We’ve all done it...a sly drive-by to check out the object of our affection. In Chad Bogdan’s case, that object was a house. After he spotted a white rectangular structure of a seemingly Bauhaus design set into a St. Paul, Minnesota, bluff, Chad made an almost nightly detour on his way home from work to steal a look.

The First Sight
This story unwinds like a fated love tale: On his way to work, Chad, a furniture design manager for Target, was driving away from his house and happened to turn around at just the right time—as if someone had tapped him on the shoulder. And then there it was—a corner of the west elevation, a white angle rising out of a tangle of leaves and branches.

“We moved to St. Paul, after living in New York City and Hong Kong, in what we like to call ‘The Great Suburban Experiment,’” Chad says. But as soon as he saw the house—and even though he and his wife, Kate, were missing the pace of life afforded by a bigger city—he was a man obsessed.

The white concrete block construction, which may not speak to everyone, drew Chad in deep. “I could tell that it was special—maybe, at the very best, designed by local architect Ralph Rapson,” he says. With its two wings and flat rooflines, the house resembles its neighbors, to put it mildly, not at all. But that’s what made his find even more astounding, he thought. “It looked so out of place and yet so perfectly situated.”

Full of winding roads and dead ends, the wooded neighborhood didn’t make it easy to find a path to the property’s front door. The infatuated 30-something admits that after originally spotting the back of the house from a road about 150 feet below the bluff, he fumbled through his attempts to locate the correct route.

“I thought Chad was crazy,” Kate Bogdan says. “He’d call me to tell me he was headed home, and then it would take him forever to arrive!”

The Letter
After a few days of harmless property stalking, Chad decided to leave a letter in the mailbox. “Dear Homeowner,” it began, “I love your house and the situation of it, and if you ever want to sell, here’s my number. At the least, could you please tell me who the architect is?”

And then he waited.

Eight months later, Chad was in London for work when Kate answered a call from Christopher Monkhouse, then curator of the Minneapolis Institute of Arts. Monkhouse calmly relayed that he was the owner of the white block house and that he was interested in selling it. He mentioned that the architect was Marcel Breuer. The Marcel Breuer? The man who Chad has counted as one of his major design influences for years? Kate immediately knew this meant they would be moving—probably as soon as Chad heard the news.

“Kate has the patience of a glacier, and she has long listened to me talk about my design inspiration and heroes,” Chad says. She immediately called him in London to share the news, and he says he fell right out of bed. Chad explains that his father, a car designer in Detroit, surrounded him with great modern design growing up. “I remember being blown away by Breuer’s Wassily Chair and how old it was. It is iconic and interesting and has been one of my favorite things since I was young.”

The Backstory
Breuer, a Hungarian-born furniture designer and architect, got his start at the famed Bauhaus in Germany, where he enrolled in the craft-based curriculum that was—at the time—completely radical. He became well-known for his furniture designs, such as the Laccio Tables and the Cesca Chair, but it wasn’t until Breuer came to the United States in 1937 that he began to focus on architecture. That focus yielded such masterpieces as the UNESCO Headquarters in Paris; the entire ski resort town of Flaine, France; and the Whitney Museum of American Art in New York City.

When Saint John’s University in Collegeville, Minnesota, commissioned Breuer to build a church and design a campus master plan in 1953, he met art professor Frank Kacmarcik. The two became friends and after Kacmarcik bought a plot of land in St. Paul a few years later, he asked Breuer to design a home for him.

In 1962, the 1,800-square-foot, two-bedroom home nestled into a hillside overlooking downtown St. Paul was complete. Kacmarcik, an avid collector of ecclesiastical art and rare books, used the home to display his artifacts. Paintings hung against the sparse white walls and sculptures on tabletops filled rooms, while thousands of manuscripts huddled on the shelves of the library. Two decades had passed when Kacmarcik decided to join the monastery at Saint John’s, donating much of his collection and selling his beloved Breuer house.

Almost 25 years and two other owners later, the Bogdan family was able to call the house that seemed to be meant for them their home.

The Modern Era
“The house was basically untouched when we bought it,” Chad says of the home as it was in 2008. He describes the grounds as having been akin to being on the moon: class five gravel filled the area between the two wings, and encroaching vegetation threatened to take over the low-lying walls. Overall, the house needed some tender loving care.

“I wasn’t convinced that the house would work for us,” Kate admits. Ever since Kacmarcik moved in, it had always been a residence for one. Now, however, Chad wanted it to become a home for a family of four.

The Bogdans’ goal was to preserve the structure while bringing it into this century. Concrete was laid to form a driveway, the trees were trimmed, the kitchen was remodeled, and creature comforts—like a garbage disposal, new furnace, and updated plumbing—were added. They drew on archival images from the Hill Museum & Manuscript Library at Saint John’s for inspiration as they planned and made their renovations.

They continued their thoughtful update in the garage, which had an unused space adjacent to the carport replete with identical cypress ceiling boards and white can lights as found in the main house. Chad decided to install a window in the concrete block wall, mimicking others on the property, and transformed the area into a studio/guest room. A desk and storage unit, designed by Chad, provides plenty of workspace, and a bright red Blu Dot convertible couch acts as the guest bed.

The couple’s two boys, Jack, 6, and Will, 3, take full advantage of what they call “the modern house.” The original library now boasts stuffed plush animal heads, rows of books, a teeny table for two, and a playful Eames cabinet with LEGO-like fronts. Chad even cleared a snowboard run next to the house for the family to enjoy during the snowy Minnesota winters. During the warmer months, they love to host events and capitalize on Breuer’s philosophy of binuclear design, which emphasizes the differences between public and private areas and creates courtyards to maximize outdoor living.

“Had you asked me 25 years ago what my dream house was,” Chad says, “it would be the same as it is today.” Lesson learned: It pays to peek over your shoulder every once in a while and speak up for what you like.

Click here to check out the Bogdans' DIY snowboard run and here to learn the history of your own house.