Killorin House
The back of the Killorin House ca. 1930s, photographer unknown. [Image: Phil Sneve]
2708 Branch Street | Architect: Edwin Hawley Hewitt | Built: 1911 | Extant
Paris-trained Minneapolis architect Edwin Hawley Hewitt took on the Tudor Revival style and executed it to massive proportions in this three-story, 10,000-square-foot home. Classic Tudor elements include a cross-gabled roof and false half-timbering over stucco along the second and third floors. The house was constructed by John Killorin and his second wife, Mary. Killorin arrived in Saginaw, Michigan, from his Canadian homeland in 1868. There the eighteen-year-old entered the lumber business, which brought him to northeastern Minnesota in the 1890s. Killorin settled in Duluth in 1906. By then he had lost his first wife, Carrie Wright, who died in 1894, and had remarried four years later to Mary McHugh, and the couple had three children by 1910. Killorin served as vice-president of Kelley-How-Thomson Hardware and as a board member of several banks. The Killorins stayed in the house until 1938; John died in 1941 and Mary in 1954. James and Irma Hartley Claypool had purchased the house from the Killorins—and with five kids, they needed the space. Jim Claypool worked as manager for the Oliver Mining Company, and Irma was a daughter of Guilford and Carrie Hartley. Jim passed away in 1946 at 59 years old, and Irma stayed in the house until at least 1957; she died in 1989 at 102 years old. The Claypools’ eldest daughter Caroline and her husband, Donald Chisholm, then moved into the mansion, staying until the late 1970s; Don died in 2007, Caroline in 2006.
