The Longest Stretch of Victorian Homes

In the stretch of the 4.5 miles of Summit Avenue stands 375 of 440 of the original Victorian homes. It’s the longest preserved stretch of historical homes in the United States! The most notable ones belonged to the Hill family, who are known for the spread of the railroad system in Minnesota and around. It was build in 1891, it’s 36,000 square feet and would cost 22.2 million dollars to build today! James J. Hill, the owner of the home, was known as “The Empire Builder”, which makes sense considering he could afford such a lavish home. This home is also available to tour and I can state it’s worth touring/ a breath-taking sight (the kitchen ceilings are even coated in gold!)

Original Hill House; Known as the James J. Hill House

James J. Hill also gifted mansions to his children on this street, imagine being gifted a mansion! His children’s homes are still around today, but I am not sure if they are still owned by distant relatives or other rich people. What’s interesting is the vast difference in architecture styles, which shows that his children had a variety of taste in homes.

Hill’s son’s gifted home; Made in inspiration of Southern homes

However, the very first home ever constructed dates back to 1855, even before Minnesota officially became a state. In 1859, six more homes were constructed, but sadly the last remaining home today from the original six is the Stuart house.

The Stuart House; One of the original six homes. 

Another home worth mentioning on this street is F. Scott Fitzgerald’s home, the famous author who wrote “The Great Gatsby”, the book everyone read in the 9th grade.This home isn’t available for tours, it’s just the James J. Hill house that visitors can see the inside of, but the outside is still gorgeous.

Fitzgerald home 

This street was not unique, every major city in America had streets of Victorian homes however, unlike the cities of New York or other historically places, Minneapolis chose to keep the homes and use them for other things (like apartment places) instead of destroying them for modernization. This has left it a unique sight because no other state has this amount of Victorian homes on a historic street left up to enjoy. Would you want a home on this street? I know I would!

The Carson Home in Eureka, California 

Where else would the most beautiful home be other than California, the state of broken dreams. The Carson Mansion, located in the old town of Eureka is considered to be the most beautiful Victorian home in the United States of America. Originally built in 1884 for a man named William Carson, who was a major woodsman and a co-founder of the Doolbeer and Carson Lumbar company; later bought out by the Pacific Lumber Company. Carson helped to build many dams and ship wood all over California, contributing to the growth of the state. When starting the construction of his home, Carson stated, “If I build it poorly, they would say that I am a damned miser; if I build it expensively, they will say I’m a show off; guess I’ll just build it to suit myself,” so despite not knowing him, a person can get a feel for his personality through the architecture of his home. The home cost 80,000 dollars (equivalent to 2,605,630 dollars today) and after the Carson family left the home in the 1950s, it was purchased for only 35,000 dollars by a private country club. This lead the home to being not open for tours to the public sadly and is only available to paying country club members.

What makes this home unique is it is a mixture of many different style of Victorian architecture styles including Eastlake, Italiante, Queen Ann and Stick (next week’s post will go into how to differentiate the styles). Many have described the home as “a baronial castle in Redwood.” What are your thoughts on this home? Do you think it is truly the most beautiful Victorian home in the United States?

Photos of the interior

Introduction

Although they are beautiful, Victorian homes exposed a variety of dangers to their residents. Start off this learning journey with stairs and learn about why they are called the “hidden killers”. Then move on to learn how toilets leaked methane into homes leading to explosions and how arsenic, a deadly poison, was used to create wallpapers for homes. After that learn how even the material in the house contained deadly material, asbestos and then how refrigerators leaked deadly gases! Lastly, how electricity often caused fires in homes. It was brand new and many had little knowledge on safety with outlets.

1.) Stairs

Have you ever tried walking up a narrow staircase in a Victorian home? Now imagine carrying a tray or any other item up this tiny, steep steps or even wearing the long dresses of those times.These staircases were often created in a hasty manner, resulting in staircases that led to many injuries and deaths. When I was growing up I lived in a Victorian homes and my sisters and I often had nasty falls down those staircases. Also for urban explorers, it’s important to be careful when walking up abandoned staircases, especially when they’ve been left unattended for so long which can result in rotten wood and bad injuries or death. Although I cannot find the exact number of those injured in Victorian times, stairs are still a “silent killer” with over one million emergency visits occur each year!

Example of narrow and steep staircases

2.) Bathrooms

Imagine using your bathroom, an amazing invention in the Victorian era, and all of a sudden your “water closet” (Victorian term for “toilet) explodes! This could lead to burns or death to those who were in the bathroom at the time of the explosion. The reasoning for this is methane coming from human waste buildup in the sewers. Toilets were new and they often would leak up the sewers resulting in methane leaking into the homes. At the time, if you needed to use the bathroom at night, a person would often bring a candle to accompany them on the trek to the toilet. However, when open flame comes in contact with methane it results in an explosion! Thankfully with modern technology this is no longer a common issue, however, there are still around 40,000 toilet related injuries each year.

3.Arsenic- Dyed Wallpaper

Many Victorian homes are accompanied by beautifully designed wallpaper that contain amazing details. However, if you come in contact with wallpaper that comes from either the 18th or 19th century and contain the color green, be wary! Arsenic was used to give these green hues not only in wallpaper but in clothing too. They didn’t know that arsenic is very poisonous and would lead to many deaths, just to get that pretty color green. In fact, arsenic cause at least 1/3rd of all poison related deaths in this period. Sadly today, drug-overdoses are the number one leading poison related death.

4.) Asbestos 

Today we know that Asbestos fibers can lead to cancer and death, but in the Victorian period it was know as “the wonder material”. It was used from everything to clothings and homes! Even to this day we don’t know how many people this effected in these time period. Today, globally 255,000 deaths related to asbestos occur today.

5. Refrigerators

During the Victorian age, like toilets, refrigerators was this really cool new invention. However, they were leaking gases into homes like sulfur dioxide, ammonia and methyl chloride! These gases attack respiratory systems and could potentially lead to deaths or disabilities. There are no statistics to show the amount of deaths that occurred in total.

6.) Electricity 

Until the Victorian time, electricity was only used for lighting. However, a burst of new electronic technologies were founded and things such as ‘electric tablecloths’ were entering homes. Also, a common problem was the overuse of outlets resulting in electrical fires (often a problem today too)! Although Victorian homes burnt down at an alarming rate, no one kept total count. However, on average today, there an average of 358,300 house fires every year.

Questions For the Reader

What surprised you most? What scared you most?