1091 Plummer Lane Southwest
Rochester, MN, USA

Henry S. Plummer House

The Plummer House is the former residence of Dr. Henry Stanley Plummer and Daisy Berkman Plummer. Located in Rochester, Minnesota and originally called Quarry Hill, the English Tudor mansion stood on a 65-acre (26 ha) estate which included a greenhouse, water tower, garage, and gazebo. The house is also called Henry S. Plummer House.

Dr. Plummer, a Mayo Clinic partner and founder, worked very closely with Ellerby and Round, the architects of record, on the design of the house. The house includes many innovations that were quite novel for their time, including a central vacuum system, underground sprinkler system, intercommunications system, dumbwaiter, security system, electricity and gas lighting, the first gas furnace in the city, garage door openers, heated pool, water tower, and two caves going into the house and the water tower. The 5 story home is over 300 feet (91 m) long, with 49 rooms including 10 bathrooms, 9 bedrooms, a 3rd floor ballroom, pipe organ, and 5 fireplaces. This translates to 11,000 square feet of living space and over 20,000 square feet total, including the basement and attached garage and greenhouse. There is a 220 ft long by 18 ft wide underground passageway connecting the main house to the caretakers cottage at the bottom of the hill.

After the death of Dr. Plummer in 1936, his wife, Daisy Berkman Plummer, and their two children, continued to live in the home until 1969. In 1971, Daisy Plummer and family gave the house with all its furnishings to the Rochester Art Center with the understanding that it would be operated as a Center for the Arts, to be used for music recitals and dance performances, as well as a setting for artists to create and show their work. The Plummer House was added to the National Register of Historic Places in 1975.

Today, Rochester Park and Rec maintains the building, and 11 acres (4.5 ha) of original estate, as a private rental facility. In the summer, the beautiful gardens make the Plummer House a popular venue for weddings. Visible from much of south west Rochester, the Plummer House and its water tower mark the summit of a Rochester neighborhood nicknamed Pill Hill, so called because it typically houses many Mayo doctors.

National Register of Historic Places - Henry S. Plummer House

Statement of Significance:

In 1917 Dr. Henry S. Plummer began construction of this house which he named Quarry Hill. The construction of this English Tudor mansion was completed in 1924. Plummer personally formulated the plans for the spacious mansion and all its constructional and artistic details.

Dr. Henry S. Plummer has generally been honored as the real genius of the Mayo Clinic. As a medical colleague of both Dr. Plummer and the Doctors Mayo once stated -- "The Mayos created the clinic. Henry made it tick." Dr. Plummer joined the Mayo brothers in 1901 as a member of the Mayo Clinic's permanent staff. He was hired to supervise the laboratory of the Clinic and immediately set about reorganizing and revolutionizing the workings of the laboratory. He was a motivating power in the development of clinical and laboratory research. Plummer initiated electrocardiography at the Mayo Clinic, determined the establishment of the laboratory of basal metabolism and its accessory functions, the organization of the laboratory of biochemistry, to mention only a few phases of the research program. His vision was an important contribution to the scope of medical education which prevails in the Mayo Foundation today.

As a clinician, Dr. Plummer was superb; he was a student of thyroid disease and differentiated the adenomatous from the exophthalmic goiter. He inaugurated the preoperative use of iodine which decimated the surgical mortality diseases of the thyroid. Plummer was the first at the Mayo Clinic to call attention to and emphasize the fact that organic disease neurosis was commonly co-existent in the same patient. He taught the modern concept of hypertension at least fifteen years before it was universally understood and accepted. Perhaps Plummer f s most far reaching medical accomplishments were in the field of radiology; he was a pioneer in the development of x-ray diagnosis and therapy.

Dr. Henry S. Plummer was an architect, a building contractor, and an engineer, as well as a superior clinician and medical investigator. He designed the buildings, the hospital laboratories, and the clinics in which the Mayo staff worked. "In designing Mayo Clinic buildings tie studied the workings of the Clinic, the role of medicine, surgery and the laboratory, coordinated the whole, and devised the means whereby all could work together most harmoniously and effectively."^ He introduced the patient history sheet, the envelope, the desk system for each unit, the records, and the filing system. The Mayo Clinic was run on the "Plummer system" which has become the prototype for all ensuing clinics working on the group system.

Dr. Henry S. Plummer was a member of many medical organizations, the American Medical Association, the American College of Physicians, the Southern Minnesota Medical Association, the Minnesota Pathological Society and the Medical Library Association, to name only a few. He was chief of the Division of Medicine, The Mayo Clinic, and professor of medicine, the Mayo Foundation, until his death. He received the degree of D. Sc. honoris causa in June 1935, from Northwestern University.

Without Henry S. Plummer the Mayo Clinic would not exist in the form it does today nor in the buildings it inhabits. His accomplishments in the field of radiology, thyroid disease, hypertension and in the field of architecture are closely tied with the success of the Mayo Clinic. The Plummer House, which he designed and resided in during his most productive working years, is worthy of national recognition.