Macalester foundation steps in to save doomed St. Paul house

After weeks of restoration, the century-old Dutch colonial at 1721 Princeton Av. looks great and is ready for sale again — a scant six months after neighbors in St. Paul's Tangletown neighborhood rallied to keep it standing in the face of impending demolition.

The house's original woodwork and hardware shines, setting off the distinctive wood-frame windows and the brick fireplace. It looks exactly like the kind of warm, comfortable home that Jennie and George Williams, a railroad mail clerk, must have hoped for when they built it in 1909 for $3,500.

"Our goal is to make it move-in ready," said Tom Welna, director of Macalester College's High Winds Fund, who expects to show the house soon to prospective buyers.

High Winds, a foundation that seeks to preserve the neighborhood around Macalester, bought the house in February from a couple who had purchased it last fall with plans to tear it down and replace it with two new houses on the oversized lot.

But pressure from neighbors, who created a Facebook page and held a curbside candlelight vigil in protest, persuaded them to sell the house to High Winds.

The couple's developer said it would cost upward of $200,000 to restore the interior of the two-story house.

It cost High Winds only about $30,000, Welna said — not counting the $15,000 to repair damage to the ceilings when radiators froze and cracked in the unheated house during a cold snap last winter.

Workers refinished the oak and maple floors, patched holes in the plaster and slapped a fresh coat of ivory paint on the walls. They removed asbestos and installed new light fixtures in every room, save for the refurbished dining room chandelier.

They rescued and fixed an old door from the basement; it now separates the dining room from the cypress-paneled sunroom. Nicole Curtis of HGTV's "Rehab Addict" offered advice on paint and furniture, which was brought in to dress up the house for buyers.

Smack in the middle of negotiations to buy the house and the restoration work has been Welna, a Macalester alumnus who was deputy mayor under former St. Paul Mayor Jim Scheibel and once owned a floating bed-and-breakfast on the Mississippi River. He has been High Winds' director for 12 years.

When the storm broke last November about the new buyers' plans for the house, Welna quickly got word to them of High Winds' interest in the property.

Macalester once owned more than 200 houses in the neighborhood, including 1721 Princeton; in fact, it had the right of first refusal on the sale, a fact that escaped the parties involved.

The asking price likely will be in the mid-$500,000 range — just about what High Winds paid to buy and restore the house.

"It would have been a moral crime to dump it," Welna said. "There's just too much that's unique about it."