At a Lower Northeast Neighborhood Association meeting last year, Seth Stattmiller learned the name of the building on 948 18th Ave. NE. Now he and his wife, Elizabeth Richardson, have bought the John Cook House with intentions of restoring the historic landmark. In doing so, they hope to create a community hub for the neighborhood.
The John Cook House
The John Cook House, often simply referred to as the Cook House, was built in 1889 by John L. Cook in the Queen Anne architectural style. The house was designated a historic landmark in 2021 by the City of Minneapolis for its connection to immigrant housing in the neighborhood and unique cream-and-red brick exterior.
In recent years, damage from vandals and squatters led to then-owner Abubakar Jabril seeking to demolish the site. Jabril cited the extent of the damage on the property causing the cost of the repairs to be greater than the total value of the property itself.
Todd Smith, a principal with Master Properties, described the house last year in the September 30 Minneapolis Heritage Preservation Commission meeting as “structurally unsound. It’s economically unviable. And it’s seriously unsafe. The house is dangerous and it’s a danger to the community. It could fall at any moment, and it would be horrific to watch it catch fire.”
Some community members disagreed with Smith and Jabril’s conclusion.
A campaign of letter-writing, community events and attending city meetings led to a vote by the Minneapolis Heritage Preservation commission barring Jabril from demolishing the property due to its historic nature.
Eventually, Jabril sold the property to Stattmiller and Richardson.
An interior photograph showing the state of the John Cook House prior to purchase. (Elizabeth Sowden)
The decision to buy
According to Stattmiller, the purchase first seemed real during a meeting held outside of the Cook House in September 2025. At that event, Josh Blanc, of Clay Squared to Infinity, quipped that either Stattmiller and Richardson had to buy the property, or they all would have to buy it together.
“That made it real,” said Stattmiller, with Richardson quickly adding, “But that didn’t make it feel possible.”
Despite that potential path forward, the couple “tried very hard not to buy this house” as individuals, Stattmiller said. The initial goal was to fundraise from the community to buy the house as entity for a commercial business such as a coffee shop or restaurant. In fact, a business came forward to do just that. However, due diligence during the purchase highlighted the extent of the repairs needed on the site, stopping the deal from moving forward.
Unable to fundraise enough for a down payment, Stattmiller and Richardson then moved to buy the house as individuals. Stattmiller said the biggest question for buying the house as a couple was simply: “Do we want to live somewhere so public?”
According to Stattmiller, creating a community hub within a private residence isn’t an issue. Their goal, upon the project’s completion, is: “Everybody can come inside, literally.”
The project
While the outside of the Cook House must be reconstructed to historic standards, the inside can be modernized.
Part of this modernization process has already occurred, with the house converted to a duplex from its original 1889 design. Stattmiller and Richardson intend to keep that layout, living on the first floor with the upstairs unit rented out for short-term rentals as a way to “fundraise the project and sustain it” beyond grants, said Stattmiller.
Richardson is taking up the role of general contractor for the project, based on her previous construction experience as a production designer in the film industry and renovation of a historic one-room schoolhouse in Willow River.
Richardson described the project as “kind of a perfect project, in that it’s a construction project about the arts and my background was construction in the arts.”
While community members couldn’t raise the funds to buy the house, many have come forward offering pro bono work across the trades and various contracting jobs. “There might be a way do to this as a community without funding up front,” Stattmiller said about the work.
The goal
The couple’s plan is to live in the building for “a year and then we will find out,” said Stattmiller. Richardson’s most optimistic hope is that at the end of that year, construction will be done, but she says an 18-24-month timeline is more realistic.
For Richardson, the biggest mark of the project’s success would be proving that the model of restoring historic houses with community support can work.
For Stattmiller, “The project has already succeeded” because of the community built around saving the house from demolition in the first place.
In the future, Stattmiller’s focus is on increasing the community around the house, with ambitions of growing the house’s YouTube channel following to 1 million subscribers and hosting a one-year anniversary celebration of the house’s purchase that dwarfs the 75 celebrants the couple hosted recently.
In the meantime, the couple’s message about the future of the John Cook House is clear: “Come get involved.”