At. Agatha’s Conservatory of Music and Arts(1884-1961) was established by the Sisters of St. Joseph in 1884 well before the construction of what is now known as the Exchange Building. The Conservatory was the first fine arts school in Minnesota .Its classes in music, art, expression and dancing generated the income needed to support the…
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.…
There has been a big transformation at a former convent in St. Paul. What was once St. Agatha’s is now a boutique hotel. And photojournalist David Peterlinz was there as some retired nuns returned to their old stomping grounds.
ST. PAUL, Minn. (FOX 9) – There’s just something about an old-fashioned sleepover with friends. And for a group of St. Paul nuns, it’s where they are spending time together that has a special meaning. Downtown St Paul has a new boutique hotel. For the first group of guests to stay here, it’s a place like “nun”…
A historic building in Downtown St. Paul with a heavenly past has new life. The former Catholic school and convent has been turned into a boutique hotel. Former convent and school opens as boutique hotel in Downtown St. Paul The hotel invited some of the sisters who lived there to be the first guests of…
When downtown St. Paul’s new 71-room boutique hotel at Exchange and Cedar Streets opens at the end of the month, it include a bar component in what used to be the St. Agatha’s Conservatory of Music and Arts’ street-level parlor space.
So what in heaven’s name will happen to the convent? Sometime next fall, it will reopen to the public as the Celeste St. Paul Hotel and Bar (Celestestpaul.com), a 71-room boutique hotel that borrows its name from Mother Celestine, aka Ellen Howard, the convent’s first Mother Superior.
A century-old office building at a prime downtown St. Paul corner, with a music conservatory as its major tenant, has been sold and will become a boutique hotel, the buyer announced Monday.
A Northfield company that specializes in restoring and converting historic properties into hotels has bought the Exchange Building at Exchange and Cedar streets in downtown St. Paul.
For more information about the Celeste St. Paul Hotel + Bar, contact Jacqueline Hanson of Hanson Communications:
