Kelsey, Porter, House

The Porter Kelsey House is significant due to its association with a historically important Anoka County industry, brick manufacturing, and as a well-preserved example of Italianate design features applied to a rural nineteenth-century residence.

The Kelsey Brick Company produced high-quality buff-colored brick on the western shore of Round Lake from 1879 until 1897. The majority of the brick manufactured at this brickyard was shipped by rail from Anoka to Minneapolis and St. Paul for the construction of buildings such as the Minneapolis City Hall (interior walls only). Locally, the brick was used in the construction of the Anoka County Courthouse (razed), many county schools and churches (only one is extant), the city of Anoka's commercial buildings, and the smokestack of Anoka's Washburn Sawmill (after the demolition of smokestack the bricks were used in the construction of the Pease Printery, 111 Harrison Street, Anoka). The disastrous Panic of 1893 coupled with the loss of a long sought-after spur line running from Anoka to the brickyard resulted in the demise of the brickyard. In 1897 the brick-making machinery was sold and the brickyard's buildings were demolished.

The house was constructed in 1887 to replace a long rambling, frame house that had served to house the Kelsey family and the brickyard employees. The massive size (over twenty rooms) and the architectural design of the house represent a unique element of Anoka County's rural landscape. The nineteenth-century rural house in Anoka County is characteristically small, invariably constructed of locally logged pine or oak, usually composed of two intersecting one-and-one-half story gable-ended sections, and void of exterior ornamentation.

The Porter Kelsey House has been well-preserved by members of the Kelsey family, who owned the house for 68 years, and by two subsequent owners. The current owners, the Charles Hartfiel family, recently completed an interior restoration of the house.