Movers to start hauling famous Winton guest house to Gainey Conference Center

Movers to start hauling famous Winton guest house to Gainey Conference Center

House-moving crews next week will begin trucking segments of the world-renowned, Frank Gehry-designed Winton guest house from its current Wayzata location to the Daniel C. Gainey Conference Center grounds in Owatonna.

The home’s former owner, real estate developer Kirt Woodhouse, donated the guest house to the University of St. Thomas earlier this year.

Stubbs Building and House Movers began work on the project in July, removing dirt from beneath the house and supporting its various sections with large beams.

While rainy weather set the crew behind schedule, Larry Stubbs, owner of Stubbs Building and House Movers, is hopeful that the house, once featured as Time magazine’s House of the Year, with its seven distinct sections, will be relocated to the St. Thomas-owned Gainey site by the end of October.

Each section will be moved individually, by truck, over the next few weeks. The two bedrooms – one built using beige Minnesota dolomite limestone, the other with matte-black sheet metal– will be the first to make the trip, beginning late next week.

By the end of next week Stubbs and his crew also hope to disconnect and load for transport the unusual home’s upper sleeping loft, the chimney top and the towering, pyramid-shaped segment that rests on top of the living room.

The final two sections to be moved will be the kitchen and the living room.

Once the home’s new foundation is poured, which Stubbs expects to take place soon after Thanksgiving, his group will begin reassembling the house, a process that should take another two to three weeks.

Stubbs said that although “everything is contingent on weather,” the project, including interior Sheetrocking after the house is reassembled, could be complete by the end of the year.

Stubbs Building and Movers is a third-generation company that in 1999 moved the 2,908-ton historic Shubert Theater in Minneapolis.

Read the original Bulletin Today story on the Winton guest house here.