Lorenz and Lugerde Ginthner House
The Lorenz and Lugerde Ginthner House in Wabasha, Minnesota, is a historic brick home built in 1882 in the Italianate style. Listed on the National Register of Historic Places in 1989, it sits on a prominent corner lot and is considered the most detailed example of Wabasha’s early merchant-class brick houses.
The house sits on a limestone foundation and has a two-story main section with rear sections that decline to one and a half and then one story. It features shallow hip roofs, an ornate front porch, tall rectangular windows with limestone hoods and an incised boss, and false gables with attic-illuminating oculus windows on both street facades. The cornice is richly detailed with dentils and brackets, and brackets extend down the walls at the corners and under the gables.
A one-story frame structure once attached to the rear has been removed. In the 20th century, a kitchen porch and much of the ironwork were rebuilt based on an 1884 engraving. Some iron roof and porch crestings were salvaged from an old hospital in Menomonie, Wisconsin, and the fence was saved from a local cemetery. A detached rear garage is a modern addition and not considered historic.
Lorenz (also spelled “Lawrence”) Ginthner emigrated from Baden, Germany, in 1852 and settled in Wabasha in 1855. He started as a tailor and merchant, making clothing on-site and selling items shipped by rail. He built his own commercial building in downtown Wabasha in 1867, and by 1882 his business had grown enough to require two more tailors, leading to the construction of the Ginthner House. The home is one of about 20 surviving 19th-century brick residences in Wabasha, all built by the city’s first two generations of merchants, which gives the town a distinctive brick-and-merchant aesthetic. The brick choice reflected local taste rather than brick manufacturing capacity, since Wabasha was not a major brick producer compared with nearby Lake City and Red Wing upriver.
This page was last edited on 3 February 2026, at 12:21 (CET).