Pillsbury Estate: Auction will mark end of grand era

In photos, the former Pillsbury estate on Lake Minnetonka's Brackett's Point looks like a fairy-tale house in a paradise of water and woods.

Once the summer residence of one of the state's best-known families, the 40,000-square-foot brick and stone manor house and its 13-acre site are for sale by sealed bids that are due Dec. 9. The property, known as Southways, could be sold intact or divided into five waterfront lots.

The possible breakup of one of the great properties on Lake Minnetonka would be only the latest loss on the lake, which is getting crowded with more homes on smaller lots. Three years ago, 70 acres of the nearby Sweatt estate, owned by one of the families that founded Honeywell, was sold for a development that will include 47 new homes.

The loss of some of the big estates and the possible division of Southways saddens Bette Jones Hammel, author of the new book "Legendary Homes of Lake Minnetonka."

"I hate to see it broken up," Hammel said. "The shoreline is unique and the beautiful estates are part of it. ... Some of us feel [Southways] should be a museum. But nobody has the money now. You would think this should be something for the public to see."

George Pillsbury, who was born at Southways in 1921 and considered it his home until he married in 1946, is philosophical about the sale.

"Owning a house like Southways is very expensive and requires upkeep," he said. "If it became a museum that would be fine. But I don't see that happening right now."

Southways has been owned by James and Joann Jundt since 1992. The Jundts spent millions to renovate the house, hiring the same architect who worked on the restoration of Ellis Island and Grand Central Station. The property, which includes formal gardens, a pool, tennis complex, tea house, caretaker's house and greenhouse, was on the market for $53.5 million last year but did not sell. Hennepin County tax records give the estate a market value of about $15.1 million, with property taxes of almost $179,000 a year.

Steeped in history

The families that founded Dayton's and Cargill were already living on the lake when Southways was finished in 1919 as a summer home for John S. and Eleanor Pillsbury. Hammel writes that Eleanor, who died at the home in 1991 at age 104, fought with the architect to make sure sleeping porches were added to the second floor.

The family began living in the house year-round in about 1930, George Pillsbury said. He remembers a house that, despite its grandeur and formality, was very much a home for a family with six kids. He and his brothers cleared snow on the frozen lake to play hockey.

"It was a wonderful house to live in. We used to entertain all the time," he said. "People would come to spend the weekend. ... In the wintertime, people would come out and skate, and mother would serve tea in the living room."

Servants did the laundry and cooking. George Pillsbury, who served in the state Senate for 12 years, said that when he was a teenager, he and his sister would go riding first thing in the morning. Then he would come home, play a round of golf, sail and finish the day by playing tennis.

"There were not many houses west of Brackett's Point," he said. "You had to go up to Mound to find more houses."

Southways is in Orono, where Jim White is mayor. Properties like the old Pillsbury home add to the character of the city, he said.

"It's not just cookie-cutter," he said. "Sometimes you drive around and you have no idea if you're in Crystal or Eden Prairie. It's nice to have these things around that speak of our past."

There are perhaps a dozen estate properties left in Orono that range up to about 30 acres in size, said Mike Gaffron, assistant city administrator. The city doesn't encourage subdivision of lots and has kept its minimum lot and lakeshore sizes unchanged since 1975.

The big properties keep "that rural flavor that the city has had for decades," Gaffron said. "One of the great challenges if the owner or developer chooses to subdivide is doing so in a way that retains the context of the site, so it retains the feeling of a grand home on an estate property."

George Stickney, a real estate agent who has sold premier properties near Lake Minnetonka, said it can be a challenge marketing homes like Southways. Built in a time when hired help did the work, homes like Southways often have kitchens tucked in the interior of the house "because the staff didn't need a view." While he said he hopes someone buys the entire property, subdivision may be necessary "to make the numbers work."

But then, "Subdivision on this property is interesting because they wouldn't be building similar-sized houses, and [Southways] would tower over them," he said. "It's going to look a little funny with other prominent houses and outbuildings around it. It would lose its prestige."

A museum, perhaps?

Talk of turning the property into a museum is wishful thinking, said Erin Hanafin Berg, who works with the Preservation Alliance of Minnesota. The property is on a narrow point of land jutting into the lake, so traffic would be a problem.

And despite the Pillsbury family's intimate ties with Minnesota -- Pillsburys have been governor, saved the fledgling University of Minnesota from bankruptcy and founded an international food company -- "I don't know of any organization that would have the capacity to buy it," Berg said.

"It's an American story worth preserving and telling," she said. "But the economic constraints we have right now are going to dampen anybody's interest."

Until bids come in, no one knows what will happen to the property. But Gaffron said that in Orono, the owners of two estates have been quietly buying properties adjacent to their own. Another landowner who had divided an estate into two-acre lots decades ago recently recombined them into one property.

"Our sense is that they are attempting to keep the estate character, not holding the land for development," Gaffron said. "Most people that own these larger estates have a sense of history and feel that they are caretakers ... . They are trying to preserve the property."

Mary Jane Smetanka • 612-673-7380