4 reasons to visit Glensheen in Winter

Dan Hartman

Published in

The Glensheen Collection

4 min readJan 29, 2019

Don’t miss this spectacular season.

www.glensheen.org

1. Feel like a Congdon

If you ever truly wanted to feel like a Congdon. This is the season.

We have 10% of the audience we had in December.

We have so few visitors this time of the year, that you pretty much get the whole mansion to yourself, like the Congdons would have had it. Seriously. We had a day last week with only 8 visitors all day.

Main Hallway — completely empty of people… because it is January midweek.

In January and February, you get these rooms pretty much to yourself.

2. Oddly, it is a crazy beautiful time of the year to visit.

This place is built for winter. A Minnesota Winter.

This Mansion has 15 fireplaces, even though the entire mansion has been heated with radiator heating since it was built in 1909. It was meant to be an escape from the frigid Minnesota temps and gusting winds off of Lake Superior. Even though it is 39 rooms it has an incredibly cozy feel to it this time of the year. Trust me, many of us have talked about starting a fire in the library and reading a book during the cold spells of January. (The fire part won’t happen).

Master Bedroom fireplace (ignore the museum rope barrier)

3. New self-guided tour with Audio Tour

This is the first winter that the entire house is self-guided, so you can stay and enjoy Glensheen as long as you want. We will have a staff member staffed at the front door to greet you like the Butler would have a hundred years ago. As part of the new self-guided tour we have installed new interpretative signs in every room of the mansion. Plus we have created a new Glensheen App which has even more information on every room.

* * * For some reason… we don’t have any photos of the signs * * *

Double plus, we have also loaded up an audio tour to the app, in case you desire that as well. We recommend you bring your own headphones, but we also rent adaptors and sell cheap headphones in case you forget. To be honest though… usually you are the only one in the house, so we don’t care if you just use your speaker on your smart phone.

The mobile app comes equipped with an audio tour — bring yourself some headphones!

4. Go snowshoe and enjoy the grounds. Or just enjoy the grounds.

The grounds of Glensheen look remarkably different in the winter. The snow covered estate and mansion look incredibly beautiful in the winter season.

Some of the most awe struck days of my tenure at Glensheen have been snowy mornings at Glensheen. Sometimes equally as beautiful are the incredibly cold days, because the snow glistens like a million crystals scattered about the estate. Plus, Lake Superior with its gentle sea smoke is something to witness close up.

Come in snow pants and sit in our Adirondack chairs. Throw your snowshoes up in the air and relax.

Come enjoy the Sea Smoke of Lake Superior

To really enjoy the raw beauty of it, I highly recommend to come in the morning. I also recommend to rent a pair snowshoes in our ticket house which come free with any purchase of any tour, including a grounds tour which is only $5.