Lumber Exchange Building, Minneapolis

The answer to “What was Minneapolis’s first skyscraper and who built it?” might depend on whom you ask. Historic architecture buffs will point to Franklin Long and Frederick Kees, who in 1885 created the Lumber Exchange Building-a Romanesque Revival masterpiece complete with heavy stonework, cone-shaped roofs, and deeply recessed windows. Once the city’s tallest structure at 12 stories, it marked the peak of Minneapolis’s “sawdust town” era, when the city led the nation in lumber milling.

By the roaring ‘20s, the Lumber Exchange’s basement housed the Hennepin Baths-because why not pair a little hygiene with your historic charm? That same basement doubled as a gay hangout in later years, at least until a 1979 renovation swept in and shook things up.

Today, the Lumber Exchange still stands proud as one of the oldest functioning commercial skyscrapers west of New York City. Together with Long and Kees’s City Hall and the Hennepin Center for the Arts, it enjoys a well-deserved spot on the National Register of Historic Places.