Every restoration has a foreman. Ours weighed well over a hundred pounds, had a white blaze on her chest, and appears in the owners’ Instagram posts about Oakland’s on 9th from the first spring of the project to the first guided tours. Her name is Madonna, she is a Great Dane, and if you have ever wondered why a furnished-studio building in downtown Minneapolis is so relaxed about dogs, she is the answer. This post is her story, told from the owners’ own dated captions.
“Madonna’s favorite place is the Oaklands” — April 2019
The Oaklands account had barely started posting when Madonna showed up in it. On April 26, 2019, a photo of her at the 1889 brownstone carried a five-word caption: her favorite place was the Oaklands. That May she “stopped by for a visit,” and by July she was pictured “on her lunch break” — the building was a construction site then, with the windows, mortar and staircase still ahead. The pattern that emerges over the next two years is consistent: whenever the owners were on site, so was she.
“Like a samurai warrior. Tough and elegant.” — October 2020
By the autumn of 2020 the exterior work was at height. On October 7 the owners posted that Madonna was “like a samurai warrior. Tough and elegant. She never has any hesitation to help out where needed, even 40ft in the air.” The next line is the one that tells you about the second dog: “Clifton chooses to stay on the ground.” Clifton is Madonna’s grandson, named for 300 Clifton, the owners’ bed and breakfast in Loring Park, and he was still a very tall puppy at the time.
A November 1, 2020 post describes the daily rhythm: “In the morning we game plan by the fire, then put on our work clothes and tackle another day at the Oaklands.” Madonna, it says, “has been working historic preservation since she was a puppy,” now with Clifton as a constant companion and, for a stretch, his brother Pip as a house guest. “All very helpful,” the caption adds, which we take to be at least partly sincere.
The birthday post: boom lifts, 23 national parks and a London taxi
The fullest account of her life is the post the owners wrote for her eighth birthday on January 3, 2021. It explains that the Oaklands was “not her first project”: the owners got Madonna six months before they took on 300 Clifton, so “she has been working preservation projects her whole life.” The list of what that involved reads like a punch list: “boom lifts, scaffolds, Home Depot runs, roof tops, and dusty basements so much it’s second nature.”
Off the job, the same post says, she had by then visited 23 national parks and most of the states, been in “scores of weddings,” countless photo shoots, two magazines and two commercials; kayaked in Key West, climbed glaciers, wandered Disney World and “meditated in Sedona.” She rides around in a 1940s London taxi and sleeps in a custom bed from the 1800s. Six years earlier she had a litter of twelve, and at eight she had six grand-puppies — one of them Clifton, whom she was raising. She had also, the owners note, raised two ducklings and a fledgling pigeon, taken in two stray cats and fostered three of her grand-puppies. The post closes by calling her “the mascot of the Oaklands project and the Bed and Breakfast,” working “every single day.” Two weeks later, on January 17, the account admitted she was “scared to go in the basement with the lights off” — the same basement that features in the restoration timeline that winter. Foremen have limits.
The welcoming committee — March 2021
When the owners sold the first “Keys to the Oaklands” tours in early 2021 to raise money for a logo entry mat, the first group came through on March 1, 2021 — and the caption records that “of course Madonna and Clifton were the welcoming committee.” That is the job she has kept. Guests at 300 Clifton still meet the two of them in the mornings, and the B&B’s own post about its resident Danes explains how to say hello to a dog who is taller than your kitchen counter.
What this means if you are bringing a dog
A building restored with a Great Dane underfoot was never going to be precious about pets. Oakland’s on 9th is pet friendly, with designated pet-friendly studios for cats and dogs — ask for one when you book, because not every unit is set up for it. Every studio is a fully furnished apartment with a full kitchen, and WiFi, utilities, heat and laundry are included. There is parking right at the door in Lot 215, and the neighbourhood is walkable: the skyway system is a block away (we are not connected to it — you walk a block), and the riverfront and its trails are a longer walk or a short ride north. The practical guide to a pet-friendly extended stay covers the practical side of bringing a pet. For breed-specific questions about Danes — they are large, calm and famously affectionate, and they do not need a yard — the American Kennel Club’s breed page is the best short read.
A note on sources: everything above is drawn from the owners’ own dated Instagram captions, April 2019 to March 2021; nothing has been added to Madonna’s résumé that they did not post themselves. For the building’s story, the National Register of Historic Places and the Minnesota Historical Society’s digital newspaper collection are where we go when a caption needs checking.
Come stay — with or without a dog
If you would like a furnished studio in a building that was restored one boom lift at a time, check availability and book online, or call us at (612) 314-5124 and tell us if you are bringing a four-legged guest. We will make sure you get a pet-friendly studio. And if you want to meet the foreman herself, book a night at 300 Clifton, about a mile southwest — she is usually around before ten in the morning.
Keep reading: Where Should Out-of-Town Wedding Guests Stay in Downtown Minneapolis? Furnished Studios for the Whole Wedding Week