< img src ="https://www.archpaper.com/wp-content/uploads/2026/04/Northwestern_National_Life_Building_Marquette_Avenue_Minneapolis_MN-1.jpg"alt=""> A Minoru Yamasaki– created building in Minneapolis is about to end up being a hotel. But depending on who you ask, the building reads as a Roman temple, an insurance coverage office, a jewel box, an oversized music box, or– per the critic Larry Millett, writing in his 2007 guide to the Twin Cities–“a temple to the gods of underwriting.”
On April 20 Minneapolis developer Chad Tepley strolled a KARE 11 electronic camera crew through the empty lobby of the Northwestern National Life Insurance coverage Company headquarters at 20 Washington Opportunity South. Tepley, who purchased the building in November for $7.1 million, described what he means to do with it: 165 hotel spaces, a ballroom and pool deck in the former mechanical penthouse, a 17,000-square-foot patio area developed on top of the portico, and a dining establishment along the reflecting pools. This is a 6,000-square-foot deck,” he stated. “People know it as the deck to the city.”
John Pillsbury, who ran the largest life insurance company in Minnesota, spoke with 39 architects before selecting Yamasaki for the task. The commission was for an insurance coverage headquarters for about 500 staff members– underwriters, actuaries, examiners– and a medical department geared up with an x-ray machine and an electrocardiograph, so the business might assess applicants’ mortality in-house. The insurance provider changed names over the years, Northwestern National Life became ReliaStar, then ING, then Voya Financial. Voya moved out in 2023.
The Northwestern National Life Building showed in among its paired swimming pools. The tower at right, 100 Washington Square, was a 2nd Yamasaki commission for the company.(Matthew Deery/Wikimedia Commons/CC BY 2.0 )Yamasaki explained his structure style as “a park with a structure in it. “He stated the deck would be”fragile” and “a delight to stroll through.”His partner Henry Guthard said the idea was a portico “you might browse”– a method to let the pedestrian shopping center that landscape designer Lawrence Halprin had simply completed drawing for downtown Minneapolis unspool its full length and come to rest, aesthetically, on the Hennepin Opportunity Bridge. You might browse, though you were never ever welcomed in.
The view through Yamasaki’s portico, framing the Wells Fargo Center, 2008.(SusanLesch/Wikimedia Commons/CC BY-SA 3.0 )Loss of Sanity In 1972, the Pruitt-Igoe public housing complex Yamasaki had actually developed in St. Louis was dynamited on live tv, Yamasaki, seeing, blamed himself. At a 1976 conference he asked “can people truly cohabit quietly?” He addressed his own question: “In spite of my vision for how architecture could really improve the lives of individuals, it appears that certain genuine social and economic conditions make this difficult.”