Photographs by Caitlin Abrams
Celestre Saint Paul bedroom
Long before it housed posh guest rooms, the sixth floor was an open-air retreat for the convent. The ornate ironwork just beyond the windows is the original railing.
In an unassuming corner room—just down the hall from and somewhat behind the dual lobby parlors of Celeste St. Paul Hotel + Bar—Sister Jane Hurley made some dubious memories.
“Hohohoho,” Sister Jane said, recalling what it was like more than 60 years earlier when she got summoned to the room. “I would have been mighty scared. That’s where you’d ask for your penance and find out what you did wrong.”
The room we’re looking at, empty now save some construction dust and scraps, is soon to be one of the nicer king suites in downtown St. Paul’s new boutique hotel. But Sister Jane, now in her 90s, knew it as someplace else: Mother Celestine’s office at St. Agatha’s Conservatory of Music and Arts. Sister Jane spent a fair amount of time there—as, no doubt, did nearly 100 other sisters of St. Joseph who lived on the upper floors of the convent.
“Every time we did something that wasn’t the right thing to do, we’d have to kneel down and ask for a penance,” she says. How often was that? “Every day for a whole month or so.”
Another former resident, Sister Agnes Foley, had joined this walk-through on a Wednesday morning in late September. Neither of the now-retired sisters had explored this 1910 Beaux Arts building, designed by architect John H. Wheeler, since they lived here in the early 1960s. And as we poked around, they both seemed genuinely curious what the next turn would hold.
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Photo by Caitlin Abrams
Sisters Agnes Foley and Jane Hurley
Sisters Agnes Foley and Jane Hurley lament the lack of designer wallpaper back when they lived on the property.
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Celeste St. Paul Hotel + Bar
The conservatory’s opulent front parlors were largely off limits to the sisters.
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Mother Celestine Howard
Mother Celestine Howard (standing) likely wondered if her name might one day adorn a boutique hotel.
“We were going out to schools to teach, so we weren’t bringing any money in,” explained Sister Agnes. A pecking order ruled at St. Agatha’s wherein the sisters who created salable wares tended to live a slightly tonier lifestyle than those who left every day to teach in the community. “So, uh, we used the stairs.”
St. Agatha’s Conservatory of Music and Arts, which called itself the first fine arts school in Minnesota, was founded in 1884 by the Sisters of St. Joseph. The namesake of the hotel, Mother Celestine Howard oversaw the fundraising and building of the six-story, 59,000-square-foot building at the corner of Exchange and Cedar and presided over its flourishing until her death in 1915.
It continued as a conservatory and convent until 1962, at which point it was converted to office space, eventually housing the administrative offices of the McNally Smith College of Music. When McNally Smith suddenly shuttered its doors in late 2017, the old owners began shopping the space. They found a willing buyer in Northfield-based Rebound Hospitality, which knew the next chapter needed to pay homage to the building’s holy ghost.
The result is a 71-room hotel and event space that has changed a ton without changing everything. For instance, in the matching front parlors—one the hotel bar, the other the front desk—the ornate trim is largely original. This includes the tiles on the mirror-image fireplaces, which were painted by hand by some of the first sisters in the house.
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Photo by Caitlin Abrams
Sisters Jane and Agnes
Sisters Jane and Agnes plot their escape.
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Photo by Caitlin Abrams
View from the Sixth Floor
The view from the now-enclosed sixth floor remains largely unchanged.
Some of the large activity rooms on the fifth floor have been divided into individual guest rooms and suites. Others, like the rooms on the third floor, remain largely unchanged. When Sister Agnes found hers (the first one on your right when you exit the elevator), she took note of only one significant difference. One of the three closets has become a full bathroom, an amenity she admits to being jealous of.
As we wound our way up and down stone stairs, worn thin years ago by a steady stream of sisters, neither Jane nor Agnes seemed particularly bothered by the hotel’s themed décor: That is, the Celeste uses its Catholic origin story as a bit of a punch line. For instance, the front desk is a literal pulpit salvaged from a church in Iowa. And the new oil painting of Mother Celestine above the fireplaces appears quite striking, if not wholly accurate.
“It doesn’t look like what we actually wore,” says Sister Agnes. “We didn’t have heavy veils.”
And then there’s the chapel, which will be used for weddings and the like and still looks as it did when the sisters prayed there. One exception: It’s missing its altar. This space has been walled off and now serves a purpose that would seem somewhat less holy: At the new Celeste, the altar space has become the bridal suite.
Sister Jane shrugged off the fact that the pulpit has made way for a king-sized bed.
“I’d often fall asleep during chapel services,” Sister Jane said.
Huh. Maybe that explains some of those penances.
