House near St. Olaf with ties to philosopher Kierkegaard lists for $850K

When Tony and Julie Barrows were house hunting two years ago, they drove up to one possibility in Northfield, with the sounds of Heath Creek rushing alongside the yard.

“The grounds themselves spoke to us instantly when we arrived,” Tony Barrows said.

The inside of the house was the opposite vibe.

“We walked around in silence,” he said. “I don’t think we’d ever seen a house as beautiful as that.”

It left the couple “in awe of the whole estate,” Julie Barrows said.

Now the Barrows, both government workers, are moving back to the Twin Cities for work and have put the house back on the market for $850,000 to wow another owner.

The home, constructed with native limestone, is on 2 acres and has more than 4,323 square feet. Natural light pours through large windows on the main floor, which has an open floor plan and a walk-out deck. The lower level has stone floors and opens onto a patio.

There are three full kitchens, five fireplaces (a mixture of decorative, wood-burning and gas), a sauna and a hot tub. It contains at least four full bedrooms, along with other versatile rooms.

“It’s really hard to say how many bedrooms there are. It’s not a traditional house,” Julie Barrows said. “There are many rooms you could use as a bedroom.”

The Barrows used one of the spacious “bonus rooms” — there are two above the main level — as their daughter’s bedroom. It has a window that opens into the home’s interior, and the Barrows imagined constructing a pulley system to lift food to their 16-year-old’s room.

The other bonus room has built-in bookshelves, so they use it as a library.

“I would describe the main level as more modern, with a Scandinavian or European flavor,” Julie Barrows said. “The lower level is more earthy.”

Both are connected to land around it: the light from the windows, the color scheme in the house, the rough-cut wooden slab that tops a counter in the primary kitchen,

And throughout the home were touches of what the Barrows call “whimsy.” Their real estate agent, Charles Eckberg, calls it “welcoming playfulness.”

The foyer has a stone floor and walls along with what Julie Barrows described as “a giant wooden door that looks like it belongs on a castle.” In the living room, a huge window of leaded glass divides into dozens of small panes. There are four staircases, two of them spiral, two built around tree trunks that retain their rough surface. There’s even a door with a big glass panel that has a tree molded into it.

What the Barrows didn’t know when they first toured the house was its original owners. The couple were world-renowned translators of the works of Søren Kierkegaard, a 19th-century Danish philosopher. He’s often called the father of existentialism, a philosophical movement that emphasizes individual free will and search for meaning.

“My wife and I, full disclosure, weren’t really aware of the home’s history,” Tony said.

Howard and Edna Hong had met as students at St. Olaf College in Northfield and traveled together to Denmark in the late 1930s. There they learned Danish and translated Kierkegaard’s works into English. Howard Hong became a professor at St. Olaf, and Edna Hong wrote 12 books, including a memoir.

Many of Edna’s books are in the home and will remain for the next owner, Julie Barrows said. One contains an illustration of a spiral staircase in the home and is “on the dining room table right now,” she said.

The Hongs donated their translations and collections of Kierkegaard’s books, papers, journals and manuscripts to St. Olaf, which became the Howard V. and Edna H. Hong Kierkegaard Library on the campus. The library became the epicenter of a worldwide network of Kierkegaard scholars, including visiting professors who traveled to St. Olaf and often found lodging at the Hongs' home.

“This is a really special place, and it’s all thanks to their legacy,” said Anna L. Söderquist, the library’s curator and an associate professor of philosophy at St. Olaf who specializes in Kierkegaard.

The Hongs' work led to “a whole trend in scholarship, not just in the U.S. but in the English-language study of these works, making Kierkegaard accessible all over the globe in a way he wasn’t before,” Söderquist said.

The Hongs' house was originally on the grounds of the college in 1940. By 1961, the college had restricted private homes on its grounds. So the Hongs’ house moved to its present site along 340 feet of Heath Creek shoreline and expanded, Eckberg said.

Their friend and colleague Arnold Flaten helped them with the house’s design. The artist was also the namesake of the Flaten Art Museum at St. Olaf.

The home received extensive updating in the 2000s, Eckberg said: a new cedar-shake roof with copper flashing and gutters as well as downspouts; new architectural-grade windows and sliding doors; and professionally landscaped grounds with terraced gardens and perennial plants.

The house is the first place the Barrows have lived in their 30-year marriage that “has a true story of its own,“ Tony Barrows said. Its mixture of fantasy and mystery reminds him of one of his favorite childhood books, C.S. Lewis' “The Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe.”

“I had always wanted to live in a house with spiral staircases and secret rooms, and this house delivered,” Julie Barrows said.

There is actually a secret cupboard in the house, and the Barrows plan to keep it that way.

“We found it by happenstance,” Tony Barrows said. “I think we should let the new owners discover it.”

Chuck Eckberg (651-246-6639, chuck@chuckeckberg.com) of ReMax Results has the $850,000 listing.