The Historic Beardsley-Cartwright House: 2648 Emerson Avenue South

It has sat on the corner of 27th Street and Emerson Avenue South in the Wedge, looking eastward, since 1885. The house was one of the first in the neighborhood, one of those built along the horse-drawn streetcar tracks that ran down Lyndale Avenue, then across 27th Street to Dupont Avenue, where they turned south to the turn-around at the horse barn.

It’s seen depressions and prosperous times; it’s seen the neighborhood grow up around it and change over the decades. It’s had eight owners.

This is the story of how this once-proud Victorian house, after being neglected for nearly four decades, was restored to a modern version of its 1885 appearance both inside and out.

Exterior

What style is it? This question often triggers debate among architectural historians. Even a cursory examination of the Beardsley-Cartwright House reveals that the house is in many ways unique among local Victorian houses. Its angularity, lack of soffits, sideward-facing porch entrance, many gables and light-colored leaded windows are unusual for Minneapolis houses of that period.

Actually, the house exhibits characteristics of three styles of late Victorian American architecture. In the Minnesota Historical Society file on 2648, the house is listed as a Queen Anne. It certainly exhibits some of the characteristics of the style: steeply pitched roof with seven gables; false tower; ornamental spandrels and corbels; various textures.

However, some characteristics stray from the Queen Anne style. In Sandeen and Lanegran’s book “The Lake District of Minneapolis”, it’s called a “rectilinear Queen Anne,” acknowledging the house’s straight lines. This is more typical of Shingle Style houses, a distinctly American style popular also during the period 1880-1900. It’s more informal than the Queen Anne, an all-wood house blending into the natural world rather than emphasizing artifice. In the Beardsley-Cartwright House, the shingles on the gable ends, the eyelid dormer windows, the boxy balcony, the lack of applied ornament are more characteristic of the Shingle Style, a style frequently found in the resorts and coastal cottages of New England.

The house also exhibits characteristics of the earlier Stick Style (1860-1890): large sash windows, steeply gabled roof, angular form, applied window trim, vertical and diagonal boarding.

Interior

Originally, the house was heated by individual stoves in each room. A center chimney with three flues and a back chimney assured that all areas of the house would have a heating source. Sections of the house that weren’t being used could be closed off from the heated rooms. The fireplace was charcoal-burning, and the house was illuminated by gaslights.

The dining room had a pass-through closet to the kitchen, a storage closet and an exquisite parquet floor with a buzzer to press to call the servants from the kitchen.

An unheated summer kitchen and privy built onto the back of the house provided access to the partial basement as well as storage space for root vegetables. In the summer, a stove could be attached to the back chimney to keep cooking heat out of the house proper. The plumbed bathroom had a pull-chain toilet, sink, and extra-long clawfoot bathtub (still there). On the third floor were the servants’ quarters: two spacious rooms with closets, plus attic space.

Today, all of these rooms are configured as they were in 1885. Over the years, the only parts of the house that have undergone significant alterations were the cellar, extended into a full basement in the 1930s, and the summer kitchen, made into a four-season addition with shower bathroom in 1996. Another major change to the property was the conversion of the two-story, three-stall horse barn into a single-story garage in the early 1930s.

Whatever you want to call it, inside and outside, the Beardsley-Cartwright House is definitely stylistically distinctive among Victorian houses in the city.

 

Eight owners and their families and three tenants have lived in the Beardsley-Cartwright house since it was built. Builder Charles J. Buell acquired the property and began construction on the house in April 1885.

The first owners, Edward C. and Alice L. Beardsley, took possession in July of 1886. At the time, Beardsley was an officer with the Phelps Well and Windmill Company. He came from a very prominent family in Elkhart, Indiana, which was platted by a Beardsley relative.

The Beardsleys lived in the house only ten months. In April 1887 the McCormick family moved in. William E. McCormick was a traveling agent for the Burlington School Furniture Company. In June of 1888 his 24-year-old wife, Ellen, died in the house of (according to her death certificate) heart disease lasting one day.  Three years later, William married Mary Heckman, listed as the housekeeper at 2648, and in 1892, the family moved to the Pacific Northwest.

From 1892 until McCormick sold the house, it was occupied by four tenant families. The last of these tenants was Frank M. Cartwright, who leased the house in 1910. In 1912, Cartwright and his wife Gertrude bought the house. Cartwright ran a livery and tack business out of the barn, catering to the horse owners who stabled their equines in the barn south of 28th Street. At that time, people would ride around Lake of the Isles and the other city lakes in the summer, and take sleighs out on the frozen lakes in winter. Frank died in 1936, Gertrude in 1941. Their children, Dana and Helen Ruth, sold it the next year.

 

 

 

 

 

 

William Stainbank and Arthur and Lillian Leonard were the next owners. The Leonards shared the house with many extended family members, and space must have been quite tight. Catherine B. Bruce acquired it in 1950, and in 1976 she sold it to the Christensen family.

List of Names on the Title for 2648 Emerson Ave. S.

Charles J. Buell, April 1885. Edward C. Beardsley, July 1886. William E. McCormick, April 1887. Frank M. and Gertrude Cartwright, July 1912. Dana Cartwright and Helen Ruth Kinney, August 1941. William Stainbank, August 1942. Arthur W. and Lillian Leonard, July 1944. Catharine B. Bruce, October 1950. Anders and Trilby Christensen, August 1976.

 

 

 

 

The builder of 2648, Charles J. Buell, moved to Minneapolis from New York City in 1880. He served as principal of the Whittier School before becoming a master builder. He built his first two houses in the Lowry Hill East neighborhood of Minneapolis in 1884; 2648 Emerson S., built 1885, is his third. In 1888, he started building in St. Paul. From 1884-1919 Buell built 30 houses, 25 of which are still standing. The Beardley-Cartwright house is among his grandest.

Once you’re familiar with Buell’s distinctive designs, it’s easy to pick them out of an architectural lineup. Here’s one of his St. Paul houses from 1889: 2214 Hillside. The exterior resembles 2648, but is a simpler shape. This house cost less than half of what 2648 cost ($2,400 vs. $5,100). It would be interesting to see the differences in their interiors.

Buell Building List:

1884 402 W. Franklin (residence) Mpls.
2521 Aldrich Ave. S. $2,000 Mpls.
2525 Aldrich Ave. S. $2,000 Mpls.
1885 2648 Emerson Ave. S. $5,100 Mpls.
1887 2714 Girard Ave. S. $1,500 Mpls.
1888 2177 Commonwealth $5,000 St. Paul
2173 Commonwealth $500 St. Paul
2210 (Langford N.) Hillside $2,400 St. Paul
930 Bayless $7,450 St. Paul Wrecked
1889 2360 Bayless $5.000 St. Paul
2230-32 (Langford N.) Hillside $5,000 St. Paul
2214 (Langford N.) Hillside $2,400 St. Paul
25 Langford Park West $5,000 St. Paul
1890 2223 Knapp $2,450 St. Paul
1094-96 E. Bayless $6,000 St. Paul  Wrecked
1891 977 W. Bayless $2,500 St. Paul
2219 Knapp $3,000 St. Paul
1898 1717 Irving Ave. S. Mpls.
1901 1859 Dayton $3,500 St. Paul
1902 1791 Dayton $2,000 St. Paul
1905 2308 Commonwealth $3,500 St. Paul
1906 1879 Dayton $4.250 St. Paul
1541 Ashland $4,500 St. Paul
1909 1549 Ashland $4.250 St. Paul
1550 Laurel $5,000 St. Paul
1910 1546 Laurel $4,000 St. Paul
1534 Laurel $4,500 St. Paul
1911 1514 Ashland $3,500 St. Paul
1913 1540 Ashland $3,500 St. Paul Wrecked
1528 Laurel $5,000 St. Paul
1915 4748 Bryant $5,000 Mpls.
4744 Bryant Mpls.
1919 2173 Commonwealth $3,200 St. Paul

(compiled by Anders Christensen)