Foshay Tower (1929)

Foshay Tower

1929

Architect: Leon Arnal working for Magney and Tusler

Everything looked rosy in Minneapolis on October 28, 1928. A headline on the front page of the Star stated that building permits totaling $23 million had been issued in the city that year, topping the $22 million in permits issued in 1927. A bigger headline on the same front page declared that the Foshay Tower, then under construction, would be “unparalleled in [the] annals of building.” At 450 feet high and 32 stories, the Foshay Tower became the tallest building between Chicago and the west coast when it was finished in 1929. It remained the tallest building in Minneapolis until the IDS Center was constructed in 1972.

The Foshay Tower’s exterior, clad with Indiana limestone, and its obelisk shape were copied from the Washington Monument, the favorite building of Wilbur Burton Foshay, the tower’s owner and namesake. Foshay’s name is emblazoned on all four sides of the tower in 10-foot-high letters just below its ziggurat top. To withstand wind forces, the building was constructed of steel and reinforced concrete, and its foundation went down five floors below street level to bedrock. The top floor contains an open-air observation deck and a display of the building’s history.

The Foshay Tower was designed by French-born architect Leon Arnal (1881-1963), who was the head of design for the Minneapolis firm of Magney and Tusler. The building’s interior details — marble walls, cast iron radiator grates, and bronze Art Deco elevator doors — were hailed in the Star as Minneapolis’s first example of the “modern French style.” Other buildings by Arnal include the Women’s Club on Loring Park and the Main US Post Office on 1st Street So.

Foshay staged a grand opening for his tower over Labor Day weekend in 1929, complete with a brass band playing John Philip Sousa’s “Foshay March,” which was commissioned for the event. But when the stock market crashed two months later, Foshay lost everything.

The Foshay Tower was placed on the National Register of Historic Places in 1978. Between 2006 and 2008, it was renovated and reopened as a 230-room hotel, the W Hotel Minneapolis - The Foshay.