The Donaldson Mansion, a 1906 Arts and Crafts Survivor

A house with a long memory

The Donaldson house, an Arts and Crafts-influenced residence, was constructed in 1906 for Lawrence Donaldson and remained in the original family until 1959. At roughly 9,574 square feet, it is among the larger and finer properties on the hill.

Like many of its neighbors, the house was built at the crest of the neighborhood's boom years, when lots on and near Mount Curve Avenue commanded the highest prices in the city. The Donaldson name connects it to the family behind one of downtown's major department stores, tying the house to the commercial history of the wider city.

Real-estate listings over the years have described it as one of the finest properties in Minneapolis, language that says as much about Lowry Hill's reputation as about the house itself.

Arts and Crafts on the hill

The Arts and Crafts style sets the Donaldson house slightly apart from the Renaissance Revival and Italian Renaissance neighbors that also line the ridge. The neighborhood's appeal has always rested on that variety, a single streetscape carrying several decades of architectural fashion.

That the house stayed in one family for more than half a century is part of why it survives so intact, a pattern common to the best-preserved homes on the hill.

The hill's value lies not in any single style but in the unbroken run of intact estates from 1900 to 1910.

Arts and Crafts on the hill

Among the houses that define Lowry Hill, the Donaldson mansion stands out for its Arts and Crafts character. Built in 1906 for Lawrence Donaldson — of the Donaldson's department-store family — the roughly 9,500-square-foot house was designed by the prominent Minneapolis firm of Kees and Colburn, whose other work includes the Grain Exchange and the Donaldson's office building downtown.

The Donaldson family kept the house until 1959, a half-century of single-family stewardship that helps explain how intact it survives. In a neighborhood where the dominant note is the Renaissance Revival of the milling barons, the Donaldson house is a reminder that the hill's builders drew on the full vocabulary of early-20th-century American architecture.

A house with a long memory

Houses like the Donaldson mansion anchor the case Lowry Hill preservationists make: that the avenue's value lies not in any single style but in the unbroken run of intact estates from roughly 1900 to 1910. Each one that survives strengthens the others.