Thorstein Veblen Farmstead

The Thorstein Veblen Farmstead is a historic landmark in Nerstrand, Minnesota. From 1866 until 1888, it was the primary home of Thorstein Veblen (1857–1929), a son of Norwegian immigrants who would become a world-renowned economist and social scientist. His most famous work, The Theory of the Leisure Class (1899), introduced the term “conspicuous consumption.” The ten-acre farmstead was placed on the National Register of Historic Places in 1975, and designated a National Historical Landmark in 1981.

In 1847, Thomas and Kari Veblen emigrated from Vang, Valdres, Norway, to Milwaukee, Wisconsin. Over the next eighteen years, the Veblens lived in various locations in Ozaukee, Sheboygan, and Manitowoc counties in Wisconsin. Upon visiting Kari's mother and stepfather—Berit and Tosten Bonde—and her three brothers in 1863, Thomas and Kari became interested in moving to Wheeling Township, Rice County, Minnesota, as well.

In July 1865, the family—consisting of seven children, including eight-year-old Thorstein—made their way from Wisconsin to Minnesota. They temporarily settled on a ninety-acre farm site with a log house in Wheeling Township. The year before, in 1864, Thomas Veblen had also purchased a fertile, unimproved 200-acre parcel with the intent of establishing the family’s primary farmstead in the area.

From the fall of 1865 through the winter of 1866, limestone was quarried and hauled from the Big Woods nearby. Over the course of the spring and summer months in 1866, Veblen built a sixteen-inch-thick stone foundation on his 200-acre tract. He erected a temporary roof with an attic for storage. The basement dwelling, approximately 725 square feet, contained room partitions, a fireplace, a cook stove, and a well to draw water. The rooms were cozy and crowded with ten inhabitants that included a newborn (John Edward Veblen) and an elderly widowed Norwegian immigrant woman—an acquaintance only—who slept on a cot in the corner.

By the fall of 1867, the shell of the frame house was erected and ready for occupancy. Veblen, a skilled carpenter and cabinet maker, fashioned a spacious 1,869 square-foot, six-bedroom house with Greek Revival details, white clapboard siding, and symmetrical rectangular window and door placements. The exterior held the appearance of an American home, but traditional Norwegian elements were present, including a stairway leading to the exterior second-floor porch and rooms grouped around main-level and second-floor parlors. By 1870, the farmhouse had assumed its final form.

Locally sourced butternut, maple, and pine from the Big Woods served for interior wainscoting, trim and flooring. The main level's maple flooring was thought to be the first hardwood floor in the Nerstrand area. When the house was under construction, Thomas’ son Thorstein used a lath nail and hammered his initials, “TBV,” into a stud in a second-floor interior wall.

For Thorstein, the attic in particular proved the space where, as William C. Melton, former chief economist of American Express Financial Services and one-time owner of the Veblen farmstead, stated, “he really became an economist.” From adolescence to post-PhD work at Yale University, Thorstein sought the attic as a solitary escape, and later a place to convalesce.

Here, in its quiet recesses, Thorstein, a voracious reader, immersed himself in any and all literature that he had scoured from the community. From the outside looking up, piles of books filled the attic, and only the top of Thorstein’s head was visible at the garret window. One of his brothers wryly remarked, “He read and loafed, and the next day he loafed and read.”

By 1893, with their children no longer living at home, the Veblens sold the farmstead. As generations of subsequent owners lived and worked the property, the place slowly fell into disrepair by 1970, and was abandoned soon after. Between the 1970s and 1990s, two non-profits, the Veblen Preservation Project, Inc. (1977–1992), and the Veblen Farmstead, Inc. (1992–1999), operated by William C. Melton, greatly aided in preservation and restoration efforts.

The ten-acre farmstead was placed on the National Register of Historic Places in 1975, and designated a National Historical Landmark in 1981. The home was fully renovated by 1994, in time for a Veblen family reunion held on site. As of 2020, the farmstead boasts a flower and guesthouse business named Historic Veblen Farm.