Lafayette’s Modern Form

Real photograph of Lafayette Club

Today, we conclude our look into the buildings that made the Hotel Lafayette and Lafayette Club’s history through the third, and current, iteration of the building. This real photograph was taken not long after the club's reopening in the early 1920's.

After having their second clubhouse wracked by fire in 1922, the Lafayette Club was, again, down but not out. In response to the disaster, construction quickly began on a new clubhouse. This time, it was to be designed by renown architects Edwin Hewitt & Edwin Brown. Hewitt was already well known for designing buildings in the Metro, but especially around the Lake Minnetonka area. He designed, for example, the Woodhill Country Club and Wayzata’s Widsten School.

His and Brown’s vision for the new Lafayette would be a Spanish style villa with soaring plaster archways along the front, large arched windows facing lakeside, and spacious gathering rooms indoors. It took nearly two years of construction before the new clubhouse opened its doors in 1924 to a grand reception.
Unlike the second clubhouse, which was moved away from the location of the original hotel, (after also having burnt in 1897.) this third clubhouse stood directly on the spot where the previous one had stood.

The new clubhouse was designed with a handful of hotel suites on the upper level which, today, sit unused. If you were to walk the Lafayette grounds at night, you could look up to see rows of darkened balconies on the second floor. Each one marking the forgotten hotel room within.

Lafayette Club has seen more than its fair share of gilded history, famous figures, dramatic scenes, steamships, summer days, and more. To top off their roster of achievements, the clubhouse symbolically stands as the last of Minnetonka’s grand, gilded era, lakeside resorts that once brought the area fame and fortune. While the current, now 100 year old, clubhouse may not be the original, built by James J. Hill, it certainly is the rightful bearer of the name that has persevered on Lake Minnetonka for over 140 years;
Lafayette.