John Howe house demolished

[DavidC]

From over at PrairieMod come this:

Howe-Designed House Lost


David

[Jeff Myers]

Sheerly shocked and angered by this.. Careless jerks that are a disrespect..

[John Donnelly]

Barbarism.

I will bet that a new and very boring McMansion will take it's place, and the owners will be thrilled.



I would rebuild that home, somewhere. Maybe nobody would be offended if I did.....

hmmm...

-John

[BBuck]

How on Earth do these people expect to replace that fine home? That is a crime. You cannot replace the design, the materials, the workmanship, nor the quality that was that. There's not an Emoticons that would fit this!

Is there any recycling being done? Or is it all gone forever? Poop!

[peterm]

Arrogant, greedy, uneducated, self centered, over-privileged, history hating criminals.

They should be locked up with Bernie Madoff.

[Wrightgeek]

Apalling, but within their rights. This should be, but is not, a crime.

[Wes Barwick]

Sotheby's strikes again. Their slogan should be "Destroying the world's cultural heritage since 1744". An absolute travesty that this should happen and a crying shame that the state of MN would allow it to happen. Shame on them!

[peterm]

Always better to imitate, copy, and rebuild than to destroy a work of art. This is exactly the reason why I have no problem with building a replica of an important piece of architecture.

It's the destruction of history which is so tragic and incomprehensible.

[Jeff Myers]

If I could I would love to arrest these owners on the charge it is and should be mandatory to write a letter to the owners what you're going to do with this home.. if teardown it will be shot down cruelty to historic structures.
Already this week here in Tulsa 3 fires at Bruce Goff's Tulsa Club Building and the city is acting a little slow and now the building has smoke scars I just sat here in furious blunders in cursing. I will slap another person with a fine if I want to if so they take another historic house or building they should be thrown in the architecture banishment for threatening another historic thread.
I AM SICK OF IT!

[lang]

I'm just beginning my architecture education. One sad aspect of it is I'm rapidly learning how much we have lost. I've lost count of how many times the word demolished has appeared on the sites I've surfed. An insult is added to injury when what replaces a unique work is nothing more than an extra large cookie cutter house that is unremarkable in all respects. Truly sad. Langdon

[Roderick Grant]

In 1963, in the same general vicinity as the Howe House (not sure how close; Minnetonka is an enormous lake with a wildly irregular shoreline), Ralph Rapson designed a mansion for Philip Pillsbury on 11 acres of prime land on the east side of Wayzata Bay on Ferndale Road. It was a huge house, featured in the Mid-May 1966 issue of Architectural Record Houses, referred to as having "an almost village-like character," it was so extensive and sprawling. That didn't stop a new owner, a banker, from casually bulldozing it in 1997 to replace it with something of his own preference. Size and magnificence had no bearing on the decision. Nor on the Stephenson's decision to demolish Northome in order to build a Norman Keep on the same property. Not to mention the loss of Purcell & Elmslie's Decker House nearby. I suspect a modest house in a neighborhood less likely to be invaded by the crass nouveau riche has a better chance of surviving. The Howe House was simply in the way as far as the new owners were concered. I don't see this sort of thing changing anytime soon.