Built in 1849 at Crow Wing, then the region's largest town, the Clement Beaulieu House is believed to be Minnesota's oldest standing frame house north of the Twin Cities and a prominent architectural artifact of the state's Territorial Period. Palatial by frontier standards and designed in the Greek Revival style, it stood on a hillside above the Mississippi River overlooking the village below. Its commanding setting reflected the standing of Clement Beaulieu, a trader of French and Ojibwe descent who became one of Crow Wing's best-known figures and is often regarded as a founder of the town. Born in 1811, Beaulieu had traded in Wisconsin and Minnesota, outfitted American Fur Company posts in northern Minnesota while heading the company's Fond du Lac department, and moved his operation to Crow Wing in 1849. There he expanded into trade, mercantile, and land development ventures, served on the first board of commissioners for Crow Wing County, platted the townsite in 1856, and made the house a well-known meeting place for visitors and business people. After the Northern Pacific Railroad selected a Mississippi crossing where Brainerd developed, Crow Wing declined rapidly in the 1870s, and Clement and Elizabeth Beaulieu moved to White Earth in 1873. In 1875, schoolteacher Elizabeth Ayer observed that the family was gone, the fence was broken, and animals were destroying what remained valuable on the premises. The house endures as a reminder of Crow Wing's past. Greek Revival architecture, the dominant American style from about 1830 to 1860, drew popularity after the War of 1812 as the United States embraced forms associated with Greek democracy; on the frontier its expression was often simplified, with features such as gabled roofs, broad trim at cornices and door lintels, triangular pediments, sidelights at the entrance, corner moldings suggesting columns, and double-hung six-pane windows.