James J. Hill House — Attraction in Saint Paul

I don't recommend this place. I've been to every state, and I've went through dozens of historic home tours, and this one was the worst. The tour guide was rude, rude, rude. Was her name Hannah? I think. Not totally sure. But the tour of the home had little to do with the Hill family, and almost nothing to do with the architecture of the home. It was mostly a tribute to the servants that worked there. Which was unexpected and strange. Much of the house is off limits to the public. We were told we could not go in most of the rooms upstairs, and we couldn't even go to the 4th floor at all. We were pretty upset about this, which made our tour guide even more rude. She started acting like our babysitter, which felt pretty degrading. Also - The house has almost no furniture in it, which is highly unusual. It felt like an empty, awkward shell. When the tour ended, we all exited through the back of the house and were told we could walk around the house and come back into the gift shop through the front. I don't think she expected us to come back in the front, because when we did we saw her huddled up with the rest of the staff talking about us!! When they saw us they scattered. One member of the staff (Allison?) made contact with us and offered us an architectural tour of the home. She explained why we couldn't go to the fourth floor (which verifies that the other tour guide was talking about us, because she wouldn't have known we were upset about that otherwise). She blamed it on the usual: covid, fire codes, blah blah blah. She was nice though. Really nice. Like "please don't give us a one star on Google" nice. She showed us really neat things about the house that we never would have seen in the tour, and we enjoyed that. But the rest of the tour SUCKED and I wouldn't recommend...

My family absolutely loved my visit to the James J Hill House during a recent trip to the Twin Cities. While I'm a card-carrying history geek, that label certainly does not apply to the rest of my family. The fact I could get my nerd on without having my family bored to tears during the 75-minute guided tour warrants a five star rating in and of itself.

The tour guide who took us through each room was friendly and knowledgeable; she made the experience even better. Viewing the exquisite woodwork alone is worth the modest price of admission ($9 for adults). Our tour guide indicated the mansion's woodwork took 30,000 hours to carve.

Unlike many other mansion tours I have experienced, you are allowed to take pictures as you walk through the 36,000 square foot mansion. In addition to a multitude of in wonderful interior shots, you get some unique pictures of St Paul Cathedral from the second floor of the mansion.

The children of James Hill removed much of the original furniture from the house when they donated the mansion to the Catholic Archdiocese of St. Paul in 1925. However, family members have returned many of those pieces in subsequent years.

We visited on St Patrick's Day weekend, so for Irish Heritage Day, were treated to bagpipe music in addition to a demonstrations of the three story pipe organ.

The tour includes a 10-minute biographical video on...

This home is very beautiful. It is an amazing display of extravagance, craftsmanship and history. I recommend the guided tour as you get to see a few things that aren't normally accessible. Our tour guide was very friendly and knowledgeable, you could tell they enjoyed their job. I don't think the pictures truly show just how lovely the home is. Definitely going to visit again to do the nooks and crannies tour that takes you to even more areas of house and they play oldest working organ. I highly recommend going here if you are able.

Update Went with some friends on the Nooks and Crannies tour and had a blast. I anticipated it would be like the normal tour with some extras but it is an entirely different tour! I saw soo many more interesting areas of the house. Our tour guide Nikolas kept everyone interested and provided answers to all the questions asked. If you can take this tour do! I would still recommend the normal or self guided first then do the nooks...