Renovated 1889 ‘cottage’ with views of White Bear Lake is listed at $450,000

One of White Bear Lake’s earliest settlers, William Worster Webber arrived in 1855, three years before the city’s incorporation and Minnesota’s statehood.

He bought a 300-acre farm next to the lake and, in 1889, built a two-story house with a broad front porch. That three-bedroom, two-bathroom house still stands and is now for sale at $450,000.

A week after they married in 2018, Jayme and Justin Frogner spotted the home on the market and bought it.

“At the time, it was a little bit of a fixer-upper, just outdated. But it was perfectly within our price range,” Jayme Frogner said.

During the first tour, she recalled her husband immediately going upstairs to stand on the primary bedroom’s balcony, saying: “We have to buy this house.”

After moving in, they did some updating to the 1,985-square-foot house. But they’ve strived to retain its historic character.

“We have 6-foot windows all over the place — that’s something you don’t see in newer builds,“ Frogner said, adding the windows now have modern soundproofed glass panes.

“We kept the older character in it, but a lake cottage [look] is what I was going for,” she said.

The living room has a wood-burning fireplace. Another fireplace in the second-floor primary bedroom is gas. That bedroom has the small balcony overlooking the lake. The other two bedrooms are on the second floor, too.

The unfinished basement, a stone-and-mortar foundation with an obsolete coal chute, is “where you really see the age,” Frogner said.

The home isn’t quite on White Bear Lake — a highway and frontage road is in between — but the porch still offers an expansive view of the lake.

“We get the lake view without the lake taxes,” Frogner said.

The cemetery is the site of White Bear Lake’s annual Memorial Day program, said Dan Jones of the White Bear Lake Area Historical Society. He was born in White Bear Lake and served on the City Council for 15 years.

White Bear Lake’s history is full of colorful tales, including some featuring literary standards like Mark Twain and F. Scott Fitzgerald’s “The Great Gatsby.” There’s even a Romeo-and-Juliet-style legend about a Native American couple and a white bear.

According to the legend, as Jones tells it, a “white bear out of nowhere” interrupted a tryst between the daughter of a Dakota chief and a young Ojibwe warrior. The warrior “kills the bear, saves the maiden and they live happily ever after.”

Some, including Jones, suspect a romantically minded woman in the Victorian era concocted the legend.

“[But] it can’t be debunked, because it’s oral history,” he said. “I guess the city and the area have accepted it.”

“A dead man could get up a better legend than this one,” Twain wrote. “I don’t mean a fresh dead man either; I mean a man that’s been dead weeks and weeks.”

Twain also says White Bear Lake is “a lovely sheet of water and is being utilized as a summer resort by the wealth and fashion of the State.”

The “Great Gatsby” connection arose because Fitzgerald, a St. Paul native, and his wife, Zelda, used to frequent the White Bear Lake area.

Jones said the Historical Society has a photo of the couple at the White Bear Yacht Club (where, on at least one occasion, the hard-drinking couple “got a little out of hand,” and the club asked them to leave).

Fitzgerald’s short story “Winter Dreams“ preceded Gatsby and explores similar themes of social class and disillusionment. Fitzgerald set it in the fictional Minnesota town of Black Bear Village, next to fictional Black Bear Lake.

Jayme Frogner agreed.

The Frogners’ house is within walking or biking distance from many White Bear Lake shops, restaurants and other destinations.

“We rarely use a car if we’re going anywhere in White Bear,” she said.

The couple, who have a 3-year-old son, find that the city of about 23,000 is “excellent for families.” But it has plenty of nightlife so it’s also “great if you’re young and single,“ she said.

“Whenever we go out, we know at least one person, no matter where we are,“ she said. ”It’s easy to get involved in things here. There are so many clubs and events.”

And, of course, there’s always that picturesque lake. On nice summer days, Frogner can look out the windows and see people enjoying beautiful weather on their boats.

“Sometimes it’s hard, having that view,” she said of working at home while watching the fun.