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Cameron and Mignon Fryer have done it again.
After spending several years restoring and remodeling a historic Craftsman-style house in Duluth’s Congdon Park neighborhood, they started all over again with another house just three blocks away.
“We were very happy with the other house,” Cameron Fryer said. “But I drove by and saw the ‘for sale’ sign.”
The home, designed by Frederick German, is a classic English Cotswold cottage worthy of a Thomas Kincade painting, built with stone, heavy timbers and brick and topped with an expansive slate roof.
Still, with big cedars blocking the front and more blocking the view in the back, his wife wasn’t interested.
At least, not at first.
But seven years later, after the couple’s painstaking repairs and renovations, the fairy-tale charm of this 1920s English Tudor home has been renewed, enhanced and is being celebrated.
On Sunday, the home at 2508 E. First St. will be among five homes featured in the Duluth Preservation Alliance’s annual historic house tour, just as their previous home had been eight years earlier. Tour-goers won’t just see the distinctive stone and slate house up close, but be able to stroll through the original hardscape designed by famed Danish-American landscape architect Jens Jensen and enhanced by the Fryers.
“I think it’s the only one he did here,” said Preservation Alliance treasurer Dennis Lamkin, a Jensen fan. “He used the same kind of materials in the hardscape that were in the house. That was the same technique he had done in other houses. He took whatever the architecture was in the house to make it feel very cohesive.”
That hardscape includes distinctive rock walls forming the perimeter, with a pavilion on one end and a circular staircase, concave on top and convex below a landing, that Jensen had also designed for an Edsel Ford home in Grosse Pointe, Mich.
“The house is beautifully done, very nicely restored, but the landscaping stands out to me as spectacular,” Lamkin said.
The house holds at least one mystery. A large, heavy-duty safe built into the basement is original to the house, though more suited for a bank.
Why it’s there is a mystery.
“I don’t know what they kept in there,” Cameron said.
Even though the house was built during prohibition, a safe with 2-foot thick walls and a 400- to 500-pound door more than 6 feet tall seems excessive to hide bootleg alcohol.
Not love at first sight
In 2005, when they bought the house, Mignon Fryer wasn’t eager for another challenge, not after years of stripping and refinishing woodwork and restoring her former home’s original layout and beauty.
“I wasn’t moving, we worked so hard,” she said.
Besides, she liked their spacious 1909 house, also designed by German.
“This one was dark and tired, with no landscaping and not a lot of curb appeal,” she said.
Believing they still had enough energy to tackle another project, Cameron, a retired financial securities consultant, persuaded her to see the inside. There they both saw beyond the original wallpaper that covered the walls, the faux-painted woodwork and the 30-year-old carpeting that covered hardwood floors. And they saw beyond those cedars that hid a spectacular view of Lake Superior, something their current house lacked.
“The minute we walked in the door, it had so much potential, we knew it was somewhere we could live,” Mignon said. “We were not quite ready for a big project, but we did it.”
The 4,500-square-foot house was designed by German and Jensen for the wife of William T. Bailey, who was vice president of Northern Oil Company of Duluth. The house’s Tudor cottage style was a look that was popular in the United States in the 1920s and 1930s.
It may be because of Mrs. Bailey that the house’s four bedrooms have bathrooms, the two master suites have sleeping porches and pocket doors save space throughout the home.
The house has an elevator operated by pulling ropes and a two-car, heated garage that are original to the house. A servants’ staircase leads to a linen room and the maid’s quarters. With six bathrooms in the house, many of the original tubs, sinks and fixtures remain.
The work begins
Once the sale closed, the Fryers went to work, removing wallpaper, repairing the cracked plaster and painting. It took four coats of white paint to cover the first floor’s faux-painted woodwork, including the 18-inch baseboards, which made them stand out for the first time.
They removed carpeting and refinished floors. They refinished a staircase, replaced windows, converted the fireplaces to gas and insulated the attic. Cameron made custom radiator covers that became added features in rooms.
But the most work was done in the dated kitchen, which was gutted and given a bright, contemporary cottage look, designed by Mignon, who is an interior designer.
Outside, the cedars were removed. Cameron added wrought-iron fencing, laid blocks in the curved driveway and stone for patios that appear part of the original hardscape. And he and Mignon created gardens that complete the backyard landscaping.
“Cam has taken such great pains to make sure he exposes the original landscaping and that any improvement to the site that he does reflects the original landscape plan that either didn’t happen or was lost to time,” Lamkin said.
While the Fryers did most of the work themselves, they hired professionals to do the electrical, plumbing, stone repair and make the kitchen cabinetry.
Having renovated and restored a grand home before made the second time around easier for the Fryers.
“We knew what we wanted to do, and what we didn’t,” Mignon said.
And they did it better, Cameron added.
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