After they finished designing the Turnblad Mansion, now the home of the American Swedish Institute in Minneapolis, Twin Cities architects Christopher Boehme and Victor Cordella designed a home for the Trump family.
The Anton Trump family, actually.
The Trumps (no relation to the First Family, apparently) lived in what was originally built as a duplex in Minneapolis' Lowry Hill neighborhood from 1909 until at least 1922. They owned the brick house at 1771 Humboldt Av. S. until the 1950s.
For decades, the duplex was a rental property.
Carolyn Brouillard and her husband, Krishna Dorney, bought the place in 2014. Over the next five years, the couple did a top-to-bottom renovation to transform the house into a traditional, two-level single-family home with an apartment on the third floor.
The 6,809-square-foot dwelling is now on the market for $1.45 million.
When the couple bought the house, there had been a lot of deferred maintenance, and the challenges included a "scary basement" with an asbestos-insulated octopus boiler, Dorney said.
But there weren't ill-considered attempts at modernization, which would have hurt the historic character of the house. Dorney, a remodeling contractor, did much of the renovation himself, taking nearly a year off to devote himself full time to the project.
Original servants' quarters
Dorney and Brouillard lived in the third-floor apartment — originally built as a servants' quarters — while much of the renovation was going on.
They replaced the electrical, plumbing, heating and air conditioning systems with high-efficiency equipment and smart house controls, so that the house now functions like a new home.
The couple also put in zoned, in-floor heat in the kitchen and bathrooms. The new kitchen features modern luxury touches like Cambria countertops and a 48-inch, professional-grade Thermador range.
But the house still looks much like it did in 1909, only nicer. Brouillard and Dorney made improvements to the home that look like they could have been installed in the house a century ago if the budget had been bigger back then. They put in a beamed ceiling in the dining room, custom cabinetry around the fireplaces, vintage light fixtures and a leaded-glass triptych window based on a design by Minnesota interior designer John Bradstreet, who helped found the Minneapolis Institute of Arts.
New/old additions also include an Art Deco-themed dressing room, a speakeasy-style lounge and bar in the basement, a bathroom tile design inspired by work of early-20th-century art tile maker Ernest Batchelder, and shimmery gold wallpaper in the master bedroom in a Japanese-influenced wave design that the couple saw in a historic house in Newport, R.I.
The house has a front porch, a back patio and a couple of second-level outdoor decks. But you won't need a lawn mower. The landscaping features a perennial garden instead of grass.
Listed as having five bedrooms, the house has the flexibility to be a good space for a multigenerational family or someone operating a business from home, Brouillard said. The self-contained apartment on the third floor could house an elderly parent, a nanny, an older child or even function as an Airbnb rental.
The couple bought the home for $657,500 in 2014. Dorney said if he had done the remodeling job for someone else, the price tag for the project might have been about $750,000.
Sue Westerman, 612-599-7050, Coldwell Banker Burnet, has the listing.
