3137 2nd Av S

Building permit: B6643
26 x 40 Wood dwelling
Date: 4-19-1886
Estimated completion date: 8-1-1886
Estimated cost: $2,200.
Hand drawn plan on permit

This is the first house that T. P. Healy built in Minneapolis. He built it for his family. In 1886, his family consisted of wife Mary Anne Jefferson Healy and their nine children—Lena (19), Alice (18), Charles (16), Dora (14), Erena (10), Reginald (8), Birdie May (6), Bessie (4), and Henry Chester (2). The first eight children were born in Nova Scotia. Henry Chester was born in
Bismarck, Dakota Territories. They would live here for a year before moving across the street to 3138 Second Avenue South into another Healy-built house. The second owners, Henry W. and Annie M. Forbes, would live in the house for eight years. Forbes was the proprietor for saddlery
at Flour City Harness Co, 222 Nicollet Avenue.

When T. P. Healy began building 3137 Second Avenue South, there were only three other houses on the block. Across the street, 3112 was built in the fall of 1885. Also across the street, 3116 and 3136 were just completed, having been built in the winter of 1886. All three of these early houses were moved off the block in the 1890s and are still standing today—3112 to 4252
Lyndale Avenue South, 3116 to 2123 10th Avenue South, and 3136 to 3322 Stevens Avenue South.

At the time of the designation of the Healy Block on the National Register of Historic Places, this house was a duplex, covered with cement asbestos siding, and had a two-story porch addition on the front. After the designation, a flurry of restoration took place on the block in the 1990s.
The house at 3137 had its asbestos siding and the two-story front porch removed. The siding on the first two floors and the shingles on the gable ends were restored. A one story front porch was rebuilt.

The Healy-Forbes house is the simplest, least expensive house on the block. The permit value was $2,200. We have no image of the house in its original state. The front porch may have had fretwork, turned columns, balustrades, and scroll work in the skirt board. The house does have one of the features that will become a Healy signature—a partial second floor porch under an
overhanging gable. The slope of the roof is much less steep than the later houses on the block. When the Healy-Forbes house was built in 1886, a house built in 1885, sat across the street at 3112 Second Avenue South. The house across the street is one of the three houses moved off the block. The roof pitch of the Healy-Forbes house matches the roof pitch of the house that now sits at 4254 Lyndale Avenue South.

It is important to remember that T. P. Healy had been building houses and other buildings on the western frontier for three years with his brother Anderson. The house at 3137 Second Avenue South is transitional—it is a frontier house on the outskirts of the growing city of Minneapolis. There is a barn behind the house with a gable on hip roof construction; it is one of
three surviving Healy barns in the historic district.