The Sauntry Mansion and the Alhambra
Near Stillwater, Minnesota
On the hill above downtown stand two remarkable buildings that tell the story of a lumber fortune won and lost. The first is the Sauntry Mansion at six hundred twenty six North Fourth Street, a rambling Victorian home that grew to some twenty eight rooms. The second, a block away, is even stranger, a Moorish styled recreation hall its owner nicknamed the Alhambra, built in nineteen oh two with a ballroom, a reflecting pool, and a bowling alley, inspired by the famous palace in Spain.
Both were built by William Sauntry, an Irish immigrant born in County Cork who rose from poverty to become one of Minnesota's first millionaires, a man they called the King of the Saint Croix. But the same declining timber industry that emptied the sawmills undid him. Sauntry poured his money into mining ventures that failed, and his fortune slipped away.
On November tenth, nineteen fourteen, at the age of sixty nine, ruined and despairing, he took a room in a Saint Paul hotel and ended his own life. His grand houses still stand in Stillwater, monuments to the dizzying rise and crushing fall of a self made lumber baron. The mansion is listed on the National Register of Historic Places.
