A gay young prince of the house of Hapsburg brought a gold leaf console table out of the palace of a swarthy Florentine doge 500 years ago and sent it on the backs of the servants across the mountains to the castle in the Barvarian Alps. There in a banquet hall the Florentine table with its black marble and curved gold legs stood for five centuries. A line of Habsburg princes placed their goblets on it and countess Habsburg princesses rested their fingertips on its polished edge as they leaned forward to peer into the mirror that hung above it on the wall. Then a few weeks ago, a dark-eyed Habsburg princess, Utta Larisch-Moenich announced formally that the Florentine table he crated and sent on its second long journey not back to the palace in Florentine for which it was made but to go home of Dr. Donald Grey Colp in Robbinsdale, Minnesota. And a few months at the end of the summer the princess herself will go to Minnesota as the wife of Dr. Colp and the Florentine table but now stands in the drawing room with Dr. Colp’s home will once more be a council table in the home of a Hapsburg princess. The engagement of the Minnesota physician to the countess was announced formally the other day in New York and Dr. Colp, who did not go to New York for the reception held in connection with the announcement, said at his home in Robbinsdale that the wedding would be solemnized late in June in Ne York.
While the traditions that the Hapsburg princess brings with her are as royal and romantic as those of the table she sent, Dr. Colp to seal their betrothal, Utta Larisch is a modern princess with a score of interests. One part of Dr. Colp’s red brick house to Robbinsdale is a beautifully furnished home another is a scrupulously antiseptic office and waiting rooms. The large lawn, the house is set back from the road, is full of blue spruce trees. In the stiff and formal reception room leading to the doctors private rooms there are the magazines, straight back chairs and the efficient uniform nurse of every medical man’s office. On the frosted glass door the office hours are marked from 9 AM to 5 PM “But the princes knows that I am a practicing physician.” Dr. Colp said, “She knows that I am extremely busy and that half of my house has the air of the doctors office, but the princess likes that.”
Dr. Colp is a tall white married man packed with energy. He strides about the drawing room at his house which is so full of antique pieces that most people have an impulse to walk on their tiptoes as he explains, his points with his hands and one minute he talks about watercolor and the next about the country light. He bounds from one of his treasures to another “This piece”, he explains smiling and walking excitedly, “The Lion, was given to me last summer by Anton Lang, the Cristus of the passion play, you know the St. John of the play made this carved figure for me. Oh and would you see this palace?” he pointed to a picture on the wall “It’s the palace in Florence. This is the Bridge of Sighs. It’s the place the Florentine table was built to fit you must see the table!” The Florentine table of glittering yellow gold dominates the Colp drawing room.” This table,” he said “It’s like one part Utta- not the modern side, I first several years years ago in Munich when I went to take a clinic, that is study a special kind of disease in great detail, we had many mutual interests. I talked about my parents and she told me about hers during the four years of the war when the fighting at the front was horrible even for men, she was there nursing the sick and wounded at the front lines rather than back in the hospitals. She left her home and her friends and went to the field and worked like any other woman would have under those circumstances. She talked about the wounds she had bandaged and soldiers she had seen shell shocked and the miles of bandages she had made. We discussed the new points in medicine. Whenever as though the years went long, I returned Munich to study, I found her there. Both of us paint. We have known that we would marry for sometime the princess is fond of country life. Her castle is in the mountains and she likes country air. She will be fond of Robbinsdale, but we made a bargain. She said the nine months of every year she would live here with me if I would live for three months in Barvaria.” But the Florentine table will remain in Dr. Colp’s home forever even though the princess whose ancestors had it in their castle returns once a year to Barvaria. The June wedding the exact unit which is not being given out will be a quiet one. The bride is in New York now and will return to Minnesota until the fall at the end of the 12 week wedding trip to South America.
– From the St. Paul Dispatch, March 30th, 1931
Where did this house stand – what stands there now?