Sara Hanson, Executive Director of the White Bear Lake Area Historical Society, chose this photograph of a woman and her car next to the Fillebrown House from their collection in MDL:

Woman and car next to the Fillebrown House, White Bear Lake, 1931

The Fillebrown House, also known as the C. P. Noyes Cottage, was built on the shore of White Bear Lake as a summer cottage for Charles and Emily Noyes in 1879. Two years later, the Noyes family sold the property to George and Ellen Young, who owned it until 1905. Then, J. Walter and Harriet Fillebrown, who had a prosperous wholesale fruit business, purchased the house to live in during the summer. In 1920 the Fillebrowns decided to sell their home in St. Paul and make the White Bear cottage their year-round residence.

Not a lot of information is known about the person in this photo, but the location on Morehead Avenue next to the Fillebrown House is evident.

This item is illustrative of White Bear moving from a resort community to a more established year round community in the early twentieth century. As the automobile gained popularity the area around the lake was more accessible to those who wished to live there year-round. They no longer had to rely on the trains and streetcars to get into the city. This was a major culture shift for this area.

The Fillebrown House has been owned and operated as a house museum by the White Bear Lake Area Historical Society since the 1970s. This image helps tell the story of the evolution of the house as a summer cottage to a year-round residence which is a micro example of the larger community's shift.

The White Bear Lake Area Historical Society in White Bear Lake, Minnesota, serves the public with a museum, archives and resource library. The collection, which spans nearly 150 years, includes artifacts, photographs and records relating to the resorts, railroads, businesses and governments of the five municipalities that touch White Bear Lake, just north of St. Paul. For the Minnesota Digital Library, the historical society contributed images of White Bear Lake's heyday as Minnesota's first resort town and includes images of the resorts and visitors and the communities that developed to serve them.

Browse the White Bear Lake Area Historical Society collection in MDL.

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