The Webster-Deinard House is an excellent example of a Tudor Revival house by prominent architects Liebenberg & Kaplan. It was also the home of lawyer Amos Spencer Deinard. Meetings of the Minneapolis Fair Employment Practices Commission took place here.
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The Webster-Deinard House is an excellent example of a Tudor Revival house by prominent architects Liebenberg & Kaplan. It was also the home of lawyer Amos Spencer Deinard. Meetings of the Minneapolis Fair Employment Practices Commission took place here.
The house was built for George B. Webster, president of Webster Lumber Company, and his wife, Helen. Seeman Kaplan formed an architectural firm with Jacob Liebenberg in 1921. The firm was well known for its theater designs throughout the Midwest. However, they also designed many single-family houses. Many of their houses in the 1920s and 1930s were in Lowry Hill and Kenwood.
This house has many characteristics of the Tudor Revival style. It is partially clad in stucco with half timbering. It is also partially clad in stone. It has a multi-gable roof with a prominent stone chimney on the side elevation. The house sits on a small hill. Many of the original landscape features remain intact.
Amos Spencer Deinard was the son of Samuel and Rose Deinard. In the early 1900s, Samuel was the rabbi at Temple Israel. In 1914, Samuel was also the first President of the Minneapolis chapter of the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People.
With his brother Benedict, Amos attended law school at the University of Minnesota and then Harvard. They returned to Minneapolis in 1922 and formed the firm of Leonard, Street and Deinard with George Leonard and Arthur Street. Amos married Hortense in 1933.
Amos practiced civil law and was active in civil rights. In 1946, Mayor Hubert H. Humphrey appointed him to the newly created Minneapolis Fair Employment Practices Commission. The next year, Amos bought this house from the Webster family. This group targeted employers who practiced open discrimination. They worked to stop discriminatory practices. This commission became a model for the Federal Equal Opportunity Commission. Amos was also a founder of the Minneapolis Federation for Jewish Service.
After Amos’ death in 1985, ownership passed to his son Amos Samuel Deinard. The junior Amos died in 2022.
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