Two years ago, after living for decades in Oak Park, Ill., surrounded by Frank Lloyd Wright buildings, Janet Levitt returned to the Minneapolis neighborhood where she was raised and bought her own little piece of architectural history.
The 1964 house in the Prospect Park district was designed by Carl Graffunder (1919-2013), a Harvard-educated architect who studied with the Bauhaus masters Walter Gropius and Marcel Breuer and spread modernism all over Minneapolis.
Mr. Graffunder’s buildings, including more than 130 residences built from 1950 to 1980, are known for their spatial efficiency; naked, unpretentious materials; and respect for nature as an honored guest that drops by in the guise of sunbeams and views. The 886-square-foot house Ms. Levitt, 60, acquired, a timber-clad stack of boxes set against a hill, had all those earmarks.
“My parents still live across the street in the house I grew up in, and they are 90,” Ms. Levitt said, “so that was actually part of what brought me back.” The little house’s location, let alone its provenance and quality, was too perfect not to fight a bidding war that ended up costing her an extra $25,100 over the asking price of $379,900.
She made the deal remotely in 2021 and then hired Lucy Penfield, an interior designer with offices in Wayzata, Minn., and Naples, Fla., to fix up the property. The women conferred over FaceTime, and there was a lot to talk about. “It was a time warp,” Ms. Penfield said about the house, “because nothing had changed.”
Or at least, not much. Ms. Levitt, who is a psychotherapist, said she is the home’s fourth or fifth owner. The original spiral staircase, which, with its widely spaced, shallow treads, would never pass code today, still connected the two principal levels. (Ms. Levitt recalled that the original owners sold the place when they could no longer manage the twisty climb.) The open-plan upper floor was still covered in cork. The walls remained sheathed in plywood or cinder block. A rice paper shoji screen next to the main entrance still filtered light.
The building’s inverted layout put two bedrooms (one is used as an office) and the sole bathroom on the lower of the two principal levels, and the kitchen, dining area and living area on the floor above. A garage with a mudroom and storage sits at the base.
Much of the project work amounted to “a little TLC, not dolling up,” Ms. Penfield said.
“We oiled the plywood walls,” she recounted. “We cleaned the brick tile floor in the entry. We painted the beams an earthy black.”
The rusted staircase was restored and the cork flooring upstairs replaced. The cinder block walls were freshened with white paint, which covered any water stains and gave them a visual lift to the top of the peaked second-floor ceiling.
“We updated the 1960s lighting, which you know is kind of dark and moody,” Ms. Penfield went on. Assuming an affectionate tone that so often is accompanied by a wondering head-shake (she was speaking on the phone, so it wasn’t clear whether she in fact shook her head), she said, “Architects just love little spotlights.”
Mr. Graffunder, she added, was all about sunlight and letting the resident keep an eye on the natural world without sacrificing privacy. The front of this house is occluded by a ribbon of windows set high in the wall, and the back contains floor-to-ceiling glass.
“Some of the kitchen appliances are a little loved,” she said, using a euphemism for “tired.” But new models “could wait for another day.” The kitchen’s parquet flooring and speckled Corian kitchen countertops, both laid down by a previous owner, were not going anywhere, at least not for a while.
Ms. Levitt left her heavy, chunky Chicago-area furniture behind when she moved, and Ms. Penfield assembled old and contemporary pieces evoking midcentury modern style and East Asian aesthetics. (Mr. Graffunder, among other accomplishments, helped to establish the architecture school at the University of Seoul.) Many pieces were picked up at vintage shops, like the bamboo dining chairs with chimney-like backs that were found in Palm Springs, and the red rattan stools that came from Pittsburgh.
The women economized by choosing furnishings inspired by the sculptor Isamu Noguchi’s gymnastic coffee table, the architect and interior designer Warren Platner’s wire side table and the architect Eero Saarinen’s Womb lounge chair rather than popping for expensive authorized versions. Even so, Ms. Levitt was pretty sure she surpassed the $50,000 decorating budget. Another $50,000 was committed to overall renovations and landscaping.
She hired a specialist to pull out the invasive plants — “buckthorns and weedy looking things,” as she described them — that had taken over her back and side yards and to replace them with plantings that are unmanicured, but in a nice way.
“It’s a very exciting house to spend time in,” Ms. Penfield said, noting that the shifting sun casts beautiful shadows through the clerestory windows, and that if you’re lucky you can catch a sight of wild turkeys on a hillside.