Heirloom Home
Ray Anderson House
The far north end of Stillwater is known as Dutchtown. It was founded in 1853 when the lumbering firm of Schulenburg & Boeckeler, of St. Louis, Missouri, came to Stillwater and built a large sawmill on the St. Croix River, about one-half mile north of downtown Stillwater. The lumber company also purchased 173 acres south of Brown’s Creek and west of the river. On this acreage, a classic mill town emerged centered around the sawmill and the company store.
At first, this settlement was known as Charlottenburg for Charlotte Boeckeler who died tragically in 1855, a year after marrying Adolophus Boeckeler. But as time went on, the settlement of German workers came to be called Deutschtown, or its corruption, Dutchtown. Because this northern edge of Stillwater was, for most of its history, separated from the rest of the city, Dutchtown had its own identity and history.
The one and one-half story house at 1901 North Second Street is one of a few remaining examples of a typical worker’s cottage from the Nineteenth Century. Its broad side faces the street with a door in the middle and matching windows on each side of the door. On the rear is a kitchen addition. There is a minimum of decoration on the exterior of the home.
We know little about the history of this particular home at 1901 North Second Street. It does not appear on a very detailed 1892 Map of Dutchtown drawn by Lewis Clarke, the Stillwater city engineer. Robert Anderson, who grew up in the house in the 1930s, is uncertain whether the house was built in the early 1900s, or whether it was moved onto the lot sometime after 1900. The simple symmetrsymmetry of the house, typical of other Dutchtown houses built in the 1870s or before, seems to belie a building date after 1900. The probability is that the house was moved onto the lot, not unusual for the times.
Across the street from the house is a park. However, for almost one hundred years that was the location of the Dutchtown School. One of the four wells in Dutchtown was on the edge of the park in a space now occupied by the Second Street right of way.
In 2006, the City of Stillwater established guidelines for the construction of new homes in its historic neighborhoods. One of the criteria was that the new house should visually fit into the surrounding older neighborhood, both in size and form. In fact, both houses to the north and south of 1901 North Second Street, were recently built under these guidelines—a fact which might puzzle the observer who would note that both new houses are completely out of scale and form with the house at 1901 North Second Street.
See also the history at 2011 Schulenburg Alley and 1924 North First Street.
Source(s): Information complied by Donald Empson, Empson Archives on 3/28/2009 Plat of Part of Carli & Schulenburg’s Addition to Stillwater, Minn. Surveyed and platted in December, 1892. (In the St. Croix Collection, Stillwater Public Library.) A History of the Dutchtown Residential Area by Donald Empson, October 1998.
Washington County Parcel Identification Number (PIN): 2103020130044
Common Property Name: Ray Anderson House
Neighborhood: Dutchtown Addition
State Historic Preservation Office Inventory Number: WA-SWC-818
Construction Date: Circa 1870
Architectural Style: Vernacular