Up in Smoke

The big stucco house, often described as neoclassical revival or derivative, was immediately distinctive, even among the sprawling, often ostentatious manses that ringed the lake. Its crescent shape and views of the parkland and lake made it stand out. Guests entered—as did the firefighters on the house’s last night—via a seventeen-by-ten-foot foyer. To the left was a large main-floor living room with an alcoved fireplace and windows overlooking both the lake in front and the gardens out back; to the right, also looking out on the lake, was a dining room capacious enough for a banquet-sized table, china cabinet, and sideboards. A large kitchen behind the dining room included a breakfast nook and butler’s pantry. A main-floor family room featured inlaid marble floors and its own fireplace, not to mention additional lake vistas and access to a spacious sun porch beyond. Upstairs lay four large bedrooms, a library (with yet another fireplace), an office, and three full baths; a fifth bedroom and half-bath were located on the third level beneath the roof. The basement included a twenty-four-by-thirty-two-foot amusement room built with rustic log walls and said to replicate a lodge favored by Teddy Roosevelt.

Sipkins, who with her husband, Peter, moved into their home across the street in 1973, remembered looking up at the enormous salmon-colored house—“kind of like this villa”—with a wonder that didn’t fade over the years.  

The Balcoses had moved into the house four months before the Sipkinses moved into theirs—on April 4, 1973, Ophelia’s birthday. Manny was a noted Twin Cities colon-rectal surgeon and clinical professor at the University of Minnesota. Ophelia, who had trained as a nurse, was a leader in civic, charitable, school, and church activities (among other roles, she chaired the city’s human rights commission). Born and raised in the Philippines, they had come to the Twin Cities in 1963 to complete their medical education. They purchased their first Isles-area home—at 2211 West Isles Parkway—in 1968. Manny, a serious runner, loved all the city lakes, but “Isles,” he said, “was always special.” The couple’s love affair with 2528 West Isles Parkway was unabashed and unabated over the years and was shared by their children and grandchildren. Accomplished cooks, Manny and Ophelia entertained there often, their guests including the mayor, members of the city’s civil rights commission, acquaintances from the Basilica of Saint Mary, U of M faculty, and other prominent friends and colleagues. Manny enjoyed reading the morning paper in the sunroom, while Ophelia was partial to the pink so-called “powder room” that doubled as a first-floor guest room. Their five kids—ages twelve to three when the family moved into the house—happily attended the public schools in the neighborhood, played soccer, softball,  and baseball at Kenwood Park, and entertained their own friends in the well-equipped downstairs rec room that looked like something out of the Old West. 

When the Balcoses decided to sell the house, they were responding to the realities of their age and stage in life, not to a loss of enthusiasm for the place. The house’s six stairways had become daunting, especially for Ophelia with her bad knees. Moreover, with the kids married and in homes of their own, there was simply much more space than the couple needed or wanted to keep up. (By their own admission, the Balcoses are the kind of people who clean the house before the cleaners arrive. “Their home was always meticulously, almost fanatically, maintained,” says one acquaintance.) Not least, there was an annual property-tax bill of already more than $25,000. Even so, the decision to put the house on the market was hard, for everybody. The house was where they had lived for so long and where they gathered for every holiday, birthday, and important event (and on many not-so-important occasions as well), even after the kids had gone their separate ways. The original asking price was $2.7 million. But, according to people who knew the property, the house needed serious updating. A new owner, for instance, would probably want to push out the back wall and extend and modernize the kitchen, but, because the house was positioned so far back on the lot, there was little space to expand in that direction. The Balcoses eventually dropped the price to $2.5 million.