The Hotel to the Stars in Winona

Have you ever looked around Winona, or any city, and tried to picture what life was like right there, hundreds of years ago? What about the purpose and use of a specific building? I have always been interested in knowing what The Kensington building was like when Winona was first founded because the outside of the building is so complex looking and beautiful. The city of Winona is such an old and timely place that I knew it had to have been the home of something more unique and have something more than meets the eye. I think it’s very important that people cherish and value these old buildings with so much history within its’ walls.

The Winona Hotel was a former hotel building in Winona, Minnesota. The five story Gothic styled building was constructed in 1889. It was listed on the National Register of Historic Places in 1983 for having local significance in the themes of architecture and commerce. It was nominated for its locally distinctive Romanesque Revival architecture and origin as a hotel. As you walk through the hotel, imagine that everything in the room and the room itself being perfectly symmetrical. The colors throughout this building are darker colors like red, brown, tan, and green. The first room, which is the lobby, had a couple of chairs, couches and tables, but other than that, the room was very much open, spacious, and organized. There wasn’t much detail put into the décor of the rooms. There were just enough so that it wouldn’t be overpowering or look cluttered. The building is characterized by wide arches, thick columns, decorative pilasters, pointed towers, and rough-hewn stones.

This type of style and architecture is usually quite expensive, due to the nature of construction. The hotel would cost somewhere between two dollars and three dollars a night whereas now a hotel costs anywhere between fifty dollars to one hundred dollars a night. The Kensington now being more of a permanent living space, it costs around $3,500 a year, meaning that you would be paying three times as more now compared to the late nineteenth and twentieth centuries. There are also more amenities and utilities in each unit now as to how it was. Now it has air conditioning, is smoke free, has an elevator, recreation room, and many more newer features that the original Winona Hotel did not have or offer. Since this building use to be a hotel, they used to serve food there to their guests. Their food was much cheaper than food at a hotel would be now. For example, a steak is $3.75 and today a steak can be up to thirty dollars depending on where you go. So many things have changed throughout time in this hotel. The only thing that has remained intact is the place of the building and the outside architecture.

Early in 1889, a group of prominent businessmen began to seriously consider the possibility of forming a corporation to provide Winona with a hotel, thus creating the Winona Hotel. It was built for the sole purpose of giving performers a place to lodge that were coming in and out of town during show tours. Once the hotel was up and running by the end of 1889, the hotel was quite lively with performers and excited theatergoers, especially on a night where there was a show.

The location of the Opera House built in rear of the Winona Hotel facing Johnson Street was most opportune. It was easy access and central being built on the main line of the street railway. This hotel was built not just by the Opera House, but also by a theater, it was essentially in conjunction with the opera and theater houses. One might see several stars of the time such as Lillian Gish, Charles Winnegar, Madame Schuman-Heinck, Sarah Bernhardt, The Barrymore’s, Otis Skinner, and many more perform there and stay at the Winona Hotel next door. It was primarily the influx of New York stage personalities into the Midwest just before the turn into the 20th century that led to the establishment of the city’s Winona Hotel. Late in the 1880s, as Winona was gradually evolving into the Midwest’s most enthusiastic center for legitimate theater between Chicago and Minneapolis. It was great for the hundreds of out-of-town theater lovers that came into the city each week and was a fine theatre destination.

As I stated earlier, there were many famous people that stayed at the hotel, one being Otis Skinner. Otis Skinner was an American stage actor active during the late nineteenth and twentieth centuries. He starred and produced many plays and recreations of films. He performed on Broadway a couple of times and toured the all over the United States performing. Otis Skinner wrote Mr. Burlingame, the owner of the opera house, in April 1920; “You are wise to quit the theater end of things. The institution isn’t the old delightful one it was when you and I first met. In another year or so I shall be out of it. I’ve worked very hard and I need the rest and quiet. Good wishes to Mrs. B.” Mr. Skinner’s first appearance in Winona was in 1893, as leading man for Madame Modjeska.

A few presidents actually visited and stayed at the Winona Hotel. President McKinley had given a speech on the balcony at the Winona Hotel to hundreds of people in 1898. In 1909, another President, William Taft, gave a speech at the Winona Hotel where many people came to listen to him speak. He toured and spoke in 259 cities across the United States. At both of their stops in Winona, Minnesota, they checked in to stay at the Winona Hotel.

A story that I read about was when the famous abolitionist Frederick Douglass came to Winona. Douglass was born a slave, faced prejudice and violence in his fight for passage of the 15th Amendment giving black citizens the right to vote. He spoke in Winona and Saint Paul during his campaign to change the constitution. Following the Civil War, Radical Republicans in Congress introduced a series of laws and constitutional amendments to try to secure civil and political rights for black people. This wing of the Republican Party was called “radical” because of its strong stance on these and other issues. The right that provoked the greatest controversy, especially in the North, concerned black male suffrage: the right of the black man to vote.In 1867, Congress passed a law requiring the former Confederate states to include black male suffrage in their new state constitutions. Ironically, even though African American men began voting in the South after 1867, the majority of Northern states continued to deny them this basic right.

It was towards the end of his life in 1890, that he came back to the little city of Winona in Minnesota. He was invited here by the Winona Library Association. But, when he showed up in town, the owners of the Winona Hotel refused to let them stay there. I found this extremely shocking because I have no idea why the people at the hotel would refuse someone like him, along with his family, to spend their money there. The people of Winona were outraged by that and they invited Douglass to stay in their homes. To me, it says something really good about Winona that there were all these people that were upset by that and willing to take this person into their home.

One of the more popular and interesting stories happened in 1927. On a Wednesday morning, two people were found dead in their hotel room at the Winona Hotel. Prominent businessman Irwin Jacobs and his wife, Alexandra were the ones that were found in an apparent murder-suicide, according to a close friend and business associate. The bodies were found in a bed along with a gun. Jacobs for much of his career was a nationally known investor who looked for unrecognized value in companies and sometimes made huge profits with short-term stock trades. Alexandra Jacobs was an accomplished painter and a devoted mother and grandmother who avoided the limelight that her husband often relished. The case was never solved for who killed who or if it was Irwin or Alexandra who did it.

Now known as The Kensington, the building has been converted to senior and handicapped apartments. It cost two million dollars in renovation. There are 46 apartment rooms in the building and about 10,000 square feet of commercial area on the first floor. It is still standing and is still apartments for the elderly. In between the building being a hotel and apartments, it was almost turned into a parking lot. April of 1982, the Winona Hotel was pretty much abandoned. The owner, Julia Bolland was notified that it either be boarded up or demolished and used for a parking lot if she didn’t respond within twenty days. Adoption of that resolution would cost the city at least $15,000 for boarding up the structure and about $80,000 for demolition.

Since the building is still up and running today, I bet you can guess that they just decided to board it up for the time being. In 1983, the abandoned Winona Hotel turned into the Kensington, apartments for senior living. The walls would now be filled with life and people again. But a few years later, another project almost added onto the Kensington apartments.

Winona county and city of Winona officials have ironed out a tentative agreement that would provide 50 additional parking spaces for the apartment project on the former Winona Hotel land. The developer, Jon Rappaport had asked the city council to use tax-increment financing to help fund a parking ramp between the apartments and the now standing county courthouse and to be provided with fifty parking spaces. The county board rejected the parking ramp according to the board chairman, Charlie Smith. Apparently, they didn’t add the ramp and parking spaces because the county may want to use that land for its own expansion in the future, “The whole point is we don’t want to give up that parking lot now” (Smith). The board had also agreed that it isn’t really the right place for a parking ramp to be. However, the county gave the city 28 spaces on the east side of the parking lot. In the long run, this will cost the city much less and it has room for improvements later on in the future.

The Kensington today has simply remained the senior living apartments it has for years now. There hasn’t been much remodeling, add-ons, or any other kind of projects or any interesting stories because it is just a place for seniors to live with assistance and with peers their own age. The best place for senior to live in Winona, would definitely be at the Kensington because of what they have to offer. The Kensington offers many different kinds of activities at their location for residents. These activities generally allow residents to maintain healthy lifestyles by encouraging movement and socializing with their peers.Being able to chat with other residents becomes an important part of many peoples’ lives and Kensington offers common spaces indoors to support that need. The benefit of living in an assisted living community is that making meals can be costly and time consuming process so Kensington provides meals for residents. Staff is awake and available 24 hours a day so if any emergencies occur no matter the time, there will be someone ready to help. For example, residents with diabetes monitor their insulin levels, is clearly an important task and Kensington can help with that task. If a resident needs assistance moving from a bed to a wheelchair, this facility has staff who can help.

It has remained the historic and beautiful building it has always been. I believe that it is so important that people value the small and usually, unnoticed things around them. The building is so timely and historic which makes me love Winona even more because there aren’t many cities like still have buildings still standing since the 1880s. It makes a small city like Winona feel like a closer knit community. The building holds so many stories and so many memoires within its walls. It adds so much beauty to the city of Winona and I hope it will always remain standing around the buildings that have been built around it over the years.

*The research from this essay came from the archives at the Winona County Historical Society.