Building Description Gluek Brewing Company Hotel and Saloon, Minneapolis Minnesota
Designed in a commercial Neoclassical Style, the building is three stories tall with a ground floor storefront. Dimensions from the original drawings are 22'-6" wide, 158'-0" long. The front facade is well proportioned and detailed, providing a large amount of glazed area on the front while maintaining rhythm and scale in a narrow building. The upper two floors are clad in smooth stone blocks and appear to be in excellent condition. The wall surface of the front facade is covered in coursed ashlar with narrow joints. It is pierced on both of the upper floors with five tall, relatively narrow windows set close together with narrow stone mullions between. At the top floor, there is an unomamented stone sill running continuously below the windows. Raised above the top floor windows is a substantial stone and metal cornice including some finely-detailed molding. The top of the parapet has a stone coping.
At the first floor, the original stone facade appears to be partially preserved behind the applied modem mansard canopy and storefront alterations. The exposed northeast common brick wall has a large sign painted out in black and contributes little to the visual quality of the building. The building shares a party wall with the Home Insurance Company Building (Berman Buckskin Company) to the southwest.
Christopher Adam Boehme (1865-1916) was a native of Minneapolis, educated at the University of Minnesota. He worked for Warren B. Dunnell for fourteen years before forming a partnership with Victor Cordella ( 1872-193 7) which lasted from 1902-11. Cordella was born in Poland and studied at the Royal Academy of Art in Krakow before coming to the United States in 1890 where he worked with Cass Gilbert. Boehme and Cordella's most famous design was the Svan Turnblad residence (now The American Swedish Institute, 1903). Boehme designed the Charles Gluek House on Mt. Curve Avenue in Minneapolis and several state institutions in Minnesota with Warren Dunnell. Boehme and Cordella designed three buildings in the Warehouse District including the P.F. Laum & Sons building (1903). Boehme individually designed six additional buildings which included several for the Gluek Brewing Company as well as the Maytag Company Building (1916).
