William Donaldson House

Transcription

[ music ] [ Larry Millett ] Hi, I'm Larry Millett, author of Minnesota's Own, Preserving Our Grand Homes. I'm in front of the Lawrence S. Donaldson house in Minneapolis today. Let's go inside and meet my partner on the project, photographer Matt Schmitt. [ Matt Schmitt ] This was a marvelous house to walk into. Larry and I came in to scout it and you just walked into the front door and you know this would be one of the 22 homes. I thought we need to be able to see that there's a living off of the entrance way, the reception area, and I wanted to show some of the glass that was in the entry also, it's beautiful. The quarter sawn oak is gorgeous, wainscoting and everything and it's just a room that needed to be photographed onto it's own. [ music ] [ Larry Millett ] This is the dining room of the Donaldson house and it's one of the most interesting rooms in the house because it's sort of the most Renaissance Revival in style, maybe the most formal room. The dome ceiling is interesting. When the present owner bough the house it had been painted white and he actually restored it with 9 carat gold leaf. One of the other features of this room are the murals that were painted by a man named Alfons Baumgart. [ music ] [ Larry Millett ] We're now in the living room of the Donaldson house, kind of Renaissance Revival type elements to it, including the fire place behind me which is Minnesota travertine stone from Mankato area. You also have in this room a beautiful window. When Mark Perrin bought the house he had these panels remade by Century Studios in Minneapolis as duplicates of the original Tiffany. [ music ] [ Larry Millett ] This is the sun-room of the Donaldson house. This entire room was decorated and out fitted by John Bradstreet who was a famous decorator, interior designer in Minneapolis. He designed, his firm designed the transom panels above the windows, the carved panels above the fire place and also behind me. These are all done with a Japanese technique which involves fuming cypress wood, this is all cypress wood, and it's fumed and then that brings out the deeper color and pattern of the wood. Mark Perrin was able to reacquire these 11 transom screens. They had been removed in 1978 but were never sold, so Perrin went to the people who had sold the items in 1978 and they still had some of them and he bought all total, I guess about 30 items back to bring back to the house to restore it. [ music ]