404 9th Avenue South
St. Cloud, MN, USA

404 9th Avenue South, St. Cloud, MN, USA

Original Owner: Michael Majerus
Architect: Theodore Kevenhoerster

Michael Majerus House

The Michael Majerus House is a historic house in St. Cloud, Minnesota, United States. It was built in 1891. The Michael Majerus House was listed on the National Register of Historic Places in 1978 for its local significance in the theme of architecture. It was nominated for its status as St. Cloud's finest house in Second Empire style.

Description

The Michael Majerus House is a three-story brick building on a prominent corner lot just south of downtown St. Cloud. The house has a roughly rectangular footprint, with a granite foundation. The dominant feature is a five-story tower rising over the front door. The walls are red pressed brick with smooth granite windowsills.. Stone trim adorns the first- and second-floor walls, forming beltcourses and arched window hoods carved with intricate rosettes, scrolls, and cherub faces. Elaborate eaves support the mansard roof, which subsumes the third floor.

A short staircase leads up to the double doors of the main entry, in the southwest corner of the building facing west. Directly above the entryway is a second-floor balcony of wrought-iron. A dormer projection of the mansard roof tops the balcony, decorated with a small pediment and a circular window. A square tower room rises above the roofline. It has two semicircular arched windows facing each direction, with small panels below. Scroll-sawn brackets define the tower's fifth story, consisting of a pyramidal roof with round dormer windows topped by small finials.

Southeast of the main residence is a detached garage that originally served as a carriage house, with two stories and a hayloft.

History

The Michael Majerus House was built in 1891 as a second home for its owner. The architect was Theodore Kevenhoerster and the project came in under $5,000 (equivalent to $150,796 in 2021). It is uncertain why Majerus selected Second Empire architecture, a style that was more than a decade out of fashion and strongly associated with the years immediately after the American Civil War. More popular choices for 1891 would have been Queen Anne or Richardsonian Romanesque. Historian Charles Nelson speculates that Second Empire style had a romantic association for many of Minnesota's German American residents, of whom Majerus was one, as it still saw use throughout the 1880s and 1890s in many German American-owned breweries.

The house received extensive preservation efforts in the 1970s following its 1971 purchase by a new owner. In 2015 the latest owners (only the house's fifth) received a local heritage preservation award for their own restoration work. The exterior of the house is virtually unchanged from its appearance 131 years ago.

National Register of Historic Places - Michael Majerus House

Statement of Significance:

The Michael Majerus House exists 'as the finest example in St. Cloud of a French Second Empire style residence. Designed by Theodore Kevenhoerster in 1891, the building recalls an architectural style which had been in vogue more than a decade prior to its construction. During the time when the Majerus House was under construction, the Richardsoniah mode was in its final years and the Queen Anne was at its high point; the French Second Empire style was decidedly old fashioned and associated with the years after the Civil War. (Interestingly, however, vestiges of the style are also noted in "German" breweries constructed in Minnesota during the 1880s and 1890s.) As Majerus was of German extraction, it is possible that the "romantic" styles of the past appealed to him in choosing this design for his own residence.