Modern, light-filled Minneapolis house on Lake Harriet lists for $5M

Light streams in through the living room’s floor-to-ceiling windows that overlook a curving bluestone patio of a modernist house on Lake Harriet.

The home feels close to the water even though its tucked away from the lake path, and natural light floods the house all day from different directions. Built on a hill at the southern point of the south Minneapolis lake, the sunny house exudes the vibe of California’s Venice Beach, not snowy and cold Minnesota.

“The idea is to give you a sense of shelter but also allow the clear stories and the glass to let your spirit soar and connect you with the light,” said renowned architect Charles R. Stinson who is known for design that’s deeply connected to the natural environment and landscape.

A Chicago real estate developer and an actress/director approached Stinson about building the house from the ground-up after the previous home on the lot was demolished.

Stinson and his team finished it in 2003, and now the 6,893-square-foot property — which Stinson said movie star Tom Hanks once stayed in, a friend of the owner from her early acting days — is on the market for $5 million.

Throughout his 40-year career, Stinson, who is based in Wayzata and Deephaven, has designed projects in 20 states and 10 countries, including Dubai, Saudi Arabia, Germany and Costa Rica. But this was the first house he designed on one of the Twin Cities metro-area lakes.

The luxury-style home is filled with modernist elements. Tidy materials like steel, glass and concrete offer a sense of simplicity. Open floor plans make for clean lines and functionalism rather than ornamentation. Lines and form rule.

“The whole view to the house is kind of like a modernist house but very warm and light,” Stinson said.

Stinson worked with interior designer Ruth Johnson, known for her work on the Lake Minnetonka Guest House, a restored 1858 Victorian Italianate home. She also worked on the iconic Lake Michigan Cliff House, a modernist home cantilevered over a lake cliff in Door County, Wis.

“The way the house is positioned on this property, you have the energy of the lake and the city, skyline, the bandshell, but it’s very private, even though it’s a glass house,” Johnson said of the Lake Harriet house. “Nobody from down on the trail around the lake can see into these windows.”

Walking through the front door into the foyer, the ceiling is low slung, but the room quickly expands.

This “expansion-contraction” is something that Stinson uses in his architecture, listing agent Shane Spencer said.

Wright, one of the most famous architects who popularized Prairie Style Houses in the early 1900s, is also the inspiration behind other elements that pop up throughout the home, like low-pitched roofs with deep overhangs, radiant-heated concrete floors, and floor-to-ceiling glass windows. These create a flow throughout the house and with the landscape.

The main floor also boasts two spacious office/bedroom areas, a laundry room (with three laundry shoots coming down from the second floor), and a small room that opens into a private outdoor gravel dog run.

A staircase with floating treads and minimalist railings leads to the second floor.

“The second owner, he said it was a love at first sight, walking in the door,” Spencer said. “I asked him what was the first thing that struck him, what was a singular moment that he can remember about why he wanted the house, and he said it was the staircase, just walking in and seeing that view.”

Another surprise: A cigarette window, also known as transoms, which were popular in the late 19th century through the 1930s. They were used in urban housing to improve ventilation and airflow, but could also be used for smoking, and remind of vent windows popular in cars from the 1930s-1960s.

“With the cigarette window opened from the bedroom, [the owners] could hear conversations flowing throughout the house and feel connected and not separated,” Stinson said.

In the master suite’s bathroom, a freestanding bathtub offers stunning views of the lake.

“They were building very traditional homes ― like built-in bathtubs, built-in jacuzzies, corner bathtubs ― so this was quite something to have a freestanding bathtub, and it is still perfectly relevant,” Spencer said.

He added: “The design of this home is beautifully timeless and modern.”

In the other bedroom, Stinson custom-designed a long, narrow, fort-like tunnel space for kids to play.

When thinking about the interplay of nature and light in the home, Stinson used a metaphor.

“If you notice a big tree trunk, and there’s a hole in it, and there’s a squirrel nest or something, and they’re looking out the end of that, it’s almost like a cave,” Stinson said.

He said this house is more like “you’re building in the spaces between the branches and the leaves of the tree, so you are always connected to a variance of light and scale all the time.”