Today I know of T.B. Walker as a lumber baron who was the founder of Walker Art Center in Minneapolis. What I didn’t know was that it began 1879 as an art gallery in his home at 803 Hennepin Avenue. By 1915 it had been expanded to 14 rooms and had about 100,000 visitors each year. In 1926 he built a new gallery on the site of the present Walker Art Center… and the house at 803 Hennepin was replaced by the building which now houses the State Theater.
What I also didn’t know about T.B. Walker was that he was among the 10 wealthiest men in the world in 1923 and an early urban planner who planned to turn St. Louis Park into an industrial town where he controlled the land, the street car, and the factories. To create a city center he built the oldest building in St. Louis Park in 1892, which even in 1922 when the aerial photo below was taken, was out in the middle of nowhere.
The historic Walker Lake District was revitalized in 2018-2019. The Walker Building is now the home of Sota Clothing and Doc’s Hall Event Space. The Block Food + Drink, complete with a dog-friendly “Pawtio,” is also in the revitalized historic district.
To house the workforce Walker built nearly 100 so-called “Walker Houses” from 1890-1898, with many concentrated in what is now called the South Oak Hill neighborhood, but others also remain scattered in areas not far from the “city center.” The red markers on the map below are historic Walker Houses that have been sold in the MLS. Built more than 125 years ago, many have had renovations to reconfigure and expand them but the highest concentration of mostly original houses appears to be on Edgebrook Drive and North Street in South Oak Hill.
The houses were nearly-identical, narrow two-story houses with two rooms up and two rooms down and rented for $9-$14 per month. They were originally platted on double lots, with the intent of providing a space for a garden… when I think of it, they likely relied on kitchen gardens for their daily sustenance at that time.
The photo below shows some of the Walker Houses still existing today… the tall, narrow shape is very distinctive.
Even the long, spreading branches of the trees show their history.
Interested in living in a piece of history? The Walker House below will be coming on the market this month… let me know if you want to know more… it retains its sense of history while also having a new custom kitchen, new furnace/AC, a deck in its huge side yard (it is still on a double lot), and city approval to add an ADU if desired.
Sharlene Hensrud, RE/MAX Results – shensrud@homesmsp.com
