By John Horchner

In 1885, on the advice of a physician Dr. Godfrey living in St. Paul, Mr. H.O. Hall and his brother Edward left Rochester, New York, to consider a new site for their business in what is now the industrial zone in south St. Anthony Park.

Back then, the area was under the joint development of the Transfer Company, which owned the new rail yard, and the St. Anthony Park Company, which was selling commercial and residential land nearby.

Satisfied with what they saw, the Hall brothers sold their existing business for $30,000. Along with a few other partners, they established this area’s first manufacturing company in 1886: the Saint Anthony Park Furniture Company.

Before we purchased our St. Anthony Park home in 2016, one of the previous owners, Mary Lerman, pointed to a framed building permit on the wall, which indicated that Edward Hall was the original owner. She offered me a two-seater couch from his furniture company and also handed me a cardboard box filled with research.

While searching historical directories from that era housed at the Ramsey County Historical Society’s library, I learned that around 1905, Edward Hall turned his interest from furniture making to real estate. Eventually, he opened an office at Como and Carter avenues, most likely the current site of Milton Square.

I remember reading that the Hall family wanted to help develop north St. Anthony Park, which had largely been stagnating up to that point.

According to the building permit, our house cost $5,000 to build in 1916. I imagine Hall built our house on speculation during a downturn in the market due to World War I. The house sat vacant after it was finished until the war ended.

In an article Mary found from the July 13, 1919, edition of the Minneapolis Morning Tribune, the house’s architect, D.C. Bennett, describes it as “Dutch Colonial Style Bungalow Allows Good Taste at Low Cost.”

Our house, one of many built in north St. Anthony Park at the time, was marketed as luxury for the middle class. This strategy was embraced by the area’s developers after the initial plan, designed in 1872 by the towering Twin Cities historical figure Horace Cleveland, fizzled.

Cleveland, who subsequently designed most of the major parks and parkways in the Twin Cities, originally designed St. Anthony Park to accommodate large estate homes. These proved out of reach for most buyers.

The remarketing of St. Anthony Park to the middle class started in the late 1800s, with the same street and landscaping layout indicated by Cleveland, but with smaller home lots. This proved successful, and I am happy to report that our house has stood the test of time and still has many luxurious features, like hardwood floors, that could never be replicated.

Historic but not energy efficient

However, what our historic home doesn’t have is energy efficiency.

Home performance professionals often point to the attic, basement, and walls as the order in which energy efficiency projects should be tackled in old homes. For a deep retrofit, one that reduces carbon footprint by 50% or more, the process usually involves dismantling and then reassembling parts of the house.

For example, in our case, when we arrived, the attic still contained sheets of brown horsehair insulation nailed to the rafters.

Like the old saying goes, don’t look a gift horse in the mouth—unless it’s hanging from your ceiling. We decided to have it removed along with the rest of the fiberglass batts that lined the floor. We replaced the knob-and-tube wiring that was up there as well before we blew in cellulose to R-55.

In the basement, asbestos pipe wrap lingered. The rim joists remain untouched, allowing for significant air leakage, which contributes to what building scientists call the “stack effect,” which is cool air being sucked in the bottom of the house and pushing warm air out the top.

As for the walls, they were last insulated with mineral wool in 1933, which took advantage of the recently invented blow-in machines. I know this only because of two building permits issued by the St. Paul Electrical Department for the work, which I found at the historical society. We can’t add to this, though, until the knob-and-tube wiring that lurks in the walls is removed.

Lastly, we have an oversized boiler—which replaced the coal/steam one and the oil one. It now runs on relatively cleaner natural gas. But it is about four times larger than it needs to be, and the time is fast approaching to replace it—with perhaps an air-to-water heat pump system?

It’s amazing how long these inefficiencies have persisted.

We’ve known in a vague way that older homes like ours contribute to energy waste and the climate crisis. Yet no one has done enough about it.

And we’re not alone: most American homes built before 1970 are in the same boat.

In 2011, the Home Energy Score tool—a program introduced by then-Vice President Joe Biden—was used by a contractor for the DOE to assess our 1899 home in Pittsburgh as part of a pilot program. Today, there’s a demonstration version of the software available to all that I have been playing around with.

My target is to plan for basement air sealing and insulation, along with a new electric heat pump to handle heating, cooling and hot water. I hope this will yield 60-70% in carbon reduction, surpassing the state’s climate goal of 50% by 2030. I anticipate working with the St. Anthony Park Transition Town Climate Action Group to implement my plan and help others create their own.

Thanks to IRA rebates and tax credits, there’s going to be significant financial support for this work starting this year as well.

This is a historic opportunity. Is it bigger than plowing the fields, plotting the land, making the sales and building the structures that created St. Anthony Park and the rest of St. Paul in the first place? Only time will tell.

 For a major retrofit like ours, it helps to work with a trusted builder or remodeler, someone who can help coordinate all the pieces. One general contractor I interviewed for our house, Joseph Timm of Minneapolis, told me: “It just seems so possible now.”

It is, and I urge you to put this kind of project on your list of New Year’s resolutions.

And let’s be sure our efforts to retrofit and revitalize homes don’t leave anyone else behind. 

John Horchner is a professional writer who lives in Saint Anthony Park.

Photo: Saint Anthony Park homes like this one feature sturdy, historic construction but lack modern energy efficiency and decarbonization measures. Learning how to safely retrofit them and meet these standards is the next step in their evolution. Sketch courtesy of Fred Foster.