Landmark Center (St. Paul)
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Old Federal Courts Building
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Landmark Center
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| Location | 75 5th Street West Saint Paul, Minnesota |
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| Coordinates | 44°56′44″N 93°5′50″W / 44.94556°N 93.09722°WCoordinates: 44°56′44″N 93°5′50″W / 44.94556°N 93.09722°W |
| Built | 1894–1901 |
| Architect | Willoughby J. Edbrooke |
| Architectural style | Richardsonian Romanesque |
| NRHP reference # | 69000076 |
| Added to NRHP | March 24, 1969 |
St. Paul’s historic Landmark Center, completed in 1902, originally served as the United States Post Office, Courthouse, and Custom House for the state of Minnesota. It was designed by Willoughby J. Edbrooke, who served as Supervising Architect of the U.S. Treasury Department in 1891–92. Edbrooke designed a body of public architecture, much of which, like this structure, was completed after his 1896 death. Landmark Center stands at 75 West Fifth Street in Rice Park and is now an arts and culture center.
The exterior is pink granite ashlar with a hipped red tile roof, steeply pitched to shed snow and adorned by numerous turrets, gables and dormers with steeply peaked roofs; cylindrical corner towers with conical turrets occupy almost every change of projection. There are two massive towers, one of which houses a clock. The exterior is almost devoid of carved detail. The interior features a five-story courtyard with skylight and rooms with 20-foot ceilings, appointed with marble and carved mahogany and oak finishes. Its Romanesque Revival architecture is similar to Edbrooke's Old Post Office Building in Washington D.C.
John Dillinger's girlfriend Evelyn Frechette, Alvin "Creepy" Karpis, "Doc" Barker and other members of the Barker-Karpis gang were tried in the building when it served as a federal courthouse.
Judges Walter Henry Sanborn and John B. Sanborn, Jr. kept their chambers here while serving on the Eighth Circuit Court of Appeals. U.S. Supreme Court Justice Harry Blackmun worked in the building as a law clerk to the younger Sanborn in 1932–33.
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