[1] Built in 1907, the house was neither seen nor lived in by Longfellow (who died in 1882), but was the home of an admiring Minneapolis businessman named Robert "Fish" Jones.

A yellow frame house with porches at each end,[4] he lived there for the next 23 years until he closed the zoo, due to complaints from nearby residents.

[1] The Works Progress Administration converted the house into the Longfellow Community Library, which opened in 1937.

During the early 1980s, it was used by the March of Dimes and Minneapolis Jaycees as "Ghost Manor", a haunted house attraction every year at Halloween.

[2][7] The moving process won the Department of Transportation an honorable mention by the Federal Highway Administration in the historic preservation category.