The Foshay Tower, Wilbur Foshay, and the Crash

The Foshay Tower opened on August thirtieth, nineteen twenty-nine, and for thirty years it was the tallest building in Minneapolis and in the entire state of Minnesota. Wilbur Foshay had built it as a monument to himself and to his utility empire, modeled deliberately on the Washington Monument in obelisk form. He spent three hundred and fifty thousand dollars on a three-day grand opening celebration, hiring John Philip Sousa and his band to perform a march that Foshay had commissioned specifically for the occasion and titled, without subtlety, the Foshay Tower Washington Memorial March. Sousa was paid twenty thousand dollars for the composition.

Thirty-eight days after the building opened, the stock market crashed on October twenty-fourth, nineteen twenty-nine. Wilbur Foshay's utility empire, which turned out to have been financed largely by investor money he had shuffled between holding companies in a pattern that the courts later found fraudulent, collapsed within months. Foshay was convicted of mail fraud in nineteen thirty-two and sentenced to fifteen years in federal prison. He served three years before President Roosevelt commuted his sentence.

John Philip Sousa, who had received a check for his twenty thousand dollars at the grand opening celebration, tried to cash it. It bounced. Sousa died in nineteen thirty-two without having been paid for the march. The march was suppressed for decades as part of the litigation fallout. It was not performed publicly again until nineteen eighty-eight, when a group of Minnesota investors finally settled the outstanding debt to Sousa's estate.

The Foshay Tower stands today as a hotel, its observation deck open to the public. The obelisk form is still visible from most of downtown Minneapolis.