The Shaw-Hammons House (later known as the DeGraff–Follrath House) consists of two sections completed in 1854 and 1870, respectively. It is both a well-preserved example of Greek revival style and a link to the Anoka lumbermen, financiers, speculators, bankers, and politicians who dominated Minnesota in its territorial period.
In 1854, Neil Shaw purchased and platted 160 acres of land in present-day Anoka County with his three sons. They built the family home as an addition to an existing building, used as a store, built as early as 1852, but the Shaw family did not use the structure as a home until 1854. They elaborated on the simple wood and clapboard siding of the original store by adding elements of Greek Revival-style architecture in the formal design. Crowned with a slightly pitched roof, the eaves feature a detailed classical cornice; the returns at the gable ends, the shuttered front windows, and the entrance resume the symmetry and grace of its style.
Shaw used the east section of his house as one of Anoka’s original store fronts from the 1850s into the 1870s. Between 1854 and 1860, however, other businessmen held title to the property, including Antoine Robert, Henry Rice, Samuel Shaw, Neal Shaw, William Woodbury, and Sumner Farnham.
One of Anoka’s more prominent citizens, a transplanted attorney from Maine named Weston Hammons, purchased the home in 1870. That same year, Hammons added to the west section, creating a two-and-a-half-story structure with a full basement, which came to be considered the main house. Additional modifications involved remodeling the front façade, including the veranda, with turned posts and decorative spandrels (the spaces between arches). The interior of this section contains two parlors and a closet on the first floor, as well as two bedrooms, two closets, and a bath on the second floor. Hammons later expanded his business interests into the local lumber industry and to Anoka’s Boot and Shoe Manufacturing Company, which endured as one of Anoka’s most significant enterprises during the 1880s.
In 1883, Justice W. DeGraff, a railroad contractor and engineer, purchased the house for his wife and daughter. His only child, Marie, soon developed a keen interest in gardening and flowers. When she inherited the home from her parents, she expanded the property’s garden. Under her care, the south side of the narrow lot along the house became a prolific producer of brightly colored flowers and plants, many of which Marie bred herself. To supplement her income, Marie gave piano lessons to the local children and was recognized as an accomplished artist.
When Marie moved to a senior care facility in 1965, the house changed hands once again, this time to Darwin Follrath and his wife. The couple restored the home to its original 1870 configuration, and on February 11, 1980, the home received an official listing on the National Register of Historic Places.
After the Follraths sold the home to a development company, it fell into disrepair. The developers considered it too far gone to restore and attempted to demolish it in order to make way for a condominium, though city zoning and preservation ordinances prohibited it. With those plans effectively cancelled and the home listed on the “most endangered” list compiled by the Preservation Alliance of Minnesota, the developers sold the home to Kurt Glaser, a private citizen whose time, money, and efforts eventually revived it to its original 1870 luster.
Editor’s note: This article contains content adapted from a National Historic Register nomination file—a public-domain text.