Chauncey and Martha Griggs House, Summit Avenue, Cathedral Hill, Saint Paul, MN
Image by w_lemay
Built in 1883-1884, this Richardsonian Romanesque-style mansion was designed by Clarence H. Johnston, Sr. for Chauncey Wright Griggs, a former Colonel in the Union Army during the Civil War, and a wholesale lumber merchant and part owner of the firm of Griggs and Foster, and his wife, Martha Ann Gallup Griggs. The house was inhabited by Chauncey and Martha Griggs until they moved to Tacoma, Washington in 1887. In 1910, the house suffered a massive fire that gutted the interior, after which a massive reconstruction was undertaken. In 1939, the house was donated to the St. Paul Arts and Science Center by Roger B. Shepard, and the front dormer was replaced with a large and distinctive skylight shortly thereafter, to allow the conversion of the attic room behind it into a painting studio. The house has since been converted back into a private residence, and is widely rumored to be haunted. The house features a rusticated brownstone exterior with arched windows, stone cornices, gable parapets with decorative trim, shingled oriel windows and gable ends, and a circular tower with carved stone relief panels. The house is a contributing structure in the Historic Hill District, listed on the National Register of Historic Places in 1976.