Immigrant homes stood the test of time BY SUE WEBBER CONTRIBUTING WRITER Irish and Norwegian immigrants who settled in the Twin Cities in the mid-1800s built sturdy homes, some of which still remain intact. Andrew Yurista’s great-grandfather, Peder Foss, was a Norwegian immigrant who settled in New Brighton with his wife, Ingebor, in the late 1800s. He built a home on Silver Lake Road in 1894 that has been preserved and maintained for 120 years. Peder’s brother farmed at Old Highway 8 and Foss Road (named for the family). “Peder was a small-business man who had various occupations,” Yurista said. “He tried his hand at farming in New Brighton, but then connected with another Norwegian and they opened a furniture store in Minneapolis.” When his parents were first married, Yurista said, they rented space in the Foss homestead in New Brighton. “There was an in-law apartment in the back,” Yurista recalled. The home stayed in the hands of the Foss family until the mid-1980s, surviving a tornado that changed a windmill on the property into a twisted mass. When the daughter who was living there moved to a nursing home, the grandchildren decided to sell it. First, however, they got it listed on the National Register of Historic Places in 1983. David and Kathryn Brewer were well aware of the Foss home’s history when they bought it 25 years ago. “My husband drove by the house every day on his way to work,” Kathryn said. “He used to put notes in the mailbox, asking the owners to call him if they ever decided to sell.” When the Fosses called the Brewers about a possible sale, the time wasn’t
right, so the home was sold to someone else. “There was one owner between the original owner and us,” Kathryn said. The next time the Foss home became available, the Brewers bought it. “It had been maintained in a pretty primary state,” Kathryn said. “There was 50-year-old carpeting when we moved in, but it was of extremely high quality and it had protected the floors. The woodwork had never been painted.” Yurista now lives right next door to the Foss homestead, in a home his own father built in 1955. But he cherishes the times he spent in his grandparents’ home next-door. “We were always over there,” he said, noting that the property still has three out-buildings left from the farm. “The pump house is still there; they used to pump water from Silver Lake,” Yurista said. “The little building was the milk house. The granary is still there.” The Brewers, well aware of the home’s historical significance, have restored the porch columns on the home and re-shingled the tower, Yurista said. “It’s a neat place,” Yurista said. “It’s kind of different not having it in the family.” About the same time Peder Foss was settling in New Brighton, Irish immigrants were buying land in Columbia Heights. Today, neighbors on Madison Street in Columbia Heights often call the white, two-story home in mid-block the Sullivan house, though it’s been decades since any Sullivans lived there. Just down the block is Sullivan Park and Sullivan Lake. Not far away, in Fridley, you can find the Sullivan Shores housing development. They’re all named for Irish immi-
Peder Foss, a Norwegian immigrant, built this home on Silver Lake Road in New Brighton in 1894. It was listed on the National Register of Historic Places in 1983. grant relatives of Jerry Manley, on his mother’s side. Manley, age 83, has lived in Fridley his entire life. “My mother was a Sullivan, and the original homestead on Madison Street goes back three generations, to 1850 and 1860,” Manley said. “There was a dirt road east to Central Avenue. It was all prairie out there then.”
His great-grandfather settled there in the early 1860s. “The Sullivan family then owned almost everything from Hilltop to Moore Lake, from University Avenue to the Ramsey County border,” Manley said. His mother was one of nine children, HOUSES - TO PAGE 4