432 Summit Ave
St Paul, MN 55102, USA

432 Summit Ave, St Paul, MN

Photos from the Library of Congress, 09/16/1971

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National Register of Historic Places

Burbank - Livingston - Griggs House

Except from the Summary of Significance:
The significance of the Burbank-Livingstone-Griggs House has been appropriately defined in a recently published article's Minnesota's most elaborate example of mid-19th century Italianate architecture. The mansion on Summit Avenue was built by James Crawford-Burbank, a native of Vermont, who came to St. Paul via New York and Wisconsin to operate a lumber business. His professional accomplishments are many, including Ramsey County Commissioner, state representative, and the individual responsible for the reorganization of the St. Paul Fire and Marine Insurance Companies. He began building his mansion in 1862, completing it a year later at an initial cost of $22,000.

The mansion included many unique features for its days steam heat, hot and cold running water, gaslighting, and brick-lined walls. The latter was supposedly immune to moisture and rat-proof. James Burbank died in June 1876, the St. Paul Dispatch carried an appropriate epitaph: “…his history is the history of St, Paul, and the state; his own successes and failures being so closely allied with their settlement and development as to preclude the mention of one without the other."

Thomas Fletcher Oakes and his family made the mansion their residence from 1883 to 1887, while he applied his ambitions as General Manager of Henry Villard's Northern Pacific Railroad. Crawford Livingston moved there with his bride in 1888; he was to establish the St, Paul Gas Light Company. The Livingston family occupied the house the longest of any previous tenants; here daughter Mary was married to Theodore Wright Griggs, a Yale graduate and partner in Griggs, Cooper, and Company (wholesale grocers) in 1915.

Following the deaths of Crawford Livingston and his wife in 1925, the house was known as the Griggs Residence. Mrs. Griggs embarked on a project to install elaborate rooms taken from French and Italian houses in Europe, each appropriately furnished with period pieces and art treasures.

The architectural and interior splendor of the Burbank-Livingston-Griggs house is illustrative of the lifestyles and value systems of wealthy America 'from 1862 to 1930.