The Center of Social and Commercial Minneapolis
MEMORIES that cling to a hotel serve as a magnet that attracts men playing parts in the business scheme that makes for development. Memories of epoch-making events, of gatherings and meetings at the hotel in the heart of the city cause these men to return to renew their acquaintances at The Dyckman—the Minneapolis hotel patronized by discriminating people.
Built by John E. Andrus in 1900, the Yonkers millionaire named the hotel after his wife, whose maiden name was Dyckman. Its twelve stories then contained 175 rooms. In 1913 H. J. Tremain, former secretary of the Commercial Club, became its proprietor, and the following year the hotel was enlarged by the addition on the Nicollet Avenue side and its total cost increased to a million dollars.
Yet sentiment alone, not sufifice to satisfy the hotel patron. When every com fort is added to sentiment the cycle is complete. This combination is found at the Dyckman. This history of the city on her Golden Jubilee would be incomplete without due men tion of the part played in civic development by the Dyckman and its enterprising management. The story of its success serves to impress upon the reader, just what this institution is doing for Minneapolis and the Northwest. Under the personal direction of H. J. Tremain, president and manager, it has maintained merited leadership.
The Dyckman has a capacity of 330 sleeping rooms, each and every one has both the Tri-State and Northwestern long distance telephones. The Dyckman is the only hotel in the city that has a private bath with every room. Designed by masters, the Dyckman’s dining rooms, rotunda, and rooms reflect an elegant comfort that lingers long in the memory of the guest. Equipped with the only hotel pipe organ in the North west, the palatial Elizabethan dining room is the center for social events as well as functions of everyday business life. It’s a sincere pleasure to dine at the Dyckman.
Few Minneapolis people but are enamored of the charming Hawaiian dining room in the basement. Flooded with its subdued tropical light, the Hawaiian room is the scene of countless banquets, balls, dinner parties, and social functions, at which are gathered the men and women who are making Minneapolis grow. The cabaret .has become an institution that is distinctly Dyckman because of the care used in selecting its attractions. It has the finest electrically equipped, specially built pipe organ in its main dining room, known as the Elizabethan Room. All air entering the Public Rooms is forced through a sheet of running water pumped from a well 1,100 feet deep. It is purified, chilled by the refrigerating system in summer, pumped and circulated in every room.
The Hawaiian dining room in “the basement has a seating capacity of 600, and is the finest ventilated room in the city. In fact, no matter what the conditions of the weather are, the temperature is held to 70, and 500 men have been known to be smoking at one time in this room without the least offense. The Dyckman has its own electrical equipment as well as heating plant, and lights and heats several large buildings in the immediate vicinity. It is connected by an underground marble lined tunnel with its Chinese-American restaurant directly across the street. In the Hygienic Institute, electric hot oven baths are given, and this institute is conducted by trained directors. There is also a gymnasium where fencing and boxing are taught. Turkish bath parlors on the second floor that are the most modernly equipped in the city. Twenty-four guests can be handled at one time.
The Dyckman has its own printing ofiice as well as its own laundry. St. Paul cars pass the door, and its location in the heart of the shopping, retail, and theatrical district makes it doubly delightful to be a Dyckman guest.
Added to the physical attractions of the Dyckman is the SERVICE perfected by Manager Tremain and his associates. Every feature that will serve to make the guest more comfortable is being constantly sought by this group of hotel specialists composed of Mr. Tremain and assistant managers, F. S. Gregory and H. N. Willey. Manager Tremain, the son of an Iowa banker. early entered the hotel business as his chosen profession. During his youthful years he acquired the ownership of the old Hum boldt Hotel at Humboldt, Iowa. Its equipment consisted of 22 heating stoves and 40 rooms fitted with kerosene lamps. The contrast with the equipment of the 1917 Dyckman is convincing. He afterwards operated eating houses on the Chicago & Northwestern, and then turned his attention to the management of hotels at Spencer, Algona, Mason City, and the Willard at St. Paul. He acquired 49 per cent of the stock in the Hotel Radisson Company before becoming proprietor of the Dyckman in 1913. Mr. Tremain’s interests are not confined strictly to the hotel. During the years he has been associated with Minneapolis development he has been aligned with the progressive element. He’s a man among men. H. J. Tremain is known and recognized as a dominant factor in the “man-power” underlying strides made by Minneapolis. The Dyckman reflects his wholesome civic enthusiasm in every department. It is playing a prominent part in upbuilding the city and has a prior claim on the patronage and esteem of thinking people.
Minneapolis Golden Jubilee, 1867-1917 :
A history of fifty years of civic and commercial progress …