from
Municipal Monument

A Centennial History of the Municipal Building Serving Minneapolis and Hennepin County, Minnesota by Paul Clifford Larson


published by the Municipal Building Commission Minneapolis 1991


Last but most conspicuous among the building arts coming to fruition in the Municipal Building was that of making stained glass. Art glass designed for specific rooms has long since disappeared, much of it the victim of the 1903 Paulle Showcase fire on Third Avenue. What remains is the showiest glass of all, the five-story wall and skylight of the rotunda.


Nothing is known about the individuals who designed the softly toned geometrically patterned windows or the single figurative window centered on the main floor, or even of the initial public response. When the finished rotunda first opened to the public in August 1906, media and public alike were obsessed by the Father of Waters.


On August 12, the front page of the Sunday Journal devoted forty-five inches of print to the statue and the ceremonies surrounding its unveiling, with coverage of the just-finished architectural space that embraced it confined to a single sentence: "The entrance was a noble hall in strength and refinement and a fitting back-ground for the statue."


Despite the silence of the press, the rotunda art glass was an artistic triumph for a local manufacturer as well as an economic coup for the city and county.


Serious consideration of local companies had been postponed until the president of the Board of Commissioners could talk to the premier stained glass artist in the country, John La Farge. Apparently a contract with La Farge failed to pan out, for in October 1905, Ford Brothers of Minneapolis was asked to submit samples and designs for consideration.


Concurrently the Board of Commissioners set up and art glass committee to explore Chicago possibilities. The firs Chicago firm investigated was Gianini and Hilgart, which manufactured much of the art glass used by Chicago School architects including the young Frank Lloyd Wright. According to the art glass committee, "They had nothing suitable to show." The Chicago branche of Tiffany Studios in New York was also a washout, for it wanted a minimum of ten dollars per square foot, twice what the board was willing to pay. The committee returned to Minneapolis confident that it could do no better than Ford Brothers.


The committee was not disappointed. In January 1906, Ford Brothers contracted to supply all of the stained glass for the far wall and skylight of the rotunda at the rock-bottom price of five dollars per square foot, and by May the architect reported that "the art glass, which is exceptionally beautiful and design, is being made." After a letter from Ford Brothers commenting on the inappropriateness of the remaining plain glass windows, similar stained glass was installed on the side walls of the rotunda.


Until 1896 a glass brokerage firm, Ford Brothers had come out of nowhere to lead the Minneapolis stained-glass industry. The key to its meteoric rise was its employment in 1898 of the great glass artist Robert T. Giles. This had exactly coincided with the loss by its chief competitor, Brown and Haywood of the brilliant, Tiffany-trained designers W.A. Hazel and the closing of that firm's local design studio in the wake of a merger with Pittsburgh Plate Glass. Brown and Haywood, which had the inside track after supplying all of the beveled glass and Florentine-patterned glass so far, dropped out of the picture.

Two years before the art glass commission was let for bid, Giles quit Ford Brothers to start up on his own, but by this time the firm's reputation, manufacturing techniques, design staff, and repertoire were established. Giles and Pittsburgh Plate Glass underbid Ford Brothers for the windows on the side walls of the rotunda, but the Board of Commissioners ignored the bidding process and went with the most expensive design by the firm it trusted, just as it had with Charles Wilkin's light fixtures. The production demands on Ford Brothers were so great that the firm drew in an affiliate, Ford Manufacturing Company, which enjoyed an equal reputation in the field of church furnishing.