Crocus Hill, Saint Paul, Minnesota
Just in time for Easter, I'll give you a historic picture of Finches nesting on Crocus Hill.
{George C. Finch & Nellie G. Finch in carriage by residence on Crocus Hill, St. Paul.}
And they had quite the nest -- an 1886 Queen Anne mansion designed by society architect William Channing Whitney. (He had a name right out of central casting.)
The Crocus Hill neighborhood has always been prestigious. It's near Macalester College and the grand houses of Grand Avenue and just a few blocks from the F. Scott Fitzgerald House.
{1903 map source}
The Finches' Crocus Hill house is, in Fitzgerald's words, "a colossal affair by any standard." Let's follow the Finches' footsteps from the porte cochere...
and into the main hall and front parlor/music room:
I'll call it a music room, because, as Fitzgerald would say, "Get a load of that colossal pipe organ."
How do you decorate around a pipe organ? How about with a banquette for your appreciative audience, like this:
Stan Topol's design could also work in this room, which at first I thought was the dining room, but...
I'm pretty sure this is the dining room...
given its proximity to the kitchen:
The kitchen has plenty of space to store your cookbooks, and only cookbooks, because your other books...
can go here...
here...
and...
here:
The second floor has this great sleeping porch:
If it were mine, I'd decorate it with springtime in mind...
which should also have a light and airy Sarah Richardson design:
{source}
It also has a room converted into a dressing room/closet.
There's definitely enough room for separate hers and his closets. (Don't you love that little call system?)
This house has seven bedrooms and seven bathrooms in 9,400 square feet.
There's also a laundry room/kitchenette, either on the third or fourth floor. Wish I had the floorplans.
The fourth floor is not original to the house. I'm guessing it was built in 1915. It was used for billiards.
I'm pleased that Pinterest provided not only a "top floor billiards room" but also one with matching antelope carpet...
...although this top floor billiards room looks more like our top floor:
Check out the rooftop deck and its view:
From here we have a view of the room below, with its row of road flares/smudge pots. (Mr. If It Were Mine recognized what they were.)
I like the symmetry of the pots all lined up in a row, both inside the house and out:
The house has two entrances, one from Crocus Place...
and one from Crocus Hill:
Plenty of space to swing your carriage around.
My favorite part is that this grandiose house has two little yellow swings in the backyard.
This is normally where I would write about the Finch family -- only the Finch family didn't own the house for very long. The Finch House is really the Rice-Finch-Egan-Merriam-Flarsheim-Baer House. (And then some.) All the "and then some" is here.
If you're looking to nest longer than the Finches, the listing is here.
