St James Hotel, a Historic Hotel of America

Very beautiful hotel and very welcoming.

The rooms here are nice sized but in need of a refresh. A beautiful historic hotel in the center of Red Wing, with easy access to everything and ample parking. But, the rooms need modernization; they are a bit sparse. There is a Keurig and an alarm clock and a smallish TV. But they just feel a bit empty and simple. Also, the bathroom fixtures were incredibly low. Like the shortest toilet and sink I’ve ever had. It may have been that I got an accessible room and didn’t know it. I did have an issue in the restaurant, Scarlet, which I have yet to raise with management. I tried to stop in for a quick lunch in advance of a meeting. There were many staff, but it seemed an imposition for them to help us. One begrudgingly allowed us to sit at the bar after making us wait for five minutes while she did something (not preparing drinks) at the bar. There were a number of waitstaff and other staff milling about but they made this one poor server attend to the entire dining room. One did refill our water. But six other staff just did nothing to help this one server. It was embarrassing. In the end, we ran out of time and had to take most of our food to go—which ended up going to waste because it had to sit in the car while we went to meetings. Cheese curds and pretzels were excellent, though. But it was the worst visible example of servers leaving one to shoulder everything while they sat around that I have seen. I need to raise this with management so they can retrain those folks.

The hotel is 150 years old, while keeping it's ancestral roots it has been updated to relative modern standards. Everyone was helpful, restaurant & bars were great. We had a wonderful 4th of July stay!!

It is a beautiful hotel. The restaurant was excellent. We will coming back.