were replaced with a narrower maple flooring during the conversion to apartments.

As was common in the late Victorian times, the Redstone features fancy ornamentation on the radiators and carving on the nickel-plated, brass hardware.

The antique furnishings throughout the house have been, for the most part, collected locally. The goal is to mix the modern equipment needed to efficiently operate an advertising agency with the personality and charm of antique furnishings that fit the architecture.