Stand on South 9th Street and look up, and you’ll see roughly what people saw in 1889: a three-story brick apartment house with a brownstone front, designed by architect Harry Wild Jones. Step inside one of our studios, though, and you’ll find an induction cooktop, fast Wi-Fi, a keyless lock, and quiet heating and cooling you control yourself.
Getting those two worlds to live comfortably in one building was one of the most interesting parts of the 2019 restoration — only the third renovation in the building’s 130-year history. Here’s how the modern half of that story happened, and what it means when you stay with us.
The coal room is now the nerve center
Like most 19th-century buildings, the Oaklands was built around coal. The coal room still sits in the basement — and during the restoration, it’s exactly where our crew spliced in the building’s fiber internet. The fiber line was literally spooled on bricks still stained black with coal dust.
The old coal chute got a second life too: it’s now the pathway for the electrical service that powers the whole building — mini-split heat and air conditioning, induction cooktops, personal instant hot-water systems, Wi-Fi and Ethernet, security cameras, keyless locks, and all-LED lighting. If you’re curious about the man who designed the building this technology now lives in, we wrote about Harry Wild Jones, the architect behind Oaklands on 9th — his papers are preserved in the University of Minnesota’s archives.
Heat and AC without a single window unit
After the 2016 fire, the building sat abandoned with no roof, and three Minnesota winters destroyed the original boiler. Rather than rebuild an old-style system, the restoration crew installed ductless mini-splits — every studio has its own heating and cooling unit, with the compressors tucked up on the roof. That means no ductwork carved through 1889 walls, no vents sticking out of the historic brick, and no window AC units in the summertime. The U.S. Department of Energy calls ductless mini-splits one of the best retrofit options for buildings like ours, and they’ve proven it here: they kept studios toasty even at 20 below.
All-new plumbing behind original walls
The plumbing got the same treatment. The crew ripped out all of the old cast iron and started from scratch — partly out of respect for Minnesota’s famously strict manometer pressure test, which the restoration team noted is unique to our state. Every toilet, sink, and shower in the building sits on brand-new pipe. It’s the kind of invisible work you only notice by what you don’t experience: no rattles, no rust, no surprises.
The one door that saw it all
Our favorite detail in this whole story is a door. As far as the restoration team could tell, exactly one door in the entire building is both original and in its original location: the door to the basement coal room. It carries a scar across its top from a basement fire in the 1970s, and it spent three years partly underwater while the building stood roofless. A cleanup and a little WD-40 on the hinges brought it back — and today it opens onto the electrical room, guarding the fiber lines and breaker panels that run the building. If you like these layers-of-history details, don’t miss the story of the salvaged 1889 materials hidden throughout the building.
What this means for your stay
All of that invisible work is why a night — or a month — here feels effortless. Every furnished studio has a full kitchen with an induction cooktop, fast Wi-Fi, its own quiet climate control, and keyless entry, with all utilities and free laundry included. Stay a night, a week, or month-to-month with no contracts, in Good, Better, and Best tiers, right in the middle of downtown — check Meet Minneapolis’s downtown events calendar for what’s happening while you’re here, or hop aboard Minneapolis Trolley Tours to see the city the fun way. And if you’re drawn to restored 1880s buildings with stories to tell, our sister property 300 Clifton, a mansion bed & breakfast in Loring Park, is cut from the same cloth.
Ready to sleep inside a piece of Minneapolis history — with 21st-century comfort humming quietly behind the brick? Book your studio here or give us a call at (612) 314-5124. We’d love to host you.
Keep reading: all that modern infrastructure exists so the studios live like real homes — full kitchens included. Put yours to work with our new guide to farmers markets near downtown Minneapolis.