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Serving Northern St. Louis County, Minnesota

Housebarn draws visitors

A socially-distanced crowd gathers for annual Community Night Out

Jodi Summit
Posted 9/17/20

EMBARRASS- The music playing in front of the Seitaniemi housebarn was just the right style. The big band and jazz favorites played by Debbie Bigelow and Dean Kleven could have come from a radio …

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Housebarn draws visitors

A socially-distanced crowd gathers for annual Community Night Out

Posted

EMBARRASS- The music playing in front of the Seitaniemi housebarn was just the right style. The big band and jazz favorites played by Debbie Bigelow and Dean Kleven could have come from a radio sitting in the kitchen of the tiny house at the west end of the housebarn where Alex and Sofia Seitaniemi raised their three children, Knute, Bill, and Lulu.
Hard decisions were being made between apple, strawberry, blueberry-peach, pumpkin, and key lime pie being sold by the slice. The lemon meringue had sold out early. By the end of the concert, only a handful of slices remained.
Sisu Heritage’s annual Community Night Out, held Sept. 13, was once again a chance for area residents to get out and enjoy an outdoor concert, eat some homemade pie, and tour the one-of-a-kind log structure built over 100 years ago.
The concert was a rare event that could be held during this season of COVID-19. With the outdoor stage, bring-your-own seating, plenty of room to spread out, and prepackaged homemade pie slices for sale, it met all the current safety guidelines.
The Sunday afternoon was partly cloudy with seasonal temperatures. Somehow, over the last nine years, the event has never been canceled due to the weather. Attendance was a little smaller than normal, but at least 60 area residents had set up chairs or picnic blankets to enjoy the music, many bringing their own picnic dinner.
Jack LaMar gave small group tours to interested visitors, many of whom had never been to the site before.
“People were very interested in the history of the family,” he said, “as well as the architecture.”
LaMar pointed out some of the more unique details of the structure, including the dovetailed corner joints that also were pegged, expertly fitting one into the other, all hewn by hand without any power tools. The housebarn is one of only three known to have been built by a Finnish immigrant in the United States, and is the only one still standing.
The 92-foot long structure, built from hand-hewn tamarack logs, has undergone over $330,000 in grant-funded restoration work since it was donated to Sisu Heritage in 2007. Stabilization work began in 2010, and currently the structure is “weather-secure,” according to Jack LaMar, who has been supervising the restoration efforts the past few years. Work included restoring and leveling the stone foundation, restoring the unique hayloft ramp, replacing joists and floorboards, securing replacement tamarack logs to replace some of the logs that had deteriorated, and repairing the windows, doorways, and roof.
LaMar said Sisu Heritage next needs to decide if they want to hire a professional grant writer to move into the next phase of the project, restoring the building to how it appeared in the mid-1920s.
“We have several photographs that show the housebarn at its peak,” he said.
Professional research would also need to be done to determine how exactly to restore the building to be historically accurate, he said. None of the three Sietaniemi children ever had children of their own. As adults, Knute and Bill lived on the homestead in a more traditional stick-built house, built in later years, but after Bill died in 2003, the land and structures were sold to a private party. The new owners graciously decided to donate the housebarn, along with a 99-year lease for the nearby surrounding land, to Sisu Heritage.
Once the final restoration work is completed, LaMar said they hope to gather some of the original artifacts from the homestead. After the final remaining Seitaniemi family member, Bill, died in 2003, the contents of the home were auctioned off, and many items are now owned by residents in the area.
The housebarn is part of the historic log home tours conducted during the summer from the Nelimark Homestead Museum. Private tours can also be arranged by contacting Jack LaMar at 218-208-7725.
Sisu Heritage is a non-profit that was formed to preserve and share the unique culture, climate, and history of the Embarrass area. The group owns other historic log structures in Embarrass and operates a small museum and gift shop in the Nelimark Homestead, which is open weekends during the summer, and for a few holiday weekend events in the fall.
You can learn more about the housebarn project at www.sisuheritage.org.