In 1922, Thorpe Brothers Realty Co. bought Browndale and Baird farms and announced plans to create “one of the finest of residence districts.”
“This district was crucial in changing Edina from a rural community to a suburb,” historian Paul D. Hesterman wrote. And not just any suburb, but one that would be forever identified with wealth and prestige.
Where prize-winning cattle and sheep once grazed, architect-designed homes sprang up in one of the nation’s first planned communities. The development even included a $60,000 clubhouse and golf course to add to property values and provide a social center for the new neighborhood.
For about a decade, the old farming community and the new suburban neighborhood shared space along the village’s main thoroughfare, Edina Mills Road (today’s 50th Street). The Edina mill, shut down years before in the face of competition from industrialized Minneapolis mills, still stood at Minnehaha Creek. Minnehaha Grange, a farm organization, still met at the southeast corner of 50th and Wooddale, although most of its newest members were businessmen, not farmers.
The village felt some growing pains, as new students crowded the old Edina School and 14 funding initiatives failed to pass to build a new one, even though Thorpe offered a site in his new development. Finally, in 1926, a new modern school opened at the northwest corner of 50th and Wooddale.
By the mid-1930s, the mill was gone, after an unsuccessful effort to save it as a historic site, and the Grange moved to make way for the construction of St. Stephen’s Episcopal Church. The Country Club District had made its mark on Edina, ushering in a new chapter in the city’s history.
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The City of Edina marks its quasquicentennial, its 125th year, in 2013. Celebration events include a historic home tour, featuring the Baird house, a Country Club home and a Morningside bungalow. Info: edinahistoricalsociety.org/125th.
