New to the National Register of Historic Places

By Michael Bridgeman

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The National Register of Historic Places was created in 1966 as a provision of the National Historic Preservation Act. When President Lyndon Johnson signed the bill on October 16, two buildings became the first Dane County entries on the register: the Robert M. La Follette House in Maple Bluff (733 Lakewood Blvd.) and North Hall on the University of Wisconsin-Madison campus. Dane County now has 272 buildings, structures, effigy mounds, and other places on the National Register.

Since I started writing these posts a little more than four years ago, I’ve done a biennial report of recent additions to the National Register. Previous rundowns appeared in February of 2020 and again in February of 2022. What follows are summaries of nine properties that were added in 2022 and 2023. They range from single-family homes to commercial buildings, a power plant, and a farmstead.

 

 The lone addition to the National and State Registers in Madison is the brick loft building constructed in 1907 for the Madison Saddlery Company (313-317 E. Wilson St.). One of the few remaining industrial lofts in the city, it was built for Carl Hoebel as a manufacturing, warehouse, and sales facility for leather goods. The four-story building was designed by Alvan Small with a timber frame and masonry walls; the façade combines the Romanesque and Commercial styles. It has been known most recently as the home of Rubin’s Furniture and NCG Hospitality plans to transform the building into The Saddlery hotel. The company, based in Middleton, owns and operates more than 30 properties in multiple states; this will be their first project to use historic preservation tax credits.

Madison Saddlery Company [3]

 

The Owen House seen from Lake Monona [4]

There are four new entries to the National Register in Monona, three residences and one commercial building. The earliest of the four is “Bungalowen,” the Ray S. and Theo P. Owen House (5805 Winnequah Road), which combines two connected houses built 21 years apart on the eastern shore of Lake Monona. The oldest portion is a Craftsman style summer cottage (to the left in the photo) that dates to 1911 and was designed by James and Edward Law. A 1932 expansion was created as a year-round house (to the right) by Theron Mandeville Woolson, a friend of the Owen family from Illinois. The house is notable as the largest, oldest, and finest Craftsman style house in Monona. Still occupied by Owen descendants, Bungalowen is highly intact and in an excellent state of preservation.

 

The Schroeder-Bohrod House (4811 Tonyawatha Trail), which also overlooks Lake Monona, was built in 1932 and is one of the largest Tudor Revival style houses in the Madison area. It was designed by Frank Riley for Otto and Louise Schroeder; Otto was a prominent Madison undertaker. The house is clad in limestone, stucco, and false half-timber work and situated to give its occupants panoramic views of Lake Monona. In 1959 the house was purchased by Aaron and Ruth Bohrod. Then the artist-in-residence at the University of Wisconsin, Aaron added a studio above the detached garage which he used until his death in 1992. The house was listed on the state and national registers for its architecture and its association with Aaron Bohrod, a nationally known artist.

The Schoeder-Bohrod House [5]

 

The Tompkins House [6]

Though it was built in 1937, only five years after the Schroeder-Bohrod House, the nearby Willard and Fern Tompkins House (110 Henuah Circle) takes a dramatically different approach to residential design. It has a flat roof, windows arranged in horizontal bands, and no ornamentation. It’s an outstanding local example of the International style. The house was designed by Hamilton Beatty and Allen Strang, Madison architects known for their progressive modern houses, many of which are found in Monona. The Tompkins House retains its distinctive International style design and composition, with no alterations to the exterior or interior; new materials are in-kind replacements based on the original building drawings and specifications.

 

The former Kohl’s Food Store (4207 Monona Drive) is the fourth Monona entry that is new to the state and national registers. Kohl’s arched roof grocery stores were a common site in parts of Wisconsin, Illinois and Indiana in the 1950s and 1960s. The Monona store was built in 1968 using the signature design devised by Rasche, Schroeder, Spransy & Associates and is one of most intact examples remaining in the state. Few changes have been made to the exterior and the interior retains several original features in its current role as a Habitat for Humanity Re-Store. The National Register nomination recognizes the importance of the store’s engineering, with sweeping glue-laminated arches that form the Contemporary style vaulted roof.

Kohl’s Food store in Monona [7]

 

Illustration of the Gonstead Clinic [8]

Another Contemporary style building that is new to the register is the Gonstead Clinic of Chiropractic in Mount Horeb (1505 Springdale St.), which was erected in 1964. John W. Steinmann, an architect from Monticello, designed the clinic with its distinctive multi-gable roof and generous use of glass. The building is highly intact and still used as a chiropractic clinic, nearly sixty years after the late Dr. Clarence Gonstead had it built to accommodate his booming practice. The clinic building has been listed for its accomplished mid-century architecture and for its association with Dr. Gonstead, one of the most influential figures in American chiropractic during his lifetime (1898-1978).

 

The Stoughton Municipal Power Plant No.1 (601 S. Fourth St.) was constructed in 1911, about 50 years before the two preceding buildings, and is very different in function and style. It was built as the first power plant in what became a municipally owned system of three hydroelectric facilities that, by the 1920s, was delivering electricity at lower rates than in any other city of its size in Wisconsin. The city sold Plant No. 1 in the 1970s, and it was privately operated for about two more decades. The National Register nomination describes the building as “a modest example of Romanesque Revival architecture” with its round arches and polychrome masonry.

Stoughton Municipal Power Plant No. 1 [9]

 

The Hammond dairy barn and milkhouse [10]

The final two additions to the state and national registers are tied to Dane County’s rich agricultural heritage. The Hammond Farmstead in the Town of Cottage Grove (3859 Vilas Road) has been owned and operated by the Hammond family since 1846, the date of the oldest part of the farmhouse. The farmstead includes a house, dairy barn with milkhouse, silo, tobacco shed, and tobacco stripping house. The existing outbuildings, which date from 1901 to about 1965, exemplify the development of a typical family farmstead in southeastern Dane County—from tobacco cultivation to dairy farming—from the mid-nineteenth century through the mid-twentieth century.

 

The oldest part of the Paoli Co-Operative Creamery Company Plant (6858 Paoli Road) was built along the Sugar River in 1925 to process and sell dairy products for farmers in the Town of Montrose and surrounding area. The building was expanded multiple times to meet changing needs and served dairy farmers until the 1980s. After being home to an art gallery for several years, the building was recently repurposed using historic preservation tax credits to become Seven Acre Dairy Company, a venture that includes a restaurant and bar, boutique hotel, event space, and a micro-dairy plant that produces butter and soft-serve ice cream.

Paoli Co-Operative Creamery Company Plant [11]

 

In addition to the National Register, there is a State Register of Historic Places. Listing on either register does not restrict what a private owner may do with a building, “as long as there are no federal or state funds, licenses or permits involved,” as Daina Penkiunas, the State Historic Preservation Officer, explained in my 2022 post. Landmark designation by local governments, usually municipalities, is what may trigger reviews and a require certificates of appropriateness when projects are proposed.

National or state listing does, however, make owners of commercial buildings and homes eligible for historic preservation tax credits as long as certain standards and other criteria are met. Owners of income-producing properties may qualify for federal tax credits of 20 percent plus state tax credits of 20 percent. Homeowners are only eligible for state tax credits of 25 percent. Regardless of tax benefits, listing on the National Register or State Register of Historic Places is an important record of the buildings, sites, districts, structures, and objects that are important to our historical and cultural heritage.

. . .

Image Credits

[1] Wisconsin Historical Society Architecture & History Index. AHI #5428.

[2] Wisconsin Historical Society Architecture & History Index. AHI #100645.

[3] Photo by Michael Bridgeman.

[4] Wisconsin Historical Society Architecture & History Index. AHI #232677.

[5] Wisconsin Historical Society Architecture & History Index. AHI #5597.

[6] Wisconsin Historical Society Architecture & History Index. AHI #5585.

[7] Wisconsin Historical Society Architecture & History Index. AHI #140498.

[8] Postcard, undated. Published by Dells Photo Service, Wisconsin Dells, Wis.

[9] Wisconsin Historical Society Architecture & History Index. AHI #5842.

[10] Wisconsin Historical Society Architecture & History Index. AHI #243100.

[11] Wisconsin Historical Society Architecture & History Index. AHI #4425.













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