CURRENT PROJECTS
The Lawrence House and Studio
Community Connections: Frank H. Johnson
When the Haakon Lawrence bungalow was built in 1920, 41-year-old Frank Hjalmer Johnson (1879 – 1951) was an Ellsworth contractor who made cast stone building products that appeared on a number of facades of local and regional buildings. His hallmark “castone” blocks, made of crushed granite, Portland cement and glue, grace the exterior of the Lawrence bungalow on W. Main Street as well as a number of other local and regional buildings. His family home stands on S. Grant Street.
Johnson arrived in the U.S. from Guttenborg, Sweden, in 1901, listing his occupation as “laborer” although he was trained as a stone mason. He settled in Hudson, St. Croix County, Wisconsin, where his older brother, August, known for his attention to detail and commitment to client satisfaction, had a successful general contracting business. Besides his own two-story home on St. Croix Street, now on the Register of Historic Places, August built Hudson’s City Hall, Masonic Temple, and Rex Theater, among others.
Frank immediately applied for U.S. citizenship, perfected his masonry skills in Hudson and married Minnesota native Amanda Caroline Johnson in 1910. They moved to Ellsworth where Frank worked as a stone mason. He opened his first business near the railroad terminus in the East End of Ellsworth in 1914, known as the F.H. Johnson Ornamental Concrete Company. Frank’s interest was in perfecting cast stone blocks, ornamental furniture and cemetery statuary, but he operated as a general masonry contractor, taking on any work that required the use of cement, concrete, brick, concrete block, mortar, or plastering.
Johnson’s reputation as a contractor grew rapidly. His work crews built at least 22 commercial buildings and several residences in Ellsworth between 1913 and 1948. In the 1920s, he branched out into cast stone tracery, the decorative molded trim that adorned Gothic windows in churches. A 1928 promotional news article described Johnson as having a creative mind with a keen business sense, a visionary who used the winter season to study, experiment and finance decorative and cast stone. His company, then known as F.H. Johnson Cast Stone Company, produced “human fountains, pedestals, sun-dials, bird baths, flower boxes, gigantic vases and lawn seats” shipped across the Midwest, while Johnson continued to provide masonry workers for a variety of building projects. His latest expansion was into the tracery arena, molding delicate buff-colored shapes, once chiseled from stone, from crushed stone, cement and glue.
