On a Thursday at noon, the doors of Courtroom 317 swing open and the public files in — no ticket, no reservation, no charge. They take their seats beneath a high ceiling in a two-tiered room of dark wood and stone, and for an hour, music replaces the echo of the gavel. This is a Courtroom Concert, one of the Twin Cities' quietest and most unusual cultural rituals, and it has been running for decades inside the Landmark Center in downtown St. Paul.
The series is presented by the Schubert Club, one of the oldest arts organizations in the country, and hosted by the composer Abbie Betinis. Concerts take place at noon on select Thursdays — the fall slate alone includes Clara Osowski, mezzo-soprano, with pianist Casey Rafn on October 15. The programming leans on accomplished Twin Cities musicians and composers, with the occasional newcomer to the area folded in. The concerts are planned to last an hour, though they sometimes run a little longer. They tend to fill up, so arriving early is advised; groups of ten or more are encouraged to call ahead, and any seats held for a group are released at 11:45 if the group hasn't arrived.
What makes the setting remarkable is that the room was built for something else entirely. The Landmark Center, completed in 1902, was originally the United States Post Office, Courthouse, and Custom House for the state of Minnesota. It was designed by Willoughby J. Edbrooke, who served as Supervising Architect of the U.S. Treasury Department in 1891 and 1892 and who designed a body of public architecture — much of it, like this building, completed after his death in 1896. The structure is Richardsonian Romanesque, faced in pink granite ashlar with a steeply pitched Ludowici clay tile roof meant to shed Minnesota snow, and adorned with turrets, gables, and dormers. It stands at 75 West Fifth Street, on Rice Park. Congress approved $800,000 for the building in February 1891, construction began the following year, and by 1898 it was clear more space was needed — prompting a second appropriation of $700,000. Cass Gilbert, the architect of the Minnesota State Capitol, supervised part of the construction.
Courtroom 317, where the concerts are held, carries a darker history. In the 1930s it hosted the trials of Evelyn Frechette, John Dillinger's girlfriend, and of Alvin "Creepy" Karpis, Doc Barker, and Leon Gleckman. Frechette's trial took place in Room 317 of what was then the Saint Paul Federal Building; she served two years in prison beginning in 1936, then toured the United States with Dillinger's family for five years in their "Crime Did Not Pay" show. Barker and Karpis were tried in Room 317 for the kidnapping of the St. Paul banker Edward G. Bremer Jr., who was seized on his way to work on January 17, 1934. The courtroom's gangster era grew out of a corrupt arrangement known as the O'Connor Layover Agreement. In 1900, St. Paul detective John O'Connor was promoted to chief of police, and he devised a plan to keep crime out of the city by harboring criminals within it: gangsters could take refuge inside the city limits if they registered with police on arrival at the downtown Hotel Savoy, paid bribes to police and city officials, and committed no major crimes within the city. The arrangement largely held during O'Connor's tenure, but after he retired in 1920, and as Prohibition took hold, St. Paul became a hub for bootlegging and, later, bank robbery and kidnapping. By 1932, more than 20 percent of the nation's bank robbers were said to be operating out of the city.
The building's own survival is part of the story. It was added to the National Register of Historic Places on March 24, 1969, and today it is owned by Ramsey County and managed by the nonprofit Minnesota Landmarks, functioning as an arts and culture center that also houses the Ramsey County Historical Society Gallery and Research Center. Courtroom 317 is now used for meetings, performances, and rehearsals — a piece of Minnesota history repurposed for exactly the kind of civic gathering the concerts represent.
The Schubert Club itself reaches back further than the building. It was launched on an autumn afternoon in 1882, when Marion Ramsey Furness — daughter of Governor Alexander Ramsey — and a group of music-loving friends formed a club they called "The Ladies Musicale," which became Minnesota's earliest recital-presenting organization. The early meetings were social gatherings for women, with members often providing the music, but they soon began organizing concerts, lectures, and study groups. The group changed its name to honor Franz Schubert, who had lived some fifty years earlier, and set as its mission the establishment of a high standard of musical performance in St. Paul. In 1893 it added the International Artist Series, presenting the German pianist Adele Aus der Ohe at Ford Music Hall at Fifth and St. Peter Street that same year. Before the turn of the century, Josef Hofmann and Xaver Scharwenka had played recitals in St. Paul under the club's banner. Over the decades the club made a point of slipping accomplished but lesser-known emerging artists into its programs alongside established stars, which led to St. Paul debuts by Louise Homer in 1902, Vladimir Horowitz in 1928, Isaac Stern in 1943, Dietrich Fischer-Dieskau in 1955, Leontyne Price in 1961, Mstislav Rostropovich in 1963, and Cecilia Bartoli in 1996. Today the organization is one of the oldest arts organizations in the country, predated by only a very few, among them the New York Philharmonic and the Boston Symphony Orchestra.
Betinis, the series host, is a composer best known for her choral and vocal music. Born in Stevens Point, Wisconsin, in 1980, she began Suzuki piano and ear training at age four at the University of Wisconsin-Stevens Point's American Suzuki Talent Education Center. A high school valedictorian, she enrolled at St. Olaf College on a piano scholarship, but during her sophomore year was diagnosed with Hodgkin's lymphoma and returned home for chemotherapy. When she came back to St. Olaf, she changed course to pursue music composition and linguistics, graduating in 2001. She later earned a master's degree in music composition from the University of Minnesota and studied harmony and counterpoint in the tradition of Nadia Boulanger at the European American Musical Alliance Summer Institute in Paris.
Put together, the pieces explain why the series has endured. The concerts are free and open to the public, held at midday, and staged in a room with an atmosphere no concert hall can manufacture — a space where the state once prosecuted its most notorious criminals and where, on a Thursday at noon, anyone who walks in can simply sit down and listen.