Owner of historic Chaska mansion collects homes for history

In the basement of the historic downtown Chaska mansion, there's a vault once kept by a local brick and banking tycoon that was filled with riches. The solid steel vault door is a talking point that Nick Johnson uses to impress potential buyers interested in purchasing the century-old mansion.

It was those historic quirks that led Johnson to add the five-bedroom Klein mansion to the collection of historic homes that he owns across the state, a collection the 73-year-old began when he was in his 30s. Now he is selling the historic property because he and his wife can no longer keep up with its maintenance.

"If you have a sense of history, you have to jump at something like this," he said of the Klein mansion, one of his later purchases.

The mansion at 205 E. 4th St. has changed hands many times over the years since Christian Klein built the home, back when he and his brother, Charles, dominated the brickmaking business in Chaska.

In 1967, the city bought it for $30,000. For 20 years it served as City Hall, with the Police Department in the basement and the City Council chambers on the third floor. The Chaska Historical Society then operated out of the building until 2003, said Lisa Oberski, the society's president.

"We would very much like it to be used, maintained and continue to be cherished by the residents of Chaska," Oberski said.

The Italian Renaissance mansion features columns, porches with balustrades and a red clay tile roof. The interior is accented in chartreuse and mahogany, with paintings of rural wooded farm towns surrounding the dining room.

While Johnson and his wife, Ann, never lived in the house, both share stories about it as if they built it together. He collects documents and tales about each of his 20-plus properties.

For example, the seven-bedroom 1850s home in Northfield that he rents out to college students features a basement made out of limestone. Johnson said he was told that a previous owner witnessed one of the Jesse James gang's robbers being struck by bullets during the gang's attempt to rob the First National Bank of Northfield in 1876.

Johnson's house in downtown Excelsior was used as a brothel in the 1930s. The home once included a tunnel to the Excelsior Amusement Park, which opened in the 1920s and closed in 1973. The garage was used by the funeral parlor next door to store bodies of victims of the 1918 flu pandemic.

And 19th-century boat captains lodged in a house that Johnson owns near the Mississippi River in St. Paul.

Johnson keeps the homes' historic elements intact as much as possible, but he admitted it's a big job. He jokingly called the Northfield home his money pit.

"If you don't like this kind of work, it is torture," he said.

Still, it doesn't stop him from wanting to add to his collection.

Johnson recently tried to buy the quirky "Mushroom House" on Medicine Lake in Plymouth.

It's now known by Johnson as the house that got away.

Beatrice Dupuy • 612-673-1707