Riverside Hotel, St. Francis

The former Riverside Hotel at 3631 Bridge Street in St. Francis is the only surviving commercial building dating to the milling boomtown’s original settlement. It was built in about 1860, during the heyday of the local lumber industry that urbanized present-day Anoka County.

In 1855, Dwight Woodbury immigrated west to Anoka to join his son, Albert, who had preceded him. Dwight would go on to build the Woodbury House in Anoka, but he first made his mark in St. Francis. Members of the Woodbury family platted both cities and built dams and sawmills at both locations.

Woodbury built a house overlooking the Rum River for himself and his family in about 1860. The two-story, Victorian Gothic structure has clapboard siding with a gable of the front façade, which makes an “L” shape. According to the National Register of Historic Places nomination form submitted in 1979, “the original architectural design features are limited to the semi-circular windows in the east gable end and in the front projecting gable” and brick now covers a portion of the building façade.

After Dwight Woodbury’s death in 1884, his son, John Woodbury, moved to St. Francis. In 1891, he built a large mill in town to mill all types of flour, then expanded the family home and began to rent rooms to seasonal workers at his mill. Its number of residents peaked at the turn of the twentieth century, which corresponded with the period of highest demand for industrial laborers’ housing. The era also marked the heyday of St. Francis, when local industries included Shaddick Creamery, St. Francis Mill, St. Francis Starch Factory, and the St. Francis Canning factory.

It was during this time the home took on the name of Riverside Inn. Contemporary newspaper advertisements indicate that different owners ran the hotel after 1900, with a J. H. Space the proprietor in 1906, and an Alex Simpson advertising his new ownership at another time. The inn continued to provide lodging to workers until the mill’s closure in 1923.

The Riverside Hotel/Rum River Inn was added to the National Register of Historic Places in December of 1979.

Editor’s note: This article contains content quoted as well as adapted from a National Register of Historic Places nomination file—a public-domain text.