609 West Fountain Street
Albert Lea, MN, USA

National Register of Historic Places - H.A Paine House ( Hiler Residence )

Statement of Significance:

The H. A. Paine house is a masterpiece and a perfect example of the Queen Anne style. In the quality of its design and craftsmanship it is on a par with the Shipman-Greve house in St. Paul on Summit Avenue. These two houses are significant on a state level as outstanding examples of the pure Anglo-American Shavian origins of the style. It is a textbook example of the Queen Anne as originally conceived by Richard Norman Shaw and first executed in the United States in Newport’s Watts-Sherman house of 1874 by Henry Hobson- - ' Richardson. Like the Shipman-Greve house, however, the architect of the Paine f house is unknown, and little is known about its owner, H. A. Paine, an Albert Lea building contractor.

The Queen Anne style originated in England with the British architect, Richard Norman Shaw, who designed rambling mansions resembling the 17th century manor houses of the aristocracy. Americans first saw the style in the British pavilion at the Philadelphia Centennial Exposition in 1876, and the style took the country by storm. Richardson had designed the Watts-Sherman house in Newport, Rhode Island only 2 years before and created a stir in architectural circles, but the Exposition popularized the style. The Paine house is a direct descendant of the Watts Sherman house. In the Shavian mode, the Queen Anne had multi-level roofs, irregular projecting masses, stained glass, small-paned windows, and different kinds of materials, in stone, brick, shingle, and half-timbering.

Virtually nothing is known about Paine. He does not appear in the vital statistics of Freeborn County, suggesting that he was born and died elsewhere. The source for information that Paine died on July 19, 1916, could ' not be tracked through the Clerk of the Court in Albert Lea. An early photograph owned by the Freeborn County Historical Society taken of the Paine house in 1899 shows the rich use of several contrasting colors to the exterior to set off the structure’s fine detail and varied woodwork. On the back of this photo is the notation that Paine built the house in 1898 for a cost of between $6,000-^8,000, a handsome sum for a relatively small structure and a price that suggests the quality of the craftsmanship. One clipping from the Enterprise Time of 1898 at the county museum notes that Paine was working on refurbishing the storefront of the Skinner Mercantile and D. Hurd & Co. building in Albert Lea in 1898. According the present owner, Mrs. Elsie Hiler, who has lived in the house since the 1940s, Paine considered Albert Lea his home and once ran for mayor unsuccessfully. He was so upset at his loss that he left Albert Lea and moved to the vicinity of Gary, Indiana, where he made a fortune and lived out his years. Mrs. Hiler was told that Paine built one of the theaters in Albert Lea, as well as the Albert Lea Hotel.