500 Bushaway Rd
Wayzata, MN 55391, USA

500 Bushaway Road, Wayzata, MN, USA

Excerpt from the History of Bushway Road and Its Neighborhood (1858-2009) by Irene Stemmer, of the Wayzata Heritage Preservation Board (HPB) as a means of preserving the history of the Bushaway Road and its neighborhood.

1924-39: Locust Hill Farm - 500 Bushaway Road Henry and Clara Carpenter had a summer home on the property. (See above story on Carpenters.) The Glenn Traer’s purchased the property from the Carpenters around 1930 and lived there throughout the decade. The Traers probably had the pool and tennis courts built. Glenn was president of Traer & Company, an investment bank, and vice president of Lane, Piper & Jaffray. In 1939, the Traers experienced financial difficulties and sold the farm to Charles Baxter Sweatt, son of William R. Sweatt, co-founder of Honeywell.

The Sweatts developed the property into a beautiful country estate, including two additions to the main house, a guest house, and built additional houses for their employees. The farm equipment building and horse and cow barn with living quarters for the riding master were designed and built by McEnary & Kraft, Architects in the early 1940s. The beautifully landscaped grounds and lavish gardens along with a paddock, show ring and pastures for their thoroughbred horses was a popular showplace for fifty years. All the Sweatts were riders and numerous horse shows were held there during the summer as well as the St. Martins-by-the-Lake Episcopal Church Country Fair. The fair was an annual event open to the public. The large banner advertising the fair that was stretched across Bushaway Road each year was as memorable as the fair itself. The flock of stately white swans swimming in the lagoon along the road caught the eye of every passerby during the summer months.

C. B. Sweatt History

Charles B. Sweatt was born in 1895, graduated from the University of Minnesota in 1917, and served in the U.S. Cavalry during World War I. When he returned from the war, he followed his older brother Harold, working at the Minneapolis Heat Regulator Company owned by their father. In 1920, he was named Advertising Manager and a company director and the following year became treasurer of the company. Following the 1927 merger with Honeywell, he appointed vice president. He was vice chairman of the board of directors of Honeywell between 1953 and 1960. Charles Sweatt was also vice president of the Midwest Region of the U.S. Olympic Equestrian Team and an officer in the American Horse Association in 1977.

In 1927, Charles Sweatt married Margaret Elizabeth Lamberton, daughter of a prominent family in Winona, Minnesota. They had four children: Charles, Jr., Harry, Sarah and Peggy. Charles Sweatt, Sr. died in 1977 and Mrs. Sweatt in 2002.

In 2006, the 75 acre farm was sold to Locust Hills Development Company to build a new community of up-scale homes. During the excavation, remnants of fire pits and shards of pottery were discovered on the property dating back to the Dakota Mdewakanton Native American tribes that winter camped on the hill overlooking Gray’s Bay. All remnants were removed and given to the Minnesota Historical Society. Only the farm equipment building and the horse and cow barn still stand. The interior has been altered slightly, but the horse stalls remain intact and the building now serves as a club house for the residents of the development.

Architects McEnary & Krafft designed a number of homes in Ferndale: 1948, Benton Case; 1948, W. H. Bovey; 1930-31, an addition to the Franklin Crosby house; and in 1935, George Dayton II house; and in 1946, the Newall Weed home in the Wayzata Highland; 1947, the Stanley Lyman house in Arlington Heights of Wayzata and in1935 Lyman Barrow’s house in Holdridge off Bushaway Road.