Heirloom Home

John and Gertrude Krantz House

 

In 1882, John Krantz purchased Lots 27 and 28, Block 1 of Sabin’s Addition from Seymour, Sabin & Co. The assessed value of the 2 lots, without structures, was $400. Two years later, after John built his house at 610 North Fifth Street, the assessed valuation rose to $850. In the 1884 Stillwater City Directory John is listed as living at this address.

John Krantz was born in Sweden in December of 1850. He immigrated to this county at the age of 23. Two years after building this house, he married Gertrude, born in Sweden in 1862. While living in the house, they had six children, of which four survived: Agnes, born in December of 1887; Annie, born in January of 1891; Lina, born in June, 1893; and Eddie, born in October of 1897. In the 1900 U. S. Census they were joined in the household by Peter Peterson, age 38, a private coachman, and his wife, Matilda, both of whom rented from John.

John (also known as "Swan") was a patternmaker and machinist. (In the Nineteenth Century names were not as inflexible as they are today. First names and middle names were often interchanged; nicknames or
diminutives often replaced formal names. It was not until the introduction of Social Security in the 1930s that a person’s name became fixed.)

Shortly after 1900, John and Gertrude moved to St. Paul where they are listed in the 1910 U.S. Census as living at 511 East Belvidere Street along with two additional children: Ruth, 8; and Elda 6. John was working as a patternmaker.

A few years after John and Gertrude left their house at 610 North Fifth Street, Frank (age 49) and Josephine (age 35) Register moved in, along with their children, Frank, 13, Emily, 11, Louis, 9, and Earl 4. Frank was the Stillwater city treasurer.

In style, the house is a standard 1880s Italianate house, which is quite common in Stillwater. Characteristic are the three windows across the front of the house on the second story with two windows and the door directly below on the first floor. There would usually be a chimney in the middle of the hip roof. This residence has a standing seam metal roof, which was popular in the nineteenth century because of the hazard of chimney sparks igniting the wooden shingles. This is an excellent example of a Nineteenth Century Stillwater Italianate Style home with the corner brackets under the eaves, the transom window above the front door, the two-pane-over-two-pane original storm windows, the decorative hoods over the windows, and the attractive painting. Although many of these houses had porches added around 1900, the original house as built in 1883 probably did not have a porch.

Source(s): Information complied by Donald Empson, Empson Archives on 3/24/2009. Building date and value is from the original annual tax assessors’ rolls, 1882-1884 (on microfilm in the St. Croix Collection, Stillwater Public Library). The U.S. Census records from 1900 to 1920 provided information on the inhabitants of the house. The Stillwater City Directory listed the occupations of the residents. There is one building permit, #959, for a $60 woodshed in 1898.

Washington County Parcel Identification Number (PIN): 2803020240034

Common Property Name: John and Gertrude Krantz House

Neighborhood: Sabin's Addition

State Historic Preservation Office Inventory Number: WA-SWC-1722

Construction Date: 1883

Builder:

Architect:

Architectural Style: Italianate