2328 Lake Pl
Minneapolis, MN 55405, USA

2328 Lake Place, Minneapolis, MN, USA

2328 Lake Place Home History
Purcell and Elmsiie, 1913 / restored and renovated, MacDonald and Mack Architects, 1990

In 1911, three years after his marriage to Edna Summy, William Purcell began to think about creating a new house for his family, which included a recently adopted infant son. Although Purcell's partnership with George Elmslie had produced few lucrative com- missions, he had family money and so was able to spend $14,000, a goodly sum at the time, to build this exquisite house just a block from Lake of the Isles. Purcell's aim was to create a progressive house for what he called "mod- ern American family life" (which in his case later included divorce). The result was this Prairie Style masterpiece.

Dubbed by Elmslie as "the Little Joker," the house isn't especially large, but it's gorgeously designed down to the last detail. In few other houses of its size will you find so many architectural ideas carried out with such great verve. Set well back on its lot to catch views of the lake, the house from the outside presents a series of rectilinear volumes, one of which juts out toward the sidewalk and ends in an array of tall art-glass windows. Rows of smaller art-glass windows flow across the second story, where stencil patterns in the stucco walls create a frieze of sorts beneath an extremely low-pitched roof. The main entry is off to one side beneath an inset porch. Here you'll find a projecting beam that culminates in a swirl of Elmslie's characteristic sawn-wood ornament as well as stained-glass windows adorned with this message: "Peek a Boo."

Within, the house commands an intricate array of spaces on five levels. At the heart of the de- sign is a spatial procession that extends along an axis from a sunken living room in front, up half a level to a dining room with a prowlike projection, and then out to a screened rear porch. A common tent ceiling unifies the living and dining rooms, which open to an entry hall on a level midway between them. The up- stairs includes two bedrooms, the largest of which can be sub- divided by screens. Although the floor plan is ingenious, what sets this house apart is the quality of its details. The best Prairie houses combine sleek modern lines with ornament of dazzling beauty and inventiveness. No other modern style except for art deco (rarely used for houses) has matched this synthesis. Here, Elmslie's gifts as an ornamentals are fully evident, in art-glass windows, stencil work, desks and chairs. light fixtures, and other furnishings. The living room fireplace is particularly fine. Gold- and glass- flecked mortar glitters between the hearth's long Roman bricks while, above, a mural by artist Charles Livingston Bull emerges from a framework of wood strips that forms an elegant arch.

Purcell and his family did not stay in the house for long. Lacking commissions, the firm of Purcell and Elmslie was all but defunct by 1918, when Purcell moved from Minneapolis and put the house up for sale. It was. purchased by Anson Cutts, Sr., a railroad traffic manager, and his wife, Edna, a singer who gave private concerts at the house. The couple's only son, Anson Cutts, Jr.-a painter, writer, and critic-moved back to the house in the 1960s to care for his ailing mother. Upon his death in 1985, he bequeathed the house to the Minneapolis Institute of Arts, which undertook an extensive restoration. In 1990 the house, occupied by art institute staff, was opened to limited public tours, and it remains one of the glories of the city.

Citation: Millett, Larry. AIA Guide to the Minneapolis Lake District. Minnesota Historical Society Press, 2009.

House at 2328 Lake Place

Photographer: Devine, Melody, Kinzler, Kim, Ostrom, Mark

Robert C. Mack Collection (M/A 0315)

Edna S. Purcell House & Anson B. Cutts House - National Register of Historic Places

Statement of Significance

The Prairie School buildings of such men as Louis Sullivan, Frank Lloyd Wright^^alter Burley Griffin, George Grant Elmslie and William. Gray Purcell. In the last decade of the nineteenth century and the first two decades of the twentieth century are midwestern America's most significant contribution to the development of modern architecture. Both Purcell and Elmslie were strongly influenced by the work of Sullivan and Wright, through Elmslie's sixteen years of association with Sullivan's firm, and with Purcell's more brief association with Sullivan and his early knowledge and appreciation of Wright's buildings in his boyhood home community of Oak Park, Illinois. The designs of the Minneapolis based firm of Purcell and Elmslie, while showing the strong influence of those associations are nonetheless unique in innovative interpretation of architectural form, and there is a justified recognition of the firm’s most successful work was in the fields of small bank buildings and residences. Of these residences, the Purcell house, is generally considered the most outstanding. Donald R. Torbert, in his Significant Architecture in the History of Minneapolis, states that, states that “ The interior spaces in the Lake Place residence merit comparison with the best of Wright's work David Gebbard writes in his foreword to the Walker Art Center's catalogue of their work, "the most outstanding house .done by the firm was Purcell's own in Minneapolis built in 1913. If one were to search for a significant example of modern architecture, he would surely find it in this house, with the artful flow of space, its superbly proportioned great room with its raised dining room, and even its little-known peek-a-boo windows." The Purcell house is, therefore, a recognized excellent example of the firm's Prairie School domestic architectural design.