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The Minnesota Hospital (Seymour, Sabin & Co.)

 

Seymour, Sabin & Co. was a large manufacturing firm in Stillwater, employing hundreds of workers (think Andersen Windows). In 1878, the company, having purchased the whole block four years earlier, built an elegant house with a central hallway and front-window bay at 1121 North Fourth Street. Why exactly they built such a elaborate $1,300 structure is uncertain, but in the mid-1880s, it served as The Minnesota Hospital, one of three hospitals in Stillwater at that time.

The proprietor of the hospital, Dr. Jellison, rented the building and funded the operation with the first kind of hospital insurance. Jellison sold two types of insurance mostly to the lumberjacks working in the woods over the winter. One type of insurance, sold at five dollars (2-3 days wages) entitled the beneficiary, if sick or injured, to board, nursing, and medical attendance. The more expensive option, ten dollar insurance, covered board, nursing, medical attendance, and also provided the patient, if injured, the sum of five dollars per week until his recovery. The lumber camps were thoroughly canvassed, and it was believed that several hundred of these insurance policies were sold.

While this could have been a successful business strategy, the Minnesota Hospital went broke in 1886, and a writ was issued by the municipal court to reclaim the furnishings of the building, among them, six stoves and ten bedsteads. A second homeopathic hospital downtown also soon failed, leaving the city hospital, now Lakeview Hospital, as the only survivor. Its financial success must be attributed to a devoted group of local women who spent most of their efforts raising funds for the hospital.

In the meantime, Seymour, Sabin & Co. had declared bankruptcy, and the hospital building at 1121 North Fourth Street passed into the hands of the Minnesota Commercial Company, a corporation formed specifically to sell the real estate left from Seymour, Sabin & Co. The Minnesota Corporation held the building until 1907 when it was finally sold as a residence to a private party. According to a building permit, the addition on the rear of the house was added in 1901.

Over the years the old house became increasingly decrepit, but in the 1980s, a local resident, Frank Langer, purchased the house and thoroughly restored it, including lifting the home to put a new basement under it. The current owner has taken great care over the years to maintain all the original elements of the house, including the old windows, the tin roof, and the delightful quatrefoil window in the north gable.

Source(s): Information complied by Donald Empson, Empson Archives on 1/2/2009 Building date and value is from the original annual tax assessors’ rolls, 1874-1878 (on microfilm in the St. Croix Collection, Stillwater Public Library). The present owner has in her basement a piece of siding removed from the front of the house, on which the shadow of a sign reading “The Minnesota Hospital” may be seen. City of Stillwater building permit application #1045. A newspaper article detailing the hospital appears in The Messenger, May 15, 1886. For more information about the house and the neighborhood, see A History of the South Half of the Carli & Schulenburg Addition Residential Area by Donald Empson, 2001.

Washington County Parcel Identification Number (PIN): 2103020430006

Common Property Name: The Minnesota Hospital (Seymour, Sabin & Co.)

Neighborhood: Carli and Schulenburg Addition

State Historic Preservation Office Inventory Number: WA-SWC-1137

Construction Date: 1878

Builder:

Architect:

Architectural Style: Italianate