Who is Frank Frost?

A Life Spent Keeping Things Running

Some people leave behind stories. Others leave behind infrastructure. This one is about the second kind.

Who is Frank Frost? He was Ava’s fourth great-grandfather, and for most of his working life, he was tied to one building in downtown St. Paul, Minnesota. From around 1889 until 1926, he ran the boilers for what was then a modern high-rise, long before automation, electronic controls, or safety systems made that kind of work routine.

The building was constructed in 1889, before electricity was common and long before air conditioning existed. Everything about it reflects that reality. Instead of sealed hallways and mechanical ventilation, it was designed to breathe. A central atrium runs from the lobby to a skylight, allowing heat to rise and escape.

Offices relied on open windows and transoms above doors to move air through the space. At night, the light came from candles or whale oil lamps. Petroleum-based lamp oil didn’t fully replace whale oil until the early 20th century, so this building comes from a completely different energy era.

For years, my family would point to the building and mention that a relative once worked there. On a recent trip to Minnesota, my daughter, Ava, and I decided to finally follow that thread. I contacted the building’s owners, who put me in touch with the current building engineer. He’d been there for 13 years and clearly took a lot of pride in the place. He gave us a full behind-the-scenes tour, from the penthouse down to the basement.

What struck me immediately was how much of the original structure is still intact. There’s no parking garage because cars weren’t part of the plan when the building was designed. Instead, the basement still contains horse stalls, essentially a horse parking deck under the building. The marble staircases are worn down in the center, not from neglect, but from more than a century of people walking the same paths every day.

Frank Frost ran the boilers there for decades, and that job carried real risk. There were no electronic controls, automated safety systems, or backup alarms. Everything was manual. Boilers in that era could be dangerous, and keeping them operating safely required constant attention and deep knowledge. It wasn’t a job where you could afford to be careless. Walking through those mechanical spaces, it hit me how much responsibility rested on one person’s judgment, day after day, year after year.

The building also has an unexpected aviation connection. In 1928, this building was Northwest Airlines’ first ticket window. Northwest later merged into Delta, and Ava dreams of becoming a Delta pilot. From the roof, you can still see the old St. Paul airport across the bridge. Knowing that airline tickets were first sold in the same building where Great-Great-Grandfather worked is incredible. I’ll take it as a sign!

We also visited the house where Frank Frost grew up. It’s still standing, just a mile from where my grandmother grew up. They met in that neighborhood. In the 1920s, she spent time around the speakeasies along the St Paul River during Prohibition, how neat!?

I didn’t walk away with a revelation so much as a new perspective. Frank Frost spent his working life keeping a system running that supported everyone else in the building. That work didn’t come with recognition, but it mattered. Seeing it firsthand made that clear in a way family stories never quite could.