Woodbury House, Anoka

The Woodbury House is the second-oldest extant house in the city of Anoka. It served as a home to several families from the time of construction until the mid-2000s. It was added to the National Register of Historic Places in 1979. In 2020, it is owned by the City of Anoka and leased to the Mad Hatter Tea Room restaurant.

Built in 1857 and “located on the crest of a hill overlooking the confluence of the Rum and Mississippi Rivers,” the Woodbury House combines both Greek Revival and Federalist Revival styles in its architecture.

Dr. Samuel Shaw, a successful New York medical practitioner, moved his family to Minnesota in 1852 to take advantage of the state's reputed healthful climate. With his father, Neal, and brothers Edward and Judson, he bought 160 acres of land on the west side of the Rum River. As noted in the National Register application, it was "surveyed, platted, and filed as Shaw's Addition to the Original Town of Anoka."

Dr. Shaw built his square, two-story house on a hill above the confluence of the Rum and Mississippi Rivers. Constructed of local pine over a stone foundation, the house combined both Greek and Federalist Revival architectural styles. It featured a fanlight transom and sidelights, and twelve-over-twelve windows that allowed plenty of light to enter the house. Larger and more elegant that most other homes in Anoka at the time, it embodied the wealth and eastern origins of the Shaws.

The Shaws sold the house in 1860 to another easterner, Dwight Woodbury, and moved to Chicago. Woodbury was involved in politics and a number of businesses in the area. In 1863, Dwight served in the Minnesota House of Representatives and his Anoka home became the scene of many social and political gatherings. Dwight remained the head of the household until his death in 1884. His daughter Mary inherited the house in 1884.

Mary and her husband Irving Caswell had one son who grew up playing on the grounds of the house. Mary enlarged the house in 1900, adding a one-story “L”-shaped structure that continued its Revivalist theme. In 1911, the Caswells made another change to the property by enclosing it with a stone fence built with rock from the Rum River bed. An elegant gateway for carriages and automobiles and another for pedestrians opened onto Ferry Street.

By 1936, the house and its grounds became too much for the Caswells to care for. They sold the property to Charles E. Kiewel, who used the property as a summer home. Charles grew up in Little Falls, Minnesota, where he became involved with farming, banking, and brewing beer. By the 1930s, he was the president of the Minneapolis Brewing Company, which made Grain Belt beer.

The Kiewels modernized the house in 1937. They added a servants' wing and garage, and expanded and screened in the porch. They updated the electrical system and installed a brewery-style refrigerator with six doors, powered by a motor in the basement. Charles took special pride in keeping up the rolling lawns around the house and the old Native American trail that ran along the top of the bluff.

Dr. Victor Johnston, an optometrist in Anoka, and his wife, Fern, purchased the property in the 1957. They moved into the historic house with an eye toward preserving it and saw it as a good place to raise their daughter, Barbara. In 1979, the Johnstons submitted the paperwork to list the house on the National Register of Historic Places using the name “Woodbury House,” though many people in Anoka still referred to it as the Caswell house. About this time, the exterior of the house received a facelift with new siding and a change of the trim color from green to gray.

In 1985, the Johnstons sold the house to John and Jill Weaver. Neither family made significant changes to the house, working only to maintain and preserve its history. Following the death of her husband, Jill sold the house to a developer who created ambitious plans to build a condo thirty-five feet from the historic home only to be thwarted by the recession of 2008. After a series of foreclosures and bank ownerships, the City of Anoka purchased the property for $330,000 in 2013 and leased it to the owners of the Mad Hatter Tea Room. Extensive remodeling took place within the interior, but the exterior remains unchanged.