Talk:The Saint Paul Hotel

A fact from The Saint Paul Hotel appeared on Wikipedia's Main Page in the Did you know column on 4 June 2021 (check views). The text of the entry was as follows:

Did you know... that when The Saint Paul Hotel was built in 1908–1910, a rathskeller was carved into the sandstone beneath the building?

A record of the entry may be seen at Wikipedia:Recent additions/2021/June. The nomination discussion and review may be seen at Template:Did you know nominations/The Saint Paul Hotel.

Wikipedia

Historic sites Low‑importance

	This article is within the scope of WikiProject Historic sites, a collaborative effort to improve the coverage of historic sites on Wikipedia. If you would like to participate, please visit the project page, where you can join the discussion and see a list of open tasks.Historic sitesWikipedia:WikiProject Historic sitesTemplate:WikiProject Historic sitesHistoric sites articles
Low	This article has been rated as Low-importance on the project's importance scale.

Hotels Mid‑importance

	Hotels portal This article is within the scope of WikiProject Hotels, a collaborative effort to improve the coverage of articles related to the hospitality industry, including hotels, motels, resorts, and destination spas on Wikipedia. If you would like to participate, please visit the project page, where you can join the discussion and see a list of open tasks.HotelsWikipedia:WikiProject HotelsTemplate:WikiProject HotelsHotels articles
Mid	This article has been rated as Mid-importance on the project's importance scale.

Minnesota Mid‑importance

	Minnesota portal This article is within the scope of WikiProject Minnesota, a collaborative effort to improve the coverage of articles related to Minnesota on Wikipedia. If you would like to participate, please visit the project page, where you can join the discussion and see a list of open tasks.MinnesotaWikipedia:WikiProject MinnesotaTemplate:WikiProject MinnesotaMinnesota articles
Mid	This article has been rated as Mid-importance on the project's importance scale.

developing

Doncram, I'm done for the night. Please give it a quick review. I'll DYK this one, probably tomorrow and be sure to credit you. I just noticed the 1910 newspaper article says 11 floors, but emporis says 13. The picture looks like 9 in brown, the 2 more in white up to the cornice. Could it have been 11 originally, with the 12th and partial 13th added later? They sort of look different. What do you think? MB 02:59, 9 May 2021 (UTC)[reply]

User:MB, it looks very good. I don't need to credited, as relatively little of it was created by me. I thought I might develop more about the gangsters and create Leon Gleckman (was a redlink) but did not.

About the Railway Exchange Building (St. Paul) (currently a redlink in the article), I am looking but don't immediately see how that might be listed in National Register of Historic Places listings in Ramsey County, Minnesota. Saint Agatha's Conservatory of Music and Arts, built 1908-10(?) is also known as "Exchange Building", but I guess is not that building? That name may be due to its location on Exchange St., a major street probably named for the Railway Exchange. --Doncram (talk) 03:22, 9 May 2021 (UTC)[reply]

Doncram, your version was 25% of it, so you should get credit too. Leon Gleckman isn't red anymore - I redirected it (for now, it could still be an article). I just looked at the nom form for St. Agathas - it is not the Railway Exchange building. All I know is it was the "largest railway office building in the world" in the 1910s. MB 03:40, 9 May 2021 (UTC)[reply]

(ec) All right, i did get some content started.... I thought I might develop more about the gangsters and create Leon Gleckman (was a redlink), now I see that you just redirected that to Tom Brown (police officer), which is a bit weird. I suppose you wanted it not to show as a redlink in the article up for DYK? But it would be better to show still as a redlink IMHO, and it is not appropriate for the name to be bolded in the police officer article IMHO.

...Hmm, there is a "Stockyards Exchange" building in South St. Paul, which comes up in Google maps when I searched for Railway Exchange. Oh, i see that your reference to the Railway Exchange Building is the 1919 Encyclopedia Americana; it may have been gone many years ago. Perhaps/probably it is this building (massive Classical Revival one), map location included in Saint Paul Historical coverage, but termed Railroad and Bank Building. Railway Exchange Building (disambiguation) lists 4 ones, those and the one in Kansas City, Missouri are what show up first in google searching. So not clear to me what name "stuck" for the Saint Paul one. I dunno if I'd call for an article to be created by leaving this one as a redlink (esp. if redlinks are to be avoided in DYKs). If I were to choose one redlink to show, which might prompt some Minnesotan(?) to start an article, it would be one for "the Al Capone of Saint Paul". --Doncram (talk) 03:41, 9 May 2021 (UTC)[reply]

Don't have much energy, but Draft:Leon Gleckman opening. FYI "The life of professonal bootlegger Leon Gleckman" has nice old b&w pic of Saint Paul Hotel, per your comments that it appeared strikingly down the end of a street. --Doncram (talk) 04:01, 9 May 2021 (UTC)[reply]

Doncram, you were right about the Railway Exchange building - that name did not stick. It was the Railway and Bank Building, which is a CP in the Lowertown Historic District (Saint Paul, Minnesota). I've created a section there and will probably expand and split that to a separate article.

Ah, MB, good, glad i guess i have helped you find your way to that. About the Lowertown HD's article's section about it, I went to try to make sense of an odd/incomplete statement: "A central interior courtyard provided daylight and ventilation to the inside offices. and an effective ventilation." The MN historical society link for the NRHP doc was/is not working; i have added link to National Archives version which downloads slowly but comes through eventually. That oddness was because of bad copying and editing of perfectly grammatical text in the NRHP document: "The building was designed with a central interior court which provided light for the inside offices and an effective ventilation system." Most or all of the whole section, and presumably also coverage about other parts of the HD, was copied without providing credit to the original authors for their wording, so amounts to plagiarism (more serious problem IMHO than copyright violation which probably applies, technically, also, though doesn't matter really for NRHP docs IMHO). Some subsequent editing/garbling neither fixed the bad copying nor negated the plagiarism. It would be great if you could revise the coverage there. --Doncram (talk) 23:28, 9 May 2021 (UTC)[reply]

Argh, did not check edit history there, sorry if I might have harshed on your own editing if it was yours. Fixable anyhow. --Doncram (talk) 23:44, 9 May 2021 (UTC)[reply]

I did not redirect Leon Gleckman to avoid a redlink in a DYK. We do that all the time when a subject has some coverage in another article. Isn't it better to direct a reader to what we do have on a subject. A redlink "hides" info a reader may find useful. I get your point that it may inhibit someone from writing the article, and that is might be valid. But don't you think that someone who would write the article because they saw a redlink is just a likely to write it after clicking the bluelink and seeing there is not much there? As far as bolding Gleckman in the Brown article, that is SOP per MOS:BOLD so a reader will more easily understand why they are at a different article. If you develop the Gleckman article, you can undo all this anyway. MB 15:54, 9 May 2021 (UTC)[reply]

Okay, I understand your points. Not contradicting them, I do think an extremely short stub article would be better. Thank you for your followups. --Doncram (talk) 23:28, 9 May 2021 (UTC)[reply]

Also, the nice photo seeing Saint Paul Hotel at end of a street, in this article which I referred to above, has caption stating it comes from Pioneer Press, here it is. Actually that is a good source/reference to add to the article, is an article written upon 100 year anniversary of building, seems not to be used yet in the article. Surely the photo is old enough to be in public domain? It nicely shows hotel name in (neon?) signage rising above the building. It would be a good addition to the article if you or someone good at this kind of uploading to Commons could make it available. --Doncram (talk) 23:42, 9 May 2021 (UTC)[reply]

I added a bit from this article. I didn't find that myself - it is hard to find good newspaper articles on places like this because the archives are filled with hundreds of articles that say stuff like "the state teachers association held their annual meeting at the..." I would use that photo if the date it was taken could be established. There needs to be proof it was first published (not taken) before 1926. Judging by the cars in the photo, it probably was taken in the 1910s and probably printed in the paper at the same time. But I've uploaded similar photos before and had them deleted. MB 04:17, 11 May 2021 (UTC)[reply]

Huh?

the larger Windsor, which operated until a few years before it was torn down

– "until a few years" isn't English, and obviously is very imprecise. – Sca (talk) 12:28, 4 June 2021 (UTC)[reply]

It is imprecise because of missing details. The old hotel was "operated successfully" until 1880. It was apparently still used as a hotel, presumably less successfully, until 1904. It was used as an arcade/theater in 1905-1906. The property sold in 1908 (not sure if the old hotel was standing at that time). The new hotel opened in 1910. There is no exact date when the old hotel was torn down. More sources would enable less precise wording. MB 13:35, 27 September 2021 (UTC)[reply]