28th-Annual Palio More Than Just a Neighborhood Gathering

SEPTEMBER, 2010
❒ WEDGE HISTORY AND ARCHITECTURE
BY TRILBY BUSCH
This is the fifth in a series about Wedge houses
designed and built by Theron Potter Healy,
Minneapolis’s most prolific master builder.
2439 Bryant Avenue South
Year Built: 1905
Cost: $5,000
First owners: Edward and Emma
Goetzenberger
Current owners: Anthony and Kate Roos
To admirers of Prairie School Architecture, the name
“Goetzenberger” will be forever associated with the
1910 house at 2621 Emerson Avenue South, designed
by the celebrated firm of Purcell, Feick & Elmslie.
However, the
Goetzenbergers owned
another house in the
Wedge, designed and built
by T.P. Healy in 1905. In
that year, 2439 Bryant
was the only house Healy
designed and built on his
own, although he did
build five other structures
designed by architects
Kenyon, Whitney, Dorr,
and Kennedy. The
building permit shows
that the Goetzenbergers
commissioned Healy to build the house; that is, it was
not built on speculation, as were many other Healys.
According to researcher Bob Glancy,
Edward Goetzenberger was a sheet metal worker
who specialized in furnace ductwork. His business
was located at 2929 Lyndale Avenue South
(currently Apotheca), an easy walk from his house
on Bryant Avenue. The architectural firm of
Purcell and Elmslie was founded in 1907, and
Goetzenberger did the ductwork on Purcell’s own
house. According to Purcell’s job notes, they
became “fast friends.” Goetzenberger became part
of the team for Purcell’s firm, a development that
led to his decision to have them design a new (and
smaller) Prairie School house for the family.
As an architectural artisan, Goetzenberger
was evidently well aware of the latest design
trends. This may partially explain Healy’s marked
departure from the Queen Anne style in his design
for 2439 Bryant. The house is unique among
Wedge Healy houses for its clean Colonial Revival
façade, placed lengthwise on the lot—and for the
fact that it is the only Twentieth Century Healybuilt
house in the neighborhood.
In the early 1900s, the Colonial Revival
style was all the rage in domestic architecture.
Brian Nelson, owner of the Cook House (2400
Bryant), says that the Cooks told him that the
Glueks (2447 Bryant) chided them for choosing a
conservative, “outmoded” design for their home.
Both houses were built in 1902, but the Kenyondesigned
Gluek House conforms closely to the
then-fashionable variant of the Colonial Revival,
the Georgian Revival. A century later, this
distinction is lost on most observers, but it certainly
affected the designs people were choosing for the
homes they built in the first decade of the 20 th
century.
Built three years after the other two
houses, 2439 Bryant sits next door to the Gluek
House. Although the Gluek House is justifiably the
iconic house of the Wedge, in some ways, 2439
Bryant is a more “correct” version of the Georgian
Revival style: a gable roof with two front dormers,
evenly spaced upper windows, and only dentils for
exterior ornamentation. However, the off-center
entry, window bay, and L-shaped porch are
departures from the style (for comparison, see
Colonial Williamsburg buildings).
The design of 2439 Bryant is consistently
spare throughout: large, airy rooms; many
THE WEDGE VOL. 41, NO. 9
T.P. Healy, “King of the Queen Anne” Part Five
Tony and Kate Roos
windows; mostly clear leaded glass; dark millwork;
little ornament. The current owner, Tony Roos, says
he was surprised to find that the house contains
many design features similar to those of the Gluek
House, notably the fireplace bricks, built-in
bookcases, and deep-brown millwork staining. The
house at 2439 Bryant stands in marked contrast to
the Healy Queen Anne at 2424 Colfax, with its
multitude of repeated motifs and ornament, and
large palette of colors in the woodwork and
windows. The parlor of 2439 Bryant has a plain
fireplace mantel with brick facing (not tiles), with a
nook on one side for fireside reading or
conversation, and a bookcase on the other. Unlike
Healy’s Queen Annes, 2439 has only one parlor, a
spacious room spanning the entire front of the
house.
Like most Wedge Healy
houses, 2439 Bryant has had
a checkered past. After the
Goetzenbergers moved, the
house changed hands many
times. During the
Depression, the bank
foreclosed on the property
and it was sold via sheriff’s
sale. The owner from
1939-1963 was also plagued
with financial woes, reflected
in liens on the house. The
next owner converted the
property into a rooming house, cutting a door
through the middle parlor window and partitioning
up the structure. Each bedroom was a numbered
unit. The late Tessie Bowman, who
lived next door, told the current
owners that at that time there were
even tenants in the basement, who
sometimes waved at her through
small windows.
The house was converted
back into a single-family home by
the owner who bought the property
in the mid-1970s. She gamely
went to work trying to restore the
house, taking down old wallpaper
and stripping paint from the
millwork. After more than two
decades of struggling with the
house, she conceded defeat and
sold it to Tony and Kate Roos, the
current owners, who tackled the job with gusto.
One of the stipulations of the sale was that the
former owner was to leave all materials related to
the house on site. Tony Roos was then able to reuse
hardwood lumber and door hardware original to the
house in his restoration.
Unlike the other Healy houses in this
series, the house at 2439 had a few significant
structural problems. Tony had to install a steel
beam to support the exterior kitchen wall. The
front bay in the parlor has a 15-foot span that
PAGE 5
2439 Bryant exterior
required a tear-out and rebuilding of the entire
façade, with the addition of laminated support
beams. Floor sags were fixed with jacks in the
basement. Healy may be “King of the Queen
Anne,” but apparently not of the Georgian Revival
—at least not for 2439 Bryant.
It’s impossible to know for certain why the
house had structural problems, but one theory is
that Healy, being unaccustomed to building in this
style, underestimated the loads on various
supporting members. “Perhaps Healy made some
miscalculations in designing an open floor plan,”
suggests Kate.
Curiously, the original paint colors were
battleship gray siding with charcoal black trim.
Gray would not be an unusual choice for a house in
this style, but such a dark trim color is very unusual.
Whatever the reasons for the odd color scheme and
structural flaws, the house, although anomalous for
Interior fireplace
Healy in more ways than one, nevertheless remains a
handsome and functional family home.
The final mystery is how Edward
Goetzenberger, a man in the building trades, could
afford to build a house on a block occupied by
well-to-do business and professional people.
Though we may never know the answer, one thing
is certain: Edward and Emma Goetzenberger were
architectural visionaries, evidenced in the
remarkable houses they built at 2439 Bryant and
2621 Emerson Avenues South. ❍