Meet Your Neighbor: A Mount Curve Steward Keeps a 1906 House Standing

A caretaker, not just an owner

Ask longtime Lowry Hill homeowners about their houses and the word that surfaces again and again is stewardship. The great houses on and around Mount Curve Avenue were built in the boom years around 1906, and keeping them intact a century later is a continuous project.

The neighborhood standard, set early and largely unchanged, is a spacious two-and-a-half-story house with generous porches and elaborate exterior detail. That detail is precisely what demands attention: the slate and tile roofs, the leaded glass, the carved interior woodwork that no longer comes cheaply.

Residents who take on these homes often describe inheriting not just a building but a file of its history, the names of the families who built and owned it, and the obligation to hand it on in good condition.

Why they stay

The payoff, owners say, is the experience of living inside the neighborhood's history, on broad lawns under boulevard shade trees, within walking distance of the Walker Art Center and the lakes.

It is a trade many on the hill have made gladly: more upkeep than a new house would ever demand, in exchange for a place in one of the city's most storied streetscapes.

Owning a Mount Curve house is less about possession than stewardship — of plaster, of slate, of a street more than a century old.

Stewardship, not just ownership

Owning a Mount Curve house, longtime residents say, is less about possession than stewardship — of plaster, of slate, of leaded glass and of a streetscape that took shape more than a century ago. The houses on the avenue date largely to a building boom that filled the ridge by 1906, and keeping a home of that vintage standing is a continuous project.

The Lowry Hill Neighborhood Association's own history describes the local standard plainly: a spacious two-and-one-half-story house with generous porches and exterior detail, set behind a broad lawn under boulevard trees. Maintaining that standard means slate roofs, period windows and carriage houses, none of them cheap or quick to repair.

Why they stay

Caretakers of these houses tend to describe a sense of obligation to the next owner as much as pride in the current one. Preservation groups such as the Healy Project have leaned on that ethic, organizing open houses and history projects that frame the avenue's homes as a shared inheritance rather than private trophies.