| Show MINNESOTA millionaires special cm of the deseret news minneapolis april 9 1893 millionaires in minnesota are thicker than mos in new jersey and you cant throw a stone on the streets of st paul without hiting a croesus or M minneapolis nn epolis the wonderful development of the country is rolling the dollars into this hopper of the great northwest and there are lumber millionaires milling kings and real estate magnates and railroad irold 0 id bugs galore this is the greatest lumber lumber center of the union and J nind the editor of the lumberman here tells me that minneapolis will sell more lumber than any city in the country in 1893 some of the richest timber dealers dealer sot of the world live here and weyerhauser the lumber king makes this his home no man in the world represents so much lumber as weyerhauser he owns timber all over the country and he buys by the millions lust just the other day he paid over for 50 feet of stan standing ding pine in northern rn minnesota and the syndicate of which he is the head will I 1 am told within four years control all the white pine me of wisconsin and minner minnesota ota it kas has a capital of it has great saw mills which turn out hundreds of millions of feet of lumber annually and whose product is worth close to a year vear it buys new lumber regions right along and it is looking out for new fields in the south and northwest FROM BEER TO BULLION this syndicate includes a small number ot of rich men but frederick weyerhauser is the richest and the brainiest brai niest of them he is a german and he began life in a brewery he came to this country without a cent and he worked for one dollar a day after leaving the brewery he piled slabs in a sawmill tor for a time at 1 1 25 a city ay and gradually worked his way up in lumber until he is worth millions he is as plain today at fifty as he was when he worked in his first sawmill and he labors just as hard he is wrapped up in his business and goes at times from lumber camp to lumber camp taking pot luck with his men and having a the thorough cough knowledg knowledge ge of every detail of his business he isa is a man of great ability full of cornmon common sense an and his four sons who are all in the lumber business take after him the boys have been well educated and his youngest son is now in yale college he gives a great d deal eal in charity and his eldest daughter who lately married a dutch reformed preacher of syracuse spent a year some tim before her marriage in going about among the lower classes of new york city doing charitable work T B walker of minneapolis is another lumber king he is said to be worth and his house here contains some of the finest paintings you will find in the united states SOME MINNESOTA MANSIONS I 1 wish I 1 could take you into the houses of these rich men of the northwest they are as fine as those of the money kings of new york or boston and nany many of them will rank with the oldest houses in europe in their artistic furn furnishing ishin there is toda today y more art displayed displace dis playe ain in the big bus business iDess blocks and jn in the fine residences of st paul and minneapolis than you will find in hi those of boston cleveland or cincinnati and money is shoveled out here on architecture art and I 1 might say religion as well the finest young mens christian association building in the world is here the minneapolis club has finer quarters than any club in washington city and there are a number of million dollar business blocks here which have more fine marbles and roman mosaic work than the cathedral of st marks at venice these men have made their money quickly and they s spend p end it freely the their i r homes are full of 01 beautiful things from all ov r the world take for instance that of mr thomas lowry the street railway millionaire of minneapolis it is a big old fashioned mansard house of about twenty rooms which are packed with art treasures old tapestries some of which would carpet a small 1 parlor hang upon the walls oriental rugs which tom lowry bought in egypt lie upon the floor and fine paintings of the great modern painters cover the walls rare devres vases stand on the mantels and pieces of really fine japanese aril art and of rare east indian workmanship are scattered here and there about the rooms the house is in fact a museum of curios but they have been so well selected and arranged that it is a most comfortable home HOW TOM LOWRY MADE A FORTUNE and just here I 1 want to say a word about tom lowry every one calls him tom here and he is is every ones friend hie he is still in his forties but he controls a capital of and his income is probably something like aioo a year he came here from logan county illas as a young lawyer he wanted to go to some place where he could be known as something more than just father lowrys lowres son his father was a friend to abraham lincoln and had lincoln not been elected president lowry should have studied law in his office he was poor when he came here but he be at once jumped into a big practice and he was soon engaged in nearly every speculation of the town along back in the seventies the horse car street railway line of minneapolis was in a bad way and tom lowry borrowed of the security bank and bought it he improved it extended the lines and so managed it that he was soon able to get hold of the st paul street car lines as well and he now practically owns the street car lines of the two cities he has made his system the best it is said in the united states and his credit is such that at the time of the Ba rings failure he was able to raise in new york at a low rate of interest his street car lines were changed from horse cars to electricity in twelve months and he has miles of track the overland trolley is used and he tells me that the conduit system he tried for one of the st paul lines was a failure his franchise of the two cities is an exclusive one and it runs I 1 am told for a long term of years these car lines have immense shops here and power houses covering acres they can make everything connected with an electric car line and it will not be surprising if they eventually add a great reat manufacturing car industry to their business gu business siness mr low lowry bezas is s eminently fitted for doing this he has the best of business brains and his credit is such that he can get any reasonable number of millions at four per cent tom lowry is is a man of strong friendships he is as well known in new york and washington as he is here he was ohe of the few men who had access to blaine at all times and he largely aided senator washburn in tiding over the financial troubles in which he was 4 involved at the time of his election to the senate he is a good story teller and it is said that he knows shakespeare by heart and can repeat paradise lost from be beginning gi nning to end he has a beautiful wife and a very bright family I 1 am told that he had a fiery J red head as a boy though his hair is now a beautiful brown and his whiskers are almost black two of his girls have red hair the youngest of these was only five years old when her little baby brother casborn was born she saw the bald headed baby and that night they say she closed her prayer as follows please god bless baby brother but dont let him have red hair we have have enough red heads in this family already SENATOR HOME senator washburn and mr lowry are interested in the soo road together and they are rapidly pushing this on to connect with the canadian pacific when this is done it will form the last great trunk line across the continent I 1 am told by senator washburn that the soo road has now more than it can do to haul its local freight and its lumber ship ments are enormous there are millions of telegraph poles lying along it await ing shipment and it promises to pay well speaking of washburn his residence here is worth a fortune it is an immense white stone surrounded by ten acres of ground every foot of which is valuable he has gotten out ot of his financial troubles and is is again rich IM HILLS MANSION st paul has dozens of great houses which would do credit to any eastern city but the residence of mr james J hill the great Nor thren railway magnate is one of the really fine houses of the world george W childs when he visited it said it surpassed that of the Vander bilts in in many ways and that he 1 13 liked it better than his own home at t wooten I 1 visited it in company with mr hills friend mr geo A bracket yesterday and I 1 like it far better than the home of north the nitrate kin king which I 1 saw in england last summer it it is more homelike and less gaudy it is located in st paul on summit avenue 0 1 and its grounds slope down toward the mississippi river it has acres of grounds about it and its windows oath give ve wide views of the hills and valleys odthe mississippi the house is an immense two story building of brown stone put together in the rough and crowned with a steel roof which slopes down in many gables A porte cocheres biz bis enough for an ordinary house under which you ott could haul the biggest wagon load of hay you have ever seen without touching its walls or its sides forms the entrance to it and as you go into this you are impressed with the massiveness and solidity of the structure the house looks as though it were built to outlast the ages the walls are about four feet thick and in const constructing construction it t mahill mr hill went down thirty eight feet feet until he struck the solid bed rock for the foundation this is one of the characteristics of his work he goes to A aaa efm the bottom of everything before he bins begins it and builds substantially and without frills or filigrees filigreed fili grees his railroad offices at st paul are severely plain in their construction and you see the same good taste displayed about every part of his house the front doors are of massive oak beautifully carved and you pass through them over a vestibule of roman mo mosaic as care carefully fudy inlaid as a florentine breastpin into a grand hall finished in antique oak As you go in you note that the walls are of carved oak and that the beilin ceiling 9 is of the same wood in great panels ne s you ou come first into a grand half hall nearly as long as the promenade corridor of the white house but far more beautifully finished it must be a hundred feet long and about twenty feet wide vide and it runs from the picture gallery gallary at one end to the great mahogany dining room at the other mother its roof is made up of tour four great panels in rafters of carved oak each four feet wide and these are upheld by eight fluted oak columns each of which is as big around as the waist of a good sized man the walls of this hall are hung with fine paintings its floor is covered with soft rugs and it is lighted as are the large rooms of the house in a most wonderful way from the center of each of these panels strung as it were upon wires seems to hang bang down a bushel of diamonds these are prisms of cut glass in the shape of a basket and lighted by electricity which coming from globes behind them and reflected by mirrors above make a most wonderfully effective illumination there are four of 4 these diamond baskets in the hall one in the dining room another in the library and others in the music reception and drawing rooms A chandelier always looks out of place lace in a house it makes a big bif room look look larger and a small room took ook smaller but these diamond baskets take up no room and they are the most beautiful things I 1 have ever seen in house lighting from the center of this hall rises the staircase between these fluted oak columns b by easy landings to the second story and X looking down upon you from it as you come in are great windows of stained glass which throw a soft light into the fall hall at the right and left of the stair cabe are grates covered by mantels of the same massive oak and over one of these is a painting of mrs hall and the other of mr hall THE DINING ROOM the dining room is is about fifty feet long by thirty feet wide it is finished in south american mahogany and the furniture is of the same wood the walls from your feet to above your head are paneled in the richest of mahogany which has a polish equal to that of the finest piano the ceiling is made up of panels framed in great mahogany rafters and the panels are of rough stucco covered with gold leaf window seats run around the end of the dining room sitting upon which you can look out over the mississippi there is a great sideboard of maho mahogany any twelve feet long filled with the finest of china and cut glass blass in two corners comers of the room are glass s covered cupboards filled with beau beautiful ticul glass ware and on the sideboard and other places about the room are pieces of the finest of all kinds of china not a few being of devres and royal dresden the butler was with me while I 1 stood in the room and he told me the cost of furnishing it was over f the dining table is of carved mahogany and it is of immense size in fact all the furniture in this house is fully from one third to twice as large as that you find in ordinary houses mrs hill told me that when she came into the house she was surprised at the immense size of the rooms and she was in despair as to how she could make them look smaller and more homelike she did so by having the furniture made in proportion and the result is that the whole house has a homelike character and everything is harmonious in mrs hills bed room for instance the bed of white maple is six feet wide but it does not look larger than an ordinary one and I 1 was not aware that it was so large until my attention was called to it the sofas are very long and the chairs and tables match even the lamps have lamps been made larger than those 0 of ordinary houses and the result is a com combine bilia tion which you will not find in the great palaces of europe nor in the other fine houses of the world speaking of lamps one on the center table in th the e music room has a body two feet high and is fully a foot in diameter mrs hill hunted for it for a long time and finally had it made out of a vase which she found which just harmonized with the coloring of the room THE DEN OF A RAILROAD MAGNATE the living room of the house is the library and just off kofl this is mr hills den it is not more than ten feet square and it is walled in mahogany it has an air of solidity about it and it is furnished elegantly but simply on the book cases on one side of the room are great volumes of railway reports and railway magazines while a globe stands in one corner there is a little library table under the window with paper and pens on it and at the rear of the room there is a mahogany door which opens into a great reat vault in which is stored at times I 1 Y doubt not securities which are worth millions the library is furnished in mahogany bronze figures of henry clay and daniel webster stand on each end of the low book cases which run around the room on either hand as you enter the great library table is covered with papers and magazines and the room looks as though it were used the collection of books is a good one all of the great authors of fiction and science may be found upon the shelves and you will find french and german books as well as english mr hill is a good french scholar and both himself and his wife have good literary taste they are both read and their domestic relations are of the happiest nature THE BASEMENT AND THE ATTIC the basement and the attic of this great mansion are to me ine even more interesting te than the living rooms the house must have a quarter of an acre of floor space and the basement is a house in itself it has a hall so wide that you could drive a wagon through it without razing grazing the walls and its rooms are all farge large airy and well lighted the floors are of marble |
