Welcome to the lower-level landing. We bring you here on the self-guided audio tour because of how unique it is to have a formal entrance to the lower level of a home of this era.

Almost exclusively, the lower level is utilitarian space. It’s a space for storage, a space for boilers. It usually has an outside rear entrance, which this property does. It usually has a behind-the-scenes servant entrance, which this also does. But Cotton Mansion has a formal entrance as well. Indeed, this space was always part of the finished home from the first day.

From this wide stairway down to the formal landing, you can get to the wine cellar, and you’d also get to the family room. The family room was the room that we now call the Speakeasy.

There are 11-foot ceilings in this lower level, which we affectionately call the garden level, and it has 14 eight-foot windows that bask every room in this level with tons of natural daylight. The Speakeasy is actually one of our favorite guest rooms. If you have a chance to ever stay in there, you’ll love how large it is and the original history that’s in that room.

This family room was where the young kids used to play in their younger years, when the Cotton family moved in. Their youngest son hadn’t been born yet, and they had four- and seven-year-old daughters. So they indeed had young kids, and they had young kids for their whole time in this house.

This family room was where they’d play and also had access to the servants’ staircase on the other end of the family room. One of the interesting things about the servants’ staircase and servants’ side of homes like this was that it wasn’t just for servants. It was actually also for kids. It allowed kids to go up and down and traverse the house without being underfoot, or in the way or noisy in the formal parts of the home.

During the period of Cotton Mansion’s history, the Speakeasy, this original family room, was a classroom. It was the music theory room, and they would teach class in here for over 20 years. There’s actually a few original chalkboards from this time period in the room.

The rest of the lower level isn’t open to the public, but you can see on the door immediately to the left of the Speakeasy a door that says Ceramics Studio. And that was also part of the 1940 to 1960 university period. Through that door was a ceramics studio and a kiln room, where students learned to throw pottery and do some more of the dirty work that would probably be more befitting of a typical basement.

A few other interesting parts: at the lower level, the boiler room actually has a huge bay window that has a 20-foot-long, super-heavy, completely original workbench that was a winter garden. The boiler room is south-facing, and these huge windows and this huge workbench were where they overwintered many plants and things like that, because they got the heat off the boilers and they got all the sun from the south-facing windows.

It’s truly actually a wonderful place, and we still use it today to plant things so we can fill the baskets when spring comes around in Duluth. Late springs.

To continue the audio tour, please head back up the stairs and go to the right to the side-entrance vestibule. You’ll find the QR code for the porte cochère entrance audio-guide tour next to the side-entrance vestibule.