Latest / Pionerd / The Richest Woman in the Underworld: St. Paul’s Red-Light Empire
Transcript
- Outside the glass walls of the Science Museum of Minnesota, visitors walk across the St. Paul bluff without looking down. Thirty feet below, along the Mississippi riverbank, the air once smelled of river fog, wet coal, and raw timber. It was the Washington Street red-light district. At its center stood a luxury two-story brownstone owned by madam Nina Clifford, the grandest, most notorious bordello in the city. St. Paul’s elite patronized Clifford's parlor while publicly preaching Victorian morality. City officials protected the trade, taxed madams monthly, and took their cut. When wrecking crews finally demolished the building in 1937, municipal leaders did not erase that history. They repurposed it. They took the brothel’s stone to build the city morgue and hung its crystal chandelier in the Mayor's office. On August 3, 1851, Johanna Crow was born in Chatham, Ontario, to German immigrant parents. Her family moved to Detroit during her childhood. In March 1886, following the death of her husband, Conrad Steinbrecher, she cared for her aging mother. Once her mother passed, she boarded a train for St. Paul. On April 23, 1887, she purchased two lots under the hill on South Washington Street; around this time, she began using the name Nina Clifford. Clifford lived at Number 145 South Washington. Next door, at Number 147, she set out to build an empire. In 1888, she commissioned architect Walter Ife to design a multi-story carved brownstone. It cost twelve thousand dollars. That was more than three times the value of any surrounding residential home or riverfront shack. On official city permits, the structure's purpose was listed as a "boarding house and seminary". The location was a masterclass in tactical geography. Washington Street was a tough harbor district anchored by the infamous Bucket of Blood Saloon. Yet Number 147 sat directly across from both the police station and the city morgue. Inside, Clifford built pure luxury. High ceilings featured crystal chandeliers, plush carpets covered the floors, and marble fireplaces warmed the rooms. By 1895, census ledgers confirm she operated the largest bordello in the district. Eleven sex workers, two maids, and a cook lived on site. Clifford did not just run her own house. She financed her competitors. When Minneapolis madam Ida Dorsey needed a St. Paul base, Clifford sold her the building at 151 South Washington. Clifford funneled those real estate profits directly into police pockets. In exchange, authorities granted her total operational control. Contemporary press accounts soon dubbed her "the richest woman in the underworld". By 1900, census records show Clifford’s live-in staff had expanded to a housekeeper, a porter, and a musician. Nine women lived in the upper rooms as boarders. By the 1920s, business was so brisk that the house required two dedicated telephone lines. The front of the house offered total indulgence. Patrons from the elite Minnesota Club walked down the hill to drink Mumm's champagne served by sharply dressed staff. Legend even claimed an underground tunnel linked the brothel directly to the club. According to delivery boy Arthur Sundberg’s written account, Clifford kept a cigar box in her marble-fireplaced office containing hundreds of loose, unset diamonds accepted as payment. She threw the gold settings into the Mississippi River to prevent identification. Yet behind the velvet curtains lay a far harsher reality. When archaeologists excavated the brothel foundation in 1997, they unearthed fine glassware and oyster shells right alongside an opium pipe and dozens of discarded patent medicine bottles. These unregulated remedies, packed with heavy concentrations of alcohol, opiates, and cocaine, were the primary means for working women to self-medicate pelvic infections and numb severe daily physical pain. The women earned up to ten times standard factory wages, but paid for it in severe physical toll and public isolation. Clifford kept her enterprise safe through systemic graft. Under the 1900 O'Connor Layover Agreement, St. Paul police protected vice as long as criminals kept major offenses outside city limits. Madams appeared in court monthly, paying fines that functioned as informal municipal licensing fees. Clifford funneled bribe money through underworld fixers like William "Reddy" Griffin at the Hotel Savoy and later "Dapper" Dan Hogan at the Green Lantern. Yet she balanced this illicit engine with public goodwill. According to newspaper accounts, she chartered streetcars every Christmas to personally hand-deliver food baskets to impoverished local families. In January 1914, the unspoken agreement between City Hall and the Washington Street brothels violently unravelled in the Ramsey County District Court. Former Police Chief Martin J. Flanagan and Detective Fred Turner stood trial for grand larceny and extortion. Prosecutors charged them with running a systematic shakedown ring against local madams. Defense attorneys fought vigorously to bar resort keepers from testifying. However, state records show Judge Morrison invoked a 1907 law compelling indicted individuals to testify in bribery cases. Clifford and fellow madam May Burke took the stand as prosecution witnesses. Court transcripts record Clifford's uninhibited testimony regarding a three-thousand-dollar payoff required from Minneapolis madam Ida Dorsey to enter the St. Paul district. Underworld fixer Willie Wolff collected the money, splitting it into seven-hundred-and-fifty-dollar cuts for police officials. Clifford directly testified that she personally handed over the payoffs. Pointing across the courtroom, she declared: "It was a pleasure to hand Turner his bit... but she hated to give seven hundred and fifty to Wolff because he grabbed for it". Other witnesses exposed widespread graft. Amy Campbell testified to paying three hundred dollars for protection, while Gertrude Shaw revealed giving Detective Turner a diamond ring two days before Christmas in 1912. Clifford's testimony secured convictions against Chief Flanagan and Detective Turner, exposing the inner gears of St. Paul's graft engine. Yet Clifford remained untouched. She operated 147 South Washington until July 14, 1929, when she suffered a fatal stroke while visiting family in Detroit. She was buried in Detroit's Mount Elliott Cemetery. Her empire outlasted the men who tried to shake her down. Following Nina Clifford's death in July 1929, locals expected to uncover a vast fortune. Instead, bank ledgers revealed she left behind little cash, having quietly funneled her real estate wealth into Michigan property and financing the educations of young women. The brothel closed. A mafia-backed nightclub briefly occupied the space, but by 1934, the building stood permanently dark. Seized by Ramsey County for back taxes, Number 147 South Washington waited for the end as the surrounding O’Connor system collapsed after a locally organized wiretapping investigation exposed police corruption. On October 19, 1937, federal Works Progress Administration crews arrived to dismantle the structure. WPA administrator project logs recorded the intent: "What death and taxes began on the once-notorious house of Nina Clifford, the WPA is destined to finish". Former St. Paul Mayor Larry Hodgson penned a satirical eulogy under his newspaper moniker, Larry Ho: "Gone are the sofas and plush covered chairs From the parlor once happy and bright... For Nina is dead and her once famous house Is sold to pay up the back tax They're widening the street so they're tearing it down The whorehouse that was once the pride of the town... It's stone they are taking the morgue to repair A purpose appropriate, true For many a stiff has been laid in them both Even as me and you". Before WPA crews smashed the carved brownstone facade, city workers carefully unhooked the ornate crystal chandelier from Clifford’s parlor. They packed it up and carried it straight to City Hall, hanging it in the private office of the Mayor of St. Paul. The remaining masonry was hauled down Washington Street to repair and construct the Ramsey County Morgue. The physical footprint of 147 South Washington was scattered into the modern fabric of St. Paul. The elite gentlemen of the Minnesota Club mounted a salvaged brick from her brothel on their wall, affixed a brass commemorative plaque, and renamed their private billiard room in her honor. Decades later, in 1997, archaeologists excavated the site before construction began on the Science Museum of Minnesota. They unearthed foundation stones and personal artifacts, but found no evidence of the rumored underground tunnels to the Minnesota Club. The excavation debunked the local legend once and for all. Today, visitors to the museum walk directly over the buried foundations of Nina Clifford’s empire. Her story stands as a reminder that the institutions defining our modern cities are often built upon the complicated, unvarnished human truths of our past.