The Albert Lammers House is a historic house in
Stillwater, Minnesota, United States, built circa 1893. It was listed on the
National Register of Historic Places in 1982 for having local significance in the themes of architecture and industry. It was nominated for its association with a local family that expanded Stillwater's lumber interests into northwest Minnesota, and as the city's leading example of
Queen Anne architecture
The Queen Anne style of British architecture refers to either the English Baroque architecture of the time of Queen Anne (who reigned from 1702 to 1714) or the British Queen Anne Revival form that became popular during the last quarter of the ...
.
Description
The Albert Lammers House is a two-and-a-half-story
wood-frame
Timber framing (german: Holzfachwerk) and "post-and-beam" construction are traditional methods of building with heavy timbers, creating structures using squared-off and carefully fitted and joined timbers with joints secured by large wooden ...
building on a prominent corner lot.
Queen Anne architectural elements include the
massing,
turret
Turret may refer to:
* Turret (architecture), a small tower that projects above the wall of a building
* Gun turret, a mechanism of a projectile-firing weapon
* Objective turret, an indexable holder of multiple lenses in an optical microscope
* Mi ...
s, wraparound porch, woodworking detail on the
gables, ornamented roofline, and surface texturing.
The house boasts an octagonal turret on the south and a round turret on the northeast corner. The complex front façade has recessed
balconies on both the second and attic levels. The lower balcony has a
latticework
__NOTOC__
Latticework is an openwork framework consisting of a criss-crossed pattern of strips of building material, typically wood or metal. The design is created by crossing the strips to form a grid or weave.
Latticework may be functional &nda ...
frieze while the upper has a seashell motif in its shape and flanking
cartouches
In Egyptian hieroglyphs, a cartouche is an oval with a line at one end tangent to it, indicating that the text enclosed is a royal name. The first examples of the cartouche are associated with pharaohs at the end of the Third Dynasty, but the fea ...
.
Much of the detailed
woodworking was done by Scandinavian carpenters, which may explain the Viking-style ornamentation on the roofline.
History
Albert Lammers was born in Minnesota and married Emma Kroon in 1882. He spent decades in the lumber business with his brother George.
Primed by their success in Minnesota's initial logging region—the
St. Croix Valley—lumbermen like the Lammers Brothers and
Isaac Staples
Isaac Staples (September 25, 1816 – June 27, 1898) was a powerful lumber baron in the St. Croix River Valley during the logging boom of the late 19th century.
Aside from his massive holdings and operations in timber, sawmills and the St. ...
were instrumental in expanding the industry to other parts of the state. In 1898 the Lammers' operation cut of lumber from the
Red Lake Indian Reservation and transported it to sawmills in
Crookston in northwest Minnesota. The Lammers didn't operate their own
sawmills but contracted to cut and bark logs for other companies.
Several of the early lumbermen in the valley were motivated to build elaborate, monumental houses to boast of their success in industry. Besides the Albert Lammers House, other houses of industry pioneers include the
Roscoe Hersey House, the
Captain Austin Jenks House, and the
Ivory McKusick House. These houses are also listed on the National Register.
As the Minnesota pineries became depleted, Albert Lammers traveled extensively, visiting his logging camps and searching for new business opportunities. He helped establish logging operations in
South Carolina,
Florida, and
the Bahamas, and also diversified into mining.
Albert and Emma Lammers had four children. She died in 1910. Albert Lammers died in 1920 while in
British Columbia, still attending to his lumber empire.
Since the 1950s, Lammers House has been a rented residential property.
[ http://www.stillwater-mn.org/hpc/Property/3303020140106]
See also
*
References
{{DEFAULTSORT:Lammers, Albert, House
1893 establishments in Minnesota
Houses in Washington County, Minnesota
Houses completed in 1893
Houses on the National Register of Historic Places in Minnesota
Queen Anne architecture in Minnesota
Stillwater, Minnesota
National Register of Historic Places in Washington County, Minnesota