Dignified 120-year-old American foursquare in Minneapolis lists for $649,000

By the time Janet Way reached the front porch of the dignified old house in the Lowry Hill East neighborhood of Minneapolis, she was just about ready to buy it.

“I kind of fell in love with it the minute we walked up the front steps,” Way said of the first time she and her husband, Murray, toured the house before buying it in 2016.

The broad front porch with a wood-paneled ceiling “is perfect for morning coffee and evening drinks and afternoon whatevers.”

That was before she’d even entered the front door and discovered all the vintage carved-wood touches filling the house’s foyer and other rooms. They include gleaming hardwood floors, door-framing pillars, wainscoting, chair rail moldings, window casings and trim, pocket doors, built-in cabinets with a mirrored backsplash and lead-lite glass panels and windows, staircase bannisters whose newel posts are topped with wooden spheres.

The 1904 boxy American foursquare is filled with generous and well-maintained supplies of the elaborate woodwork found in many Minneapolis homes from around the turn of the 19th century — details that would be prohibitively expensive to replicate in most new construction today.

The 3,880-square-foot home has a spacious foyer, a formal dining room and a kitchen enlarged using a former butler’s pantry. The second floor holds three bedrooms, an office and a three-season porch. The third floor is an owners’ suite with a bedroom, sitting area, bathroom and walk-in closet. Part of the basement is finished as a rec room.

“It’s amazing, the work somebody put into so many things in the house, and it’s stood the test of time,” Way said. “They knew how to build quality back then and they built it to last and they built it to enjoy it and be proud of.”

She loves some other details, such as the chimney that rises through the house, its bricks visible on three of the four floors. And the windows, some of which the couple had professionally restored to minimize loss of heat and air conditioning while preserving the original, 120-year-old glass in all of them.

“You can tell quickly by looking at it ― it’s got little wavy bits in it,” she said.

The house is surrounded by other classic homes in a walkable neighborhood near lakes and restaurants in the Lowry Hill East Residential Historic District.

Janet and Murray Way, who are from Canada and New Zealand respectively but have been in Minnesota for more than 20 years, were acutely aware of themselves as temporary occupants of the house — “caretakers” who would own and maintain it for a while, then sell it to another family and move on.

“I just feel privileged to be among the people that have served family dinners in this dining room,” Janet Way said. “You have to do justice to an old house that everybody else has done justice to prior to you. You can’t let something go downhill while you’re being the caretaker.”

When preparing it to sell, the Ways called in hardwood experts who said the floors needed no more than a light sanding and a coat of varnish. This might be surprising, because in the 1980s the house had held the offices of a law firm. Way noticed that each room had phone jacks, and she saw a tangle of cords in the basement.

And in perhaps an even more surprising twist, the Ways’ real estate agent, Constance Vork of Keller Williams, lived in the house for several years as a child. Vork so loved its vintage touches that she credits the experience with influencing her choice of career in real estate and interest in restoring older homes.

Vork was 3 when her divorced mother went back to school to get a law degree. While at school, her mother worked as a paralegal at the same law firm that was at the Lowry Hill East property. Vork and her mother lived on the house’s third floor. That floor has since become a finished owners’ suite that includes the walk-in closet lined with wood shelving, but at the time it was unfinished.

“I have these marvelous memories of just running up and down the stairways and looking at the built-in buffet,” said Vork, who lived there until she was 6. “I just loved that house so much.”

One of Janet Way’s favorite parts of the property is visible only part of the year. When the couple bought the house, they didn’t know until that fall that the maple tree in the front yard turns brilliant red, almost fuchsia.

“It’s the first tree in the area to change color and stays quite long,” Way said. “It’s fun to sit on the front porch and see the number of people who see the tree and can’t walk past without taking a picture.”

Constance Vork, (612-396-4046, constance@constancevork.com) of Keller Williams Realty, has the $649,000 listing.