The French House That Followed: The Allan Janney Hill House at 250 Bushaway Road

At 250 Bushaway Road, a Prairie legacy made way for a manor from another world.

By the mid-1940s, the Great Depression had done what time and weather could not — it forced the quiet disappearance of one of Lake Minnetonka’s finest Prairie School homes. The house, commissioned in 1912 by banker Edward W. Decker and designed by the storied team of Purcell & Elmslie, was once a beacon of architectural innovation — low-slung, art glass-filled, and impossibly ahead of its time.

But as financial tides shifted, the house quietly slipped from the Decker family’s hands. Its horizontal lines, breezeways, and lake-facing glass would soon give way to a dramatically different vision — not from the Midwest, but from the salons of Paris.

A Change in Fortune, and Style

In 1944, the estate was purchased by Allan Janney Hill, heir to Janney, Semple, Hill & Co., a prominent hardware distributor that helped supply and build much of early Minneapolis. Hill represented a new generation of wealth — one that appreciated legacy but wasn’t afraid to rewrite it. Where Decker embraced the American modernism of the early 20th century, Hill looked back — far back — to the grandeur of 18th-century France.

With the help of architect Guy Tilden Crawford, known in elite Minneapolis circles for his work in European revival styles, Hill razed the main structure but kept one vital thread: the original Purcell & Elmslie breezeway and carriage house, which he integrated into the new construction. It was an architectural decision both practical and poetic — a physical link between two centuries of design thinking.

The new residence would not be just inspired by French tradition. It would contain it.

The Rooms That Traveled

The centerpiece of the Hill House was not its footprint, but its provenance. Hill acquired two entire period rooms — one a Louis XVI bedroom, the other a paneled Regency salon — that had originally been built in Paris in the early 1700s. The rooms had been shipped to New York in the 1920s by a French banking heiress, intended for installation in a luxury apartment that was never completed. For decades, the interiors sat in storage, untouched.

Hill’s vision gave them purpose.

The rooms arrived in Wayzata crated like sculptures: carved boiserie, gilded cornices, inset mythological murals, and original marble fireplaces — all preserved from an era when craftsmanship was a royal mandate. Crawford built the home around them, adjusting ceiling heights and wall dimensions to accommodate every precise detail.

It wasn’t just architecture. It was time travel.

A Dialogue in Design

Outside, the home wore a quiet kind of luxury. The brick façade, softened by age and vegetation, evoked Normandy manor houses, not American showpieces. Its placement on the hilltop echoed the site’s original Prairie intent — respecting the contours of the land and the long views toward Wayzata Bay.

Inside, it whispered Versailles.

But perhaps the most fascinating aspect of the Hill estate is its deliberate juxtaposition. The original 1912 carriage house, with its restrained Prairie lines and functional design, still stands connected to the new French manor by the same breezeway that once linked the Decker House. It’s as if two architectural languages — Purcell’s Midwestern modernism and Crawford’s continental classicism — are in conversation, separated by thirty years and radically different worldviews.

In that space, design becomes dialogue. The house tells its own story, even without speaking.

Enduring Legacy

Over the decades, ownership changed hands, but the home's integrity remained intact. The French rooms, in particular, were treated as living artifacts — never gutted, never reimagined, only gently restored. Their layered patina was preserved, their murals left untouched. The wood paneling, carved entirely by hand more than 300 years ago, remains rich with detail and unpolished history.

Outside, the woods surrounding Bushaway grew thicker. The road itself, one of the earliest platted routes in Minnesota, became quieter and more protected. And within that quiet, 250 Bushaway continued to evolve — not by replacement, but by reverence.

Today, while many estates on Lake Minnetonka are being torn down or radically altered, the Hill House stands apart: a rare composition where architecture, legacy, and restraint meet. It reminds us that preservation isn’t just about holding on — it’s about knowing what to hold on to.

A Final Note

At first glance, the French House that followed may seem a world apart from the Decker residence that came before. But the heart of both stories is the same: a belief that home should reflect not just who we are, but what we value — beauty, thoughtfulness, and a connection to something greater than ourselves.

And so, on a quiet stretch of Bushaway Road, two eras remain, side by side. One in carved oak and gilded plaster. The other in quiet proportion and filtered light.

Both still telling stories — if you know how to listen.