Porter Kelsey House

The Porter Kelsey house was built in Andover in 1887 from materials produced by the owner’s own brickyard. In 2020, it is one of few structures built with Kelsey Brickyard brick that still stands in Anoka County.

The Kelsey Brick Company produced high quality buff-colored brick beginning in 1879. The majority of the brick manufactured there was shipped by rail from Anoka to the Twin Cities and used in the construction of buildings such as the Minneapolis City Hall (interior walls only). Locally, the brick was used in the construction of the Anoka County Courthouse, county schools and churches, the city of Anoka’s commercial buildings, and the smokestack of Anoka’s Washburn Sawmill.

In the early-to-mid 1880s, Porter Kelsey, his family, and his brickyard employees lived in a rambling frame house near the brickyard site. It stood on the west shore of Round Lake, two miles northeast of Anoka, among stands of pine and maple trees. By 1887, his business was prospering, and Kelsey made plans to build a grander home in place of the existing building.

Most houses built during the nineteenth century in rural Anoka County are relatively small, constructed of locally logged pine or oak, composed of two intersecting one-and-one-half story gable ended sections, and void of exterior ornamentation. The Porter Kelsey house, by contrast, is unusually large (it has over twenty rooms) and elaborately decorated. Although it is not a "pure" example of any one architectural style, it features Italianate design elements, including, on the interior an "L" plan, wide eaves with coupled brackets, a truncated hipped roof, a rectangular balustrade atop the roof, and a veranda surmounted by a balustraded balcony. Its external Italianate features are etched glass doors, carved woodwork, decorative hardware, and lighting fixtures (converted from kerosene to electricity) all dating to the turn of the twentieth century. In later years, the family modernized the kitchen, rearranged rooms, and added supporting columns to the archways between two rooms.

The Panic of 1893, coupled with the loss of a long-sought-after spur line running from Anoka to the brickyard, put Kelsey’s company out of business. In 1897, he sold his brick-making machinery, and the brickyard's buildings were torn down.

Members of the Kelsey family continued to live in the house until 1955. The Charley Hartfiel family completed an interior restoration of the house in the late 1970s, and it was added to the National Register of Historic places on December 26, 1979.

Editor’s note: This article incorporates content from a National Register of Historic Places nomination file—a public-domain text.