Dear Tom, Elizabeth, Greg, Susan, and Rob,

I'm envious.

U. of St. Thomas, in Minnesota, Gets a Guest House by Frank Gehry

This house, designed by Frank Gehry, will be moved to a retreat center in southern Minnesota owned by the U. of St. Thomas.

A guest house designed by Frank Gehry, located in a western suburb of Minneapolis, is being donated to the University of St. Thomas, in Minnesota. The house, built in 1987 and known as the Winton Guest House, after the owners who commissioned it, is one of Mr. Gehry’s few residential works and is considered one of his best. It now sits on a property with a home by Philip Johnson, built in the 1950s.

Kirt Woodhouse, a Twin Cities real-estate developer who has an interest in architecture, said that he bought both homes in part to preserve them. “I really feel like I am just a steward,” Mr. Woodhouse told The Chronicle. “I didn’t want either home to meet the wrecking ball.” In 1997 another home in that area, by the notable Minnesota modernist Ralph Rapson, was demolished to make way for a McMansion. Mr. Woodhouse won’t say what he paid for the houses and property, but they were listed at more than $3-million, according to a Chicago Tribune article in 2001.

The Johnson house was sold and renovated. The Gehry house will be separated into its various distinct components, then moved to Owatonna, Minn., where the University of St. Thomas has a conference and retreat center built around a French Norman-style home designed by Edwin Lundie, another notable Minnesota architect. (The home was designed for Daniel C. Gainey, who owned Jostens, the class-ring company.)

Mr. Woodhouse will cover the cost of moving the Gehry house and reassembling it. According to an article in Architectural Record, the Walker Art Center, in Minneapolis, briefly considered taking the house, but the cost of moving it to the Walker and putting it in heated storage until a courtyard was ready was deemed too high. Asked why he decided to give the house to St. Thomas, Woodhouse said: “The short answer is, Dartmouth College is too far away.” Mr. Woodhouse is a devoted alumnus of Dartmouth, where he says his appreciation of the arts was cultivated. But he added: “I think St. Thomas is a great institution.”

Marlene Levine, the director of St. Thomas’s conference center, said the house will be used for small-group retreats — particularly with groups that want a place to do out-of-the-box thinking, given the architectural atmosphere the house will provide.

Ms. Levine noted that Mr. Gehry will be in Minneapolis now and then over the next couple of years, as he is designing an addition to his Weisman Art Museum at the University of Minnesota-Twin Cities. She hopes he will stop by Owatonna for a dedication of the relocated house. —Scott Carlson