6/19/2007 12:32:00 PM History lives at the Burwell House
Burwell House tour guide Gayle Andrs extols the virtues of the guest room in the Victorian home on the north bank of Minnehaha Creek Tuesday, June 12. Andrs spent part of her youth living with her family next door to the Burwell House.
A birthday wish from Charles H. Burwell to his wife Mary Dunham Burwell.
Volunteers: Currently, 28 volunteers lead tours and help with cleaning. Others organize the annual ice cream social. If you are interested in volunteering, call 952-939-8219.
By Kelly Westhoff
After an elementary teaching career that spanned 45 years with the Hopkins School District, Gayle Andrs knew she wouldn't be happy sitting at home upon her retirement.
She considered many volunteer opportunities and settled on several, one which gears up each spring and continues throughout the summer: Since 2001, Andrs has been a volunteer tour guide at Minnetonka's historic Burwell House.
"I grew up in a house next door to the Burwell House," Andrs said, explaining her parents built a home on the adjacent property in 1941. "There was a little cottage on the Burwell property that was rented to a family with four kids and I'd go over there and play with them," she said.
"I remember Louise Burwell," Andrs said, admitting that because she was a child, she didn't know her very well.
Louise was the last of the Burwell family to call the house home.
The Burwell House was built in 1883 by Charles Burwell.
Charles spent his boyhood in Connecticut. As a young man, he moved to Wisconsin, married and had two children, Anna and George.
When his first wife died shortly after the birth of their son, Charles packed up his children and moved to Minnesota where he took a job at the Minnetonka Mill on Minnehaha Creek and eventually rose to prominence.
He remarried, this time to a local woman, a merchant's daughter named Mary, and had two more children, Louise and Loring.
As the years passed, members of the Burwell family died or moved away.
But Louise stayed and she never married or had children. She worked as a librarian at Burwell Elementary, which sits on land donated to the school's construction by her family. In fact, Andres herself attended Burwell Elementary, yet after Louise's retirement.
Louise lived in the Burwell House until 1958, when she sold it and moved to California.
In 1970, the house was sold to the city of Minnetonka, which completed extensive renovations to the building and converted the grounds into a park.
The house is on the National Register of Historic Places and is a Minnesota Landmark.
Even at the time of its construction, the Burwell House was a unique building.
The two-story Victorian home boasts a tower and a wrap-around front porch. Andrs remembers Louise Burwell standing on her porch and looking out over her property.
"I do have personal memories of being inside the house," Andrs said. "Louise Burwell used to host a tea on New Year's Day. I went with my mother and I remember sitting on the settee and being very quiet." Those were the days, Andrs acknowledged, when children were to be seen, not heard.
"I don't ever remember being allowed upstairs when I was a child," she added.
Now that she is a volunteer tour guide in the home, however, Andrs is free to go upstairs and down.
"I am in awe of the restoration," she said, explaining that because the house is a registered historic site, craftsmen were recruited for much of the restoration work.
The wood work has been meticulously maintained and the wallpaper, while out-of-place in a modern home Andrs said, is perfectly matched to evoke the Victorian era.
The home is furnished with original Burwell furniture and other donated period pieces.
Mannequins stand dressed in period clothes. Andrs favorite item in the house is a quilt stitched by a Brainerd woman.
"It's a fabulous piece," she said. "It's period-oriented and it's beautiful."
Because Andrs was a teacher for so many years, she organized an educational program that brings local students into the Burwell House to learn about the history of the Minnetonka area.
Just this spring, about 250 children toured the home.
"The kids are in awe of how pretty it is, and they are very respectful of the house," Andrs said, noting that children often find beauty in things adults rarely notice.
For example, "The kids are really interested in the modern updates to the home," Andrs said.
In 1999, an act of arson destroyed part of the house. A sprinkler system was installed to protect against future fires and the school children always ask questions about this, she explained.
"They like to know it can't happen again," she said.
The students also express interest in Louise Burwell's collection of books and the dolls on her bed.
In the kitchen, the kids want to inspect the butter churn and all grimace and groan when they learn about the sausage stuffer, Andrs said.
Perhaps the highlight of the school tour, Andrs said, is the icebox.
The kids, she explained, just don't understand how a family could cut ice chunks from the creek or lake, store them in a box and transport them into a house.
Andrs has found great satisfaction from being a volunteer tour guide for the Burwell House.
"I've met a lot of really interesting people, nice, nice people," she said, explaining it has been fun to form friendships with the other tour guides and make connections with people who come to the house for tours.
Yet her work teaching local school children about the home has been, perhaps, the most satisfying.
She hopes to expand the program next spring to include even more students.
Andrs said, "One little girl told me she wanted to live there because it was so pretty. She wished she could walk through the house with the people who lived there."
