Most of what gets written about restoring a 137-year-old building is about the big, expensive things — the roof, the windows, the mechanicals. This is a story about a doormat, and it is one of our favourites.
A bare hallway and a mat they could not afford
By February 2021 the Oaklands was deep into restoration. The hallways were stripped back to nothing. The team wanted a proper entry mat with the building’s logo on it for the front door — the kind of small, permanent thing that makes a building feel finished. It was, in the owner’s own words at the time, simply too expensive.
So on February 13, 2021, they made an offer to the people who had been following the renovation online: buy a “Key to the Oaklands.”
One hundred dollars, a handmade keychain, and a tour whenever you liked
The deal was straightforward. One hundred dollars bought a commemorative Oaklands keychain, handmade by a local Etsy maker, aVintageParcel. Twelve of them would cover the mat. And every keychain came with an open invitation: show the key and get a private tour of the building, any time in the future.
The tour on offer was not a walk down a hallway. It was described as seeing the city of Minneapolis through the eyes of the Oaklands — the rooms then and now, the architect, and the whole life and restoration of the building, including the parts that were still half-finished. Buyers were told to bring a friend and ask questions about what it actually takes to preserve a fire-ravaged historic building.
The campaign ran four days. It closed on February 17, 2021. By the 24th the keychains were already in production.
The first tour: March 1, 2021
Nicole, Javier, Meg and Emma were first through the door. Madonna and Clifton — the Great Danes who supervised most of the restoration — served as the welcoming committee. A neighbour, Nancy Keyes, had donated a guest book, and everyone signed in. The owner was, by her own admission, too excited to remember to take any photographs; the pictures from that day came from Nicole.
Seventeen months later, the mat arrived
These things take longer than anyone expects. The mat finally turned up on July 26, 2022 — nearly a year and a half after the twelve keychains were sold. It carries the building’s name, and along the bottom edge, the signature of Harry Wild Jones, the architect who drew the Oaklands in 1889. It is still there, inside the front door, and it was paid for entirely by people who had never stayed here.
If you walk past on 9th Street, the historic designation marker sits in the garden out front. Peek through the door and the mat is right there.
Why a doormat is worth a blog post
Preservation gets talked about as though it happens in one heroic act — a building is saved from demolition, or it is not. In practice it is thousands of small decisions and small sums, made over years, mostly by people with no obligation to care. The National Trust for Historic Preservation and the National Register of Historic Places exist for the big battles. Twelve keychains bought a doormat.
That is roughly the same instinct that runs through the rest of the building: the 1889 brick reset as a border outside, the original fixtures rehung, the brownstone detail left legible rather than smoothed over. Nobody had to. Someone did.
Come and stand on it
To be clear, the Keys to the Oaklands campaign closed in February 2021 and the keychains are long gone — we are not selling them. But the building is open, and the easiest way to see the mat, the hallway and the staircase is to book a studio.
The Oaklands is a furnished, month-to-month apartment hotel at 215 South 9th Street in downtown Minneapolis. Studios come with a full kitchen, WiFi, all utilities and heat, and free laundry, with no lease and no contract — stay a night, a week or a month. We have three tiers: Good, Better and Best. The skyway is a block’s walk away, not connected to the building, and parking is on site. Getting anywhere else is easy on the Metro Transit network.
Book at our reservations page or call (612) 314-5124. You can also read what else there is to see in the building during a stay.
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