One-owner University Grove home open for viewing Tuesday March 25, 2025

This is a unique opportunity to view this home designed by Joe Michels that is in wonderful original condition, owned by the original owners since it was built in 1965. It is now pending sale to its new owners but Docomomo is hosting an open, self-guided tour on Tuesday, March 25, 2025 from 4:30 to 6:30. This is a FREE event, but registration is required. Address will be provided in the Eventbrite registration.

If you are a lover of mid-century modern homes you should know University Grove, a unique neighborhood of 103 homes built for UMN professors and administrators over a 60-year period on land owned by the University of Minnesota. Only 8 blocks long and one and a half blocks wide, University Grove is nestled between the University golf course and the University of Minnesota St. Paul campus. It feels like part of neighboring St. Anthony Park, but this is a separate community with a Falcon Heights address in the Roseville school district.

This group of 103 homes built for UMN professors and administrators over a 60-year period on land owned by the University of Minnesota is an architectural time capsule. Because each home had to be designed by an architect with a maximum ceiling on costs, no two houses are alike and they create a cohesive mix. The early homes were mostly Tudor or colonial styles, but later houses showed the strong influence of the Bauhaus and international style… creating a unique enclave of mid-century modern homes.

Mid-century architects included well-known names such as: Elizabeth and Winston Close, Robert Cerny, Harlan McClure, Carl Graffunder, Frank Kerr, Ralph Rapson, Tom Van House, Joseph Nichols, Richard Hammel, Michael McGuire and Joe Michels.

Learn more about it in an article from the Park Bugle (University Grove: an architectural time capsule) and on the University Grove website itself.