A July 11th, 1915, article in The Minneapolis Journal, carried the headline ‘Winchell Plan for Woman Students’ Home Realized at the University of Minnesota After 43 Years.’ The paper reported the Charlotte Winchell Cottage for women students would open that fall. It went on to state that Professor’s Winchell, Rhame, and Sawyer ‘were the men who planned the house and their idea was to have it as a boarding house for women students in the first days of the university. It was not until the present year that their plan materialized. …’
The article went on to describe the house’s interior with its hand-hewn beams. ‘About 18 girls and a chaperone and maid will be accommodated at the cottage, which has 10 bedrooms, a living room, a dining room, one large study room on the main floor, two upstairs studies, and a kitchen.’
July 11, 1915, Star Tribune article on Charlotte Winchell's Cottage
Although the1915 article credited the three professors, the idea of a boarding house for women was originally Charlotte Winchell’s, reflecting her recognition that housing was a serious impediment to women being able to study at the university. For many years, the fledgling institution consisted of a single building. There were no dorms and nearly all area boarding houses were for men only. A woman coming to the university was hard pressed to find accommodations if their families did not have friends or relatives living in the area. The housing shortage for women persisted for many years and was the reason the university’s first dorm, built in 1910, was for women students.
From a modern perspective, the idea of providing a single boarding house to alleviate this shortage may appear hopelessly naïve but the university’s Calendar for the 1874-1875 academic year only listed 239 students attending the university. Of those, sixty-one were women, including Helen Mar Ely of Winona who that spring would become the university’s first woman graduate. Twenty-seven of the women came from Minneapolis and one from Saint Paul, all of whom would have been able to live at home. Others came from nearby communities, like Minnetonka, and might have had relatives or family friends in the city. Three came with brothers, which would increase their housing options. Hence, with only thirty women students in need of housing, an eighteen-room boarding house could have made quite a difference in 1875.
However, even for academics, 43 years, well really 41 years, is a bit slow…
The Beginning
On October 24, 1872, the Saint Cloud Journal reported that the “Old Cheever House” in East Minneapolis had burned in a fire on October 19. The Star Tribune of Oct. 20, 1872, reported the fire broke out ten minutes before noon, begun by sparks from the chimney on the rear side of the house. The house was owned by William Constance, of St. Paul, and leased to J. S. Lennon, a real estate dealer. At the time, the only occupants of the large edifice were the Moses Morse family, who had moved in a week earlier, and three college students who occupied a room together, Mr. Day of Castle Rock, William H. Best and John Ayott. ‘The roof of the building was in bad condition, and the dry half-rotten shingles caught like tinder, communicating with the chambers inside in a very few minutes. The best furniture in the house was in the upper rooms, from which nothing was saved.’
Other students started a subscription to offset the three students’ losses (calculated to have been more than $200) and raised more than fifty dollars but no mention was made of any relief for the Morse family. A high wind during the fire spread cinders towards the University buildings. Numerous small fires started up among the dry leaves covering the grounds, but students and others put them out. No fire department arrived and no alarm given apart from a few minutes ringing of the nearby Presbyterian Church bell.
The building had suffered an earlier fire in 1865 so by 1872 it only retained a vestige of its former glory as a 61-room hotel. After the second fire though, nothing remained of the original structure. Constance sold the grounds and a nearby building, which once served as the hotel’s barn and may have predated the 1851 hotel, to three university professors. So, a geologist, an engineer, and a German professor walk into a burned-out hotel …
October 20, 1872, Star Tribune article on Cheever House fire.
The Trio and The Wife
Well, actually, it was two years after the fire when a trio of University of Minnesota professors purchased, moved, and refitted the old Cheever barn into an eighteen-room ‘cottage.’ And it would not be the professors themselves, but one of their wives who originated the idea of establishing a boarding house for women students at the university.
Newton Horace Winchell and Mitchell Davison Rhame both arrived at the university in the fall of 1872. Winchell had been hired to conduct the Geological and Natural History Survey of Minnesota. In doing so, he became the founder of the university’s department of geology, while those he hired went on to start the departments of Zoology, Botany, and the present-day Bell Museum. Rhame had been hired to replace Arthur Beardsley as the university’s professor of civil engineering. However, the only engineering course Beardsley taught was a surveying course. Hence, as the first to teach full engineering courses, Rhame proved to be the founder of all our university’s modern engineering programs.
The Board of Regents’ annual report to the Governor of Minnesota in 1872 noted that: ‘Professor Arthur Beardsly filling the Chair of Civil Engineering, tendered his resignation at the close of the academic year, which was accepted by the Regents, in June last. Mr. M. D. Rhame, who is a graduate of Yale, and furnished with good testimonials has been appointed in his stead. Mr. N. H. Winchell, a graduate of the University of Michigan, has been selected to give instruction in Geology and Minerology for the present year, and will enter upon his duties the first of January next.’
Wesley Caleb Sawyer arrived the following year and would not stay at the university long. He was hired to teach the German language and literature.
The 1873 regents’ annual report noted: Mr. W. C. Sawyer, a graduate of Harvard University, has been appointed assistant Professor in charge of the German Language and Literature. Professor N. H Winchell, graduate of the University of Michigan, has been made Professor of Geology, Zoology and Botany in addition to his duties as State Geologist. Mr. M. D. Rhame, a graduate of Yale College, has been made assistant Professor in charge of the department of Civil Engineering.
Besides all being newly arrived professors, the three were united by their Methodist faith, Sawyer even being a minister, so it is somewhat natural they would work together.
However, it was Winchell’s wife, Charlotte, who conceived and drove the dream of building a rooming house for women attending the university. As the primary caretaker of the house, its family, and numerous students who stayed there, it was only natural that when the house became cooperative housing for women students, it would bear her name, as the Charlotte Winchell Cottage.
Link to Biographical Summary of Charlotte Sophia Imus Winchell
Charlotte Sophia Imus Winchell in 1880 (UMN Archives)
After the Fire…
Shortly after the 1872 Cheever Hotel fire, Winchell, Rhame, and Sawyer all purchased land the burned Cheever House had stood on or was associated with. Winchell bought the land below what had been the east end of the Cheever House, and which still held the hotel’s barn (lots 4 & 5 of block 10), while Sawyer bought the land which had housed the hotel’s west end (lots 6 & 7 of block 10). Rhame bought four additional lots to the east of the old hotel’s site (lots 4-7 of block 11) and Sawyer and Winchell purchased two lots south of Rhame's land (respectively lots 3 and 2 of block 11).
1884 map of the Campus with the professors' known lands.
On the map above, the three grey lots were owned by Sawyer, those in brown were purchased by Winchell, and the five green lots by Rhame. The line of the Saint Paul and Northern Pacific Railroad ran across the top of the present Northrop Mall between Johnston Hall and Morrill Hall. The east half of Block 11 is the northern part of the present Northrop Mall. Sawyer's Lot 3 of Block 11 was the site of the Winchell home which Winchell purchased from Sawyer in 1875. Rhame did not purchase the southern plot (lot 6 of Block 21) until he left the university in 1880.
The three moved the old barn, which may have started life as Cheever’s farmhouse, roughly 200 meters to a new site. In its new location, the remodeled structure stood in what is now the middle of Northrop Mall. If it still existed, its front exterior would face the offices of the Earth and Environmental Sciences department, the descendant of Winchell’s own geology department.
Map on left shows locations of original Cheever buildings including the barn that was later moved to what is now Northrop Mall (to red rectangle). On right is an image of the Charlotte Winchell Cottage (previously the Winchell home) modified from a September 21, 1919, Star Tribune article placed in the cottage's mall location facing Tate Hall.
Although the house came from Winchell’s plot, Sawyer owned the land they moved the house to. Initially though, Sawyer intended to live on the old Cheever Hotel site as a May 19, 1875, article in the Star Tribune announced that ‘Prof. Sawyer is grading and preparing to build below and near the University, on the grounds of the old Cheever Hotel.’
Sawyer never followed through on those plans but instead became the first resident of the recently moved and renovated eighteen-room house. The 1874 Minneapolis City Directory had an entry for Sawyer W. C. a.m., P.H.D. living at State, between ‘A’ and ‘B’ ED (East Division). State was a north-south street that ran down the east side of the present Northrop Mall. ‘A’ street ran across what is now Northrop Plaza, between Johnson and Morrill Halls while ‘B’ street was just to the south of the campus’ present Scholars Walk.
The 1874 directory also noted Sawyer was the editor of The Citizen, 103 Central Avenue. The Citizen was a newspaper produced by The Citizen Publishing Company. John Sargent Pillsbury was the company’s president, Henry Godfrey Sidle, a banker, its treasurer, and Sawyer was secretary. At the time, Pillsbury was president of the university’s board of regents and in two years would become Minnesota’s eighth governor so Sawyer, despite having just arrived, was already well connected.
In terms of Charlotte’s vision though, Sawyer living in the house posed a problem. Despite the house being far larger than Sawyer’s needs, he was unmarried. Hence, he could not offer boarding to women students. However, Sawyer left the university at the end of the 1874-75 school year to take a position at Lawrence University in Appleton, Wisconsin.
Among the real estate transfers reported in the Star Tribune on May 7, 1875, was one from Wesley C. Sawyer to Newton H. Winchell, transferring the undivided half of Lot 3, Block 11, St. Anthony, for the sum of $1,800. This was the lot with the moved and renovated house. Five days later, the Star Tribune reported a second transfer, Wesley C. Sawyer to James S. Upton, of the west four-fifths of lots 6 and 7, in Block 11, in “St. Anthony City” for $1,200. This second transfer was the land site of the old Cheever House Sawyer had bought.
May 7, 1875, Star Tribune notice of land transfer from Sawyer to Winchell
The Winchells now owned the house but with their growing family and limited income, they could not afford to make it into a boarding house. Instead, they compromised, moving into the house from their 1223 5th St. residence, but also taking in women students as boarders. In the 1880 U.S. Census, three students were boarding with the Winchell family, Louisa Stevenson, Lilla Ruth Williams, and Carrie Delania Fletcher. The 1915 Star Tribune article on the Charlotte Winchell Cottage mentioned other alumnae who had boarded with the Winchells, including Mariana Adella Bishop, sisters Mary and Carrie Blanchard, Justina Leavitt, Lizzie Thatcher, and Mary Alton Craik. And undoubtedly there were other boarders who did not make it into census lists or news articles.
Winchell Family at 120 State home in 1894. From left to right: Back row: Alexander Newton Winchell, Mabel Martina Johnson, Francis Newton Stacy, Ima Caroline Winchell Stacy, Horace Vaughn Winchell, and Avis Winchell Grant. Second Row: Newton Horace Winchell, Antoinette Caroline Winchell Johnson, Charlotte Sophia Imus Winchell (holding Alice Emily Stacy), Julia Frances Lines Winchell, and Ulysses S. Grant. Front row: Ida Belle Winchell (holding Royal Winchell) and Louise Winchell Dayton Denman. (Hennepin County Library)
By 1880, Rhame had severed his connection with the university, but did not leave the state nor break his ties with the Winchells. Instead Rhame and his family became the Winchells’ next-door neighbors, living at 201 State.
In 1885, the Saint Paul and Northern Pacific Railway Company built a railroad from Brainerd to Saint Paul, seizing or condemning properties along their proposed right of way, including the old Cheever House lands purchased by Sawyer, Winchell, and Rhame. The new railroad line ran just north of the Winchells’ home – which must have adversely impacted the family. Much later, a February 10, 1946, Star Tribune article would mention that only unpleasant feature about the original Winchell Cottage was its proximity to the railroad tracks. Lulu Elliot, who had lived in the cottage, remembered that the foot bridge over the railroad tunnel extended almost to their front porch.
1892 Campus map with location of Winchell home (circle) and Rhame home (rectangle).
Notice June 30, 1908 The Minneapolis Journal of Winchell's purchase of lot for family's last home. Below is the September 13, 1908, Star Tribune notice of the home's architect.
Newton Horace Winchell’s association with the university ended in 1900 although his family continued to live at 120 State. However, the university continued to expand and in June and October of 1908, the university purchased or condemned Winchell’s property in the area, paying a total of $24,613.30 for the house and three lots. At the time, the university lacked the funds to build on its newly acquired land so the old Winchell home, along with two dozen other residences, remained standing.
In June, Winchell purchased another lot on the southern edge of the campus and on September 13, 1908, the Star Tribune carried a brief notice that ‘C. McElroy, architect, reports Nels Jenson has charge of the work of erecting N. H. Winchell’s residence at 501 East River bank. It will be of pressed brick and cut stone, 30x50. Cost $6,000.’
The new house and its land were bordered filled the east side of Union Street, between Essex Street and East River Road. Initially it was known as 501 Union Street but as seen in the photograph of the house, Union Street only existed on maps, so the Winchells began using 501 East River Road as an address. However, because of the land’s slope, East River Road lay below the house so eventually, they settled on 500 Essex Street. The land is now the site of the west wing of the University of Minnesota Medical Center.
Winchell House at 501 East River Road in 1911 and lot location on 1913 map. Photograph was taken across the map location of Union Street, looking east. East River Road would be to the right and Essex Street to the left. The Winchell lot (circled) is indicated in brown on the 1913 map.
Yet although the Winchell family no longer owned their old home at 120 State, their connection to the building was not completely lost.
Charlotte Winchell Cottage
In 1910, the University of Minnesota finally began to address the need for women housing when Sanford Hall, the university’s first dormitory, opened its doors for ninety women. Yet, even as it opened, the new dormitory’s capacity fell far below what was needed. In 1914, having become disenchanted with the university’s failure to truly address the issue, the Faculty Women’s Club opened the Elizabeth Northrop Cottage at 113 Church Street as women’s cooperative housing. A September 30, 1917, article in The Minneapolis Journal credited the idea of a cooperative cottage to Laura Lettie (Smith) Krey, wife of history professor August Charles Krey, who had been a graduate of the University of Texas and lived at one of the cottages maintained by that institution which may have been the first in the nation. Cottage residents not only contributed to a general fund to pay for rent, food and miscellaneous expenses but also helped maintain the home. Their total expenses were less than half the cost of living in Sanford dormitory. Elizabeth Northrop Cottage opened with nine residents, a faculty chaperone, and a housekeeper.
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Elizabeth Northrop Cottage 113 Church Street SE (Hennepin County Library)
Not to be outdone, the newly organized University of Minnesota Alumnae Club decided their first project would be to convert the old Winchell home at 120 State into a second Minnesota women’s cooperative cottage which opened in 1915. On Saturday, October 16, 1915, the University of Minnesota Alumnae Club and the inaugural fifteen residents welcomed Charlotte Winchell to a housewarming tea held in her honor at her old home, which was named for her. Charlotte was now a widow, as Newton had died in May of the previous year.
Still, the demand for women’s housing remained unsated. In 1916, the university’s announced plans for a future addition to Sanford Hall. At the time, only ninety women could reside in the current dorm, while about ninety others lived in sorority houses, and twenty-six lived in Elizabeth Northrop and Charlotte Winchell Cottages. Two hundred and fifty other women lived in rooming houses while the rest of the women students lived with relatives or friends. The university eventually expanded Sanford Hall in 1921, but the expansion only produced residence for another 90 women and in the intervening years, the number of women at the university had grown substantially.
October 3, 1915, Star Tribune article on Cottage's opening.
Sanford Hall in 1921 after its initial expansion that doubled its original 1910 size. (UMN Archives)
On October 10, 1917, two additional homes on the campus were opened as women’s cooperative cottages. One was the Sarah Fowell Cottage at 303 Washington Avenue SE named after William Watts Folwell’s wife. The other was funded by Florence Barton Loring in honor of her niece who had died a few years earlier. The house chosen for the Ruth Loring Cottage happened to be 201 State, the old home of Winchell’s one-time neighbor and colleague, Mitchell Denison Rhame. So coincidentally, four years after he died, Rhame’s house finally became the women’s housing he had considered decades earlier. Hence, in 1917, the only university housing for women consisted of Sanford Hall and four wood frame houses, which were now cooperative cottages. The cottages’ combined occupancy of sixty-seven students nearly matched the ninety who could live in Sanford Hall.
1928 view of Northrop Mall during construction of Northrop Auditorium. In distance to south of Tate Hall stands the Ruth Loring Cottage, originally the Rhame family home (seen in blown up image at right). This is the only image known of the cottage. (UMN Archives)
Although the cooperative cottage experiment had proven remarkably successful, it required one tweak. In 1916, after their first year experience, residents of the two cottages felt that new students coming to the university were ‘underequipped’ for the responsibility of living cooperatively. Hence future residents had to spend a year in the dorms before being eligible to live in the cottages.
Besides their communal lifestyle, conveniently located on campus, the cottages were economically extremely attractive. Average monthly costs for residents ranged from $18 to $18.50, with 27 cents a day going for food. The remainder paid the wages for a cook and matron, as well as covered the house’s rent, light, and heat. Residents helped keep food costs low by planting and maintaining large gardens beside the house. The cottage’s rent to the university was $350 to $400 per year and in 1917 President Burton and the university regents cancelled two months of rent to further reduce costs for the residents.
Winchell Cottage modified from an illustration int the September 21, 1919, Star Tribune at left. On right is a photograph labeled 'In Our Room' showing two residents of the cottage in 1918 from the Minnesota Historical Society's collections.
Charlotte Winchell Cottage quickly came to play a prominent role in university social life, hosting literary societies, Halloween frolics, teas, and sorority meetings. During 1916, the cottage had a pronounced theatrical bent, putting on vaudeville performances at social events. In February at the opening of the new women’s gymnasium (now Norris Hall), they hosted a ‘rooster’ fight with the residents playing the rooster’s parts. Their support for the gymnasium was fitting as the next year, Charlotte Winchell Cottage would dominate women’s sports at the university, winning both the Girls’ Basketball Cup and women’s baseball tournament. Charlotte Winchell Cottage was also the first cottage to hold meatless and wheatless days in 1917 in support of the war effort.
The university assumed control of the cooperative cottages in 1918 and hired a resident director and cook for each house. However, the university declined to invest anything else, as the cottages still stood on land the university had future plans for. The title of a March 9, 1919 article in The Minneapolis Journal was ‘U’ Poor Landlord; Houses Run Down. At the time there were twenty-five houses on campus grounds but some of those were so poorly maintained that they were renting for $5 a month. Mr. Hildebrand, the university’s superintendent of buildings and grounds, fully acknowledged they were not worth more. Hildebrand said the University of Minnesota was a poor landlord and would not make any improvements as the institution intended to sell the houses. The university also only offered monthly leases as it retained the right to take over a house whenever it would be needed. Five buildings were used as homes for the nurses of Elliot Memorial Hospital and those were kept in good condition. ‘Others are used for girls co-operative cottages. The former home of the late Professor Newton H. Winchell is now housing 15 university girls. Folwell cottage houses 20, and Northrop and Loring cottages each house 16. These cottages are kept in good condition, Mr. Hildebrand said, but will be moved as soon as the university can obtain an adequate dormitory system for its women students.’ It appeared that the Charlotte Winchell Cottage’s days in the old Winchell home were numbered.
Elizabeth Northrop Cottage was the first cooperative cottage to close, being requisitioned by the regents as a home for nurses as the university retooled in response to World War I.
The original Charlotte Winchell Cottage would follow. An article in the Star Tribuneon September 21, 1919, described William Watts Folwell’s attempt to find the original location of the old Cheever House and Cheever Tower. Almost incidentally, the article mentioned that the Winchell Cottage, once the barn of the old Cheever House, was being dismantled.
Having been moved and remodeled in 1874, once the Charlotte Winchell Cottage became a part of the university in 1915, it also became the university’s oldest structure. There is no record of when the original structure was built, but it was at least as old as the 1851 Cheever House. Which means the house dated to the original founding of the University of Minnesota at the foot of Owámniyomni (Saint Anthony Falls), three years before the university moved to its present location. Sadly, even then, the university had a poor record of preserving its historic structures.
During the twenties, the university’s central mall began to take shape. Walter Library was built in 1924, followed by the Physics Building (now Tate Hall) in 1928, and Northrop Auditorium in 1929. In 1930, the university built its first men’s dormitory, Pioneer Hall, two decades after the first women’s dormitory.
However, the Charlotte Winchell Cottage idea had been so successful that it not only survived the demolition of its original home but began to multiply. Another university-owned house at 504 SE Beacon Street was designated the new Charlotte Winchell Cottage. However, that residence was smaller and could only house several students. Consequently, parts of two other older homes at 500 and 511 SE Beacon were used to house the other cottage residents. These temporarily became known as the Winchell Cottage Annexes and their residents used a dining room in the main cottage. Because of the continued demand for new housing, the university soon dedicated the entirety of the two annex structures as new Winchell Cottages. It then continued to add other old university-owned residences along Beacon Street between the university’s Engineering buildings and stadium.
Perine's 1940 Campus map with thirteen Winchell Cottages on Beacon Street shown in blow up segment. (UMN Archives)
1958 Campus Map with thirteen Winchell Cottages next to Sanford Hall. Largest one (1124) had a dining room used by residents of all the cottages. (UMN Archives)
In the spring of 1945, as the University expanded eastward, a total of thirteen Winchell Cottages were bundled onto trucks and moved from Beacon Street SE to Eleventh and Twelfth Avenues SE adjacent to Sanford Hall. The February 10, 1946, Star Tribune noted eight of those thirteen cottages reopened that fall with the other five opening in January of 1946. Their new locations were 211, 213, 215, 217, and 219 11th Avenue SE and 200, 201, 204, 205, 208,209, and 212 12th Avenue SE, with another equipped with a dining room at 1124 University Avenue SE. That house was large enough that it had to be split in half to be moved to its new location. A 1958 campus map shows the thirteen cottages snuggled up along the wings of Sanford Hall like chicks overflowing a nest.
By the 1950s, the Charlotte Winchell Cottages housed 135 to 140 undergraduate and graduate women in ‘small comfortable units, where the women share in the work expenses.’ As in the past, the cottages provided an affordable alternative to other campus area housing with rates ranging from $229 to $266 per month. As a consequence, despite the cottages’ age, there was always a waiting list of women hoping to reside in them.
On May 23 and 27 of 1958, The Minnesota Daily ran a two-part spread on the Winchell Cottages. According to that article:
‘But while slightly ancient around the edges, the houses are far from decrepit!
The Cottages are one of the most popular housing units on campus. According to Winchell’s president, Judy Taplin, SLA sophomore, they can’t begin to handle all the applications they receive.
While this is partly due to the University’s ever-swelling enrollment, the big attraction is financial —Winchell is the most economical of the dorms.
At $150 a quarter, the room and board at the cottages was roughly $100 less than other women’s residences. Besides offering affordable accommodations, the cottages’ residents continued their tradition of social activity, hosting an annual street dance known as the ‘Cement Mixer’ yet still maintaining some of the highest-grade averages at the university. Many residents were second-generation ‘Winchellites’ whose mothers had previously lived in the cottages.
While the Daily articles praised the Winchell Cottage success and noted they were among the earliest cooperative college living experiments in the country, the last half of the series held an ominous note. Clinton T, Johnson, director of University Services mentioned that ‘While cooperative living has been a successful venture in campus housing, Winchell cannot continue to operate as it is indefinitely.’ Johnson then mentioned that the university wanted to replace these older, small occupancy units with new modern cooperative dorms but “For financial reasons it will be far in the future before the University can seriously plan on new cooperative housing units to replace the old cottages.’ Hence the article ended with the promise that the Charlotte Winchell Cottages would remain part of university life for many years.
Yet it was not to be. The following year, the May 15th Daily announced the university was closing the cottages but had plans to build a ‘similar type of unit for the women.’ Like its earlier promises, the university failed to follow through. The Winchell Cottages were closed down with no new cooperative housing to replace them. The university’s only response to their closing and the resulting need for more women housing was to convert the south wing of Pioneer Hall into a women’s dormitory in 1960. It was the end of a half century of women cooperative cottages at the University of Minnesota.
Charlotte’s Legacy
Newton Horace Winchell had a major impact on the fledging University of Minnesota, founding its geology department, establishing the state geological survey, and building the General Museum that was the origin of the current Bell Museum. However, he only taught classes for seven years, from 1872 to 1878, and finished his survey work in 1900. Hence, apart from geology majors, by the early 1900s’ few students knew anything about him.
In contrast, as the inspiration for the Winchell Cottages, Charlotte’s name remained a campus feature through the end of the 1950s’, over a half century since her husband left the university and three decades past her death. Hundreds of university women lived in her original cottage and its descendants, and their prominence in social activities meant Charlotte Winchell’s name remained known up to the 1960s.
Charlotte Winchell had begun her career as an educator at fourteen and throughout her life maintained an interest in helping students, particularly women. In her own life, Charlotte challenged society’s restrictions, pushed for suffrage, and in 1876 became one of the first women elected to public office in Minnesota. It was originally Charlotte’s idea to start a rooming house to enable women to attend the University of Minnesota and while her dream was deferred, it was never abandoned. She added students into her family’s life and home, and was the inspiration for the University of Minnesota Alumnae Club’s transformation of the old Winchell house into the Charlotte Winchell Cottage. While the university’s other cooperative homes closed, the Winchell Cottage not only survived but multiplied, lasting until the end of the 1950s.
Charlotte Winchell’s grave marker is a simple flat stone. It lies so low in the ground it is often covered by standing water after rain or is obscured by even the lightest snow. But her modest stone does not matter, as her real memorial lies in the lives and families of the few thousand women who lived in the Charlotte Winchell Cottages for over a half century. Some of whom could only attend the University of Minnesota because of the cooperative cottages’ affordability and Charlotte’s dream.
Charlotte Sophia Imus Winchell in 1916 (Hennepin County Library)