Historic Minneapolis home built by Pillsbury co-founder on market for $1M

Sally French bought the historic Woodbury Fisk House in Minneapolis with the goal of hosting parties and arts-related gatherings.

She hosted countless literary salons, readings, concerts, sports-team dinners and other large events in her Marcy-Holmes neighborhood home.

Notable for its unusual Italianate Revival architecture and location among other grand old mansions, the 1869 house is one of 64 significant properties in Minneapolis’ Fifth Street Southeast Historic District and is also on the National Register of Historic Places.

Fisk, the man who had the house built, came to Minneapolis from New Hampshire in 1856 at age 29. He partnered with a friend, John S. Pillsbury, in the flour milling company that eventually evolved into the Pillsbury food company.

French and her husband, Rodney French, bought the house in 1998. Rodney French died in 2011. Sally French died in December at the age of 92, and the home is now listed for $1 million.

As a public information and arts administrator, she is remembered for leading students on field trips to theaters, galleries and other arts organizations.

French wanted to continue her hospitality in her home, said Judy Hornbacher, French’s longtime friend and colleague.

With its spacious living room and 12-foot ceilings, French could comfortably host large events, enlisting her children and grandchildren to help with cooking and serving.

Hornbacher and her husband were married in the house and held their reception on its corner lawn.

Before buying the place, French asked friends to stop by and give their opinion of it, Hornbacher said.

“We were saying things like, ‘Have you checked the roof?’ ‘Have you checked the heating?’ She was totally unconcerned with that,” Hornbacher said. “She looked at the house and she could see it being a center for arts and for the people she loved, getting together.”

Sally’s daughter, Edie French, also said her mother’s goal was to share the place with others.

“She didn’t feel that it was her house, she felt that it was a community treasure,” Edie said. “So many artists came through and spoke and sang. The spirit of the house is just amazing.“

The almost 7,400-square-foot home has seven bedrooms, all on the second floor, five bathrooms and is made of Chaska brick. It also has a foyer, library, bonus room and upper-level laundry.

Outside, it has a low-pitched roof with wide overhanging eaves, supported by decorative brackets, pairs of tall narrow windows capped with heavy cast iron and a porch lined with beveled columns. One side has a screened porch.

The house is “the most elaborate and one of the most intact examples of the Italian Villa architectural style in Minneapolis,” its 1983 application for the National Register said.

“The house is a key architectural element in the surrounding environment of other stately homes, serving as an excellent example of its nineteenth century style,” the application said. “As one of only a few such representative of high style Italian Villa design to have survived and retained its original integrity, the Woodbury Fisk House is significant in the continuum of the architectural history of the city;”

When it was built, the St. Anthony Democrat praised the home, as quoted in “Hiding in Plain Sight, Minneapolis’ First Neighborhood,” by Penny A. Petersen, published by the Marcy-Holmes Neighborhood Association.

“Woodbury Fisk had just completed and moved into one of the best residences in the city; perhaps we ought to say the best,” the newspaper said. “The location is pleasant, exceedingly, and is destined to become more so, every year.”

In an interview, Petersen said the home has held up. “It’s remarkably well preserved; Sally took very good care of it.”

Located near the University of Minnesota in what was once called the University District, at some point between Fisk’s and the Frenches’ occupancy, “it became a boarding house,” Hornbacher said.

“A lot of big old houses in Minneapolis have that history, where at some point in their evolution, they became boarding houses for students,” she said.

The doors of the upstairs bedrooms still have numbers on them.

Students can sometimes be rough on a house, but the Fisk house still has original Tiffany lamps, chandeliers, leaded glass windows and “phenomenal woodwork,” Hornbacher said.

“There are two fireplaces downstairs and one upstairs,” Edie French said.

She isn’t sure whether the wood-burning fireplaces are currently working, but thinks they could be made functional. Either way, she said, they retain decorative value.

“They’re gorgeous,” she said.

For Sally French, beauty was the home’s most important trait.

“The house was her ultimate work of art,” Edie French said. “It holds so many stories of profound human connection and experience.”

Matt Spector (612-730-6288, mattspector@edinarealty.com) and Delilah “Dolly” Langer (612-280-8898, dollylanger@edinarealty.com) both of Edina Realty Downtown Minneapolis, have the $1 million listing.