Exploring the Historic Hallways of Schmidt's

After I shared the story of the Stahlmann Cave Brewery on instagram, I received comments from several people expressing how much they would like to see the inside of the buildings. I couldn’t agree more!

That’s the hard thing about historic buildings, right? They are often privately owned, have restricted hours, or are secure buildings - which is great, but makes it hard for the public to enjoy. Luckily, when I reached out to the Schmidt Artist Lofts instagram page I was in touch with Matthew. He lives in the Lofts and graciously offered to show us around.

I put out an invite on Eventbrite.com. We needed to keep the group small because I didn’t want to A) make a bunch of noise and irritate the other residents and B) I didn’t want to have to worry about keeping a big group of people together. The eight spots filled up almost immediately and about 20 people took up spots on the waitlist, too.

The date came around and Matthew met me (my husband, Steve came along too) and once everyone arrived we started on our “tour”. We didn’t really have a plan, so we decided to head to the top and work our way down.

That decision meant that we started out VERY strong. The rooftop of the building is amazing. Even on a cloudy day (a winter storm was coming in fast) the views of downtown Saint Paul and West 7th street were incredible. It was too bad we had to cut it short because of the cold wind, because I could have stayed up there a lot longer.

The interiors of the 6 floors of Lofts were fascinating. Between the historic artifacts (like freight elevator doors, heavy vault doors, brickwork, telework and more) and the artwork hung on the walls all throughout the building, there was something interesting around every single corner. The architects who rehabbed the building did a really thoughtful job of adding creative skylights to get natural light into the interior units that wouldn’t be able to have windows. The creative spaces (painting studio, pottery studio, dance studio and more) were all well-equipped and made me want to move in.

We also saw lots of quirky things leftover from the brewery days or created by the reuse demands of the building. Strange tar stalactites, doors to nowhere, creepy tunnels and crumbling walls are the kinds of things that some people might not enjoy but I think they’re a feature, not a flaw.

Another highlight was the tunnel between the main brew house and the bottling plant. It was just the perfect level of cool and creepy to make it really fun.

Without the guidance of Matthew (and Carin, another resident of the Lofts) we never would have found our way back to the main lobby. We did and everyone was super reluctant to head out into the now blowing snow that waited for us outside.

If you get a chance, stop by the Schmidt Artist Lofts during their Spring Art Crawl 2025. It is April 25-27 and over 80 artists will have their works on display. They’re going to have activities on the rooftop, too, so you can check out that view!