PBS Wisconsin Originals

Remarkable Homes of Wisconsin

Announcer: The following program is a PBS Wisconsin original production.

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Michael Bridgeman: These are some of Wisconsin’s most magnificent homes.

Architectural Historian: When you walk into this home, you know right away, it’s a family of status.

Michael Bridgeman: Built in the 19th and early 20th centuries, these houses continue to inspire our modern imagination.

Architectural Historian: He felt that he could build an American architecture here in the prairies of the Midwest.

Michael Bridgeman: But who built them? And why are they still here after so many generations? I’m Michael Bridgeman, and I’ve been fascinated by architecture my entire life. Over the next hour, I’ll tour six of these grand homes from all across our state. They have their own unique designs, and each of them holds an incredible story.

Architectural Historian: He brought a mindset to this house that was really revolutionary.

Architectural Historian: These are people of great privilege, and they don’t want to “rough it.”

Michael Bridgeman: This is one of the most beautiful places I’ve ever seen. Join me on a journey through the Remarkable Homes of Wisconsin.

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Announcer: Remarkable Homes of Wisconsin is funded in part by the Jeffris Family Foundation of Janesville, Wisconsin. Dedicated to Midwestern Historic Preservation and Friends of Wisconsin Public Television.

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Michael Bridgeman: Wadsworth Hall is a mansion on the shores of Geneva Lake in southeastern Wisconsin. The home has been restored to its greatness of a century ago. The massive restoration project, completed just before the new millennium, was led by architect, John Nelson.

John Nelson: It was a very intense construction period. I mean, there were times when there were over a hundred workers on the site.

Michael Bridgeman: The home was originally constructed in 1905, at a time when a number of the region’s high society were building country estates in Lake Geneva. Most of these movers and shakers were from Chicago. They came to the lakes of Southern Wisconsin to enjoy their beauty, to maintain social status, and to get away from a city going through unprecedented change.

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Michael Bridgeman: Chicago was America’s fastest-growing city in the 19th century. In 1850, its population was below thirty thousand people. In just 50 years, that number was fast approaching two million. And living in cities at this time could be downright unpleasant.

Architectural Historian: The streets were filled with horse manure. There was soot and smoke in the air. Cities were swept by disease like cholera, typhoid. Cities were regarded as places that were not healthful.

Michael Bridgeman: Lake Geneva offered a striking contrast to life in Chicago, enticing some of its wealthiest people to vacation there in the summer. The earliest would come because of a catastrophe.

[distant screams]

Michael Bridgeman: The Great Fire of Chicago began on Sunday, October 8, in 1871. By the time it was extinguished two days later, it had claimed at least three hundred lives and destroyed the heart of the city.

Architectural Historian: The wealthy don’t want to live among the ruins of Chicago while it’s being rebuilt. So they temporarily take residence up in Lake Geneva, and they establish this tradition of living in these grand estates that surround the lake. Norman Harris is just one of a long line of Chicago people who make it a vacation destination.

Michael Bridgeman: Chicago investor and philanthropist, Norman Wait Harris, made his fortune in insurance and banking. Harris hired a renowned Boston architecture firm to design his getaway home in Lake Geneva. And it had to be prestigious, something worthy of Harris’s stature.

Architectural Historian: There’s a long tradition, really, of architecture being used to express status. And so what we see in Wisconsin in a lot of these buildings in the late 19th and early 20th century are the desire on the part of its wealthiest citizens to express power. And it was on the architecture itself, on the exterior of these buildings as well as on the interiors. They wanted to show that they were keeping up with the Joneses, so to speak.

Michael Bridgeman: Harris named his home Wadsworth Hall to honor his mother’s family and his New England roots. And Harris chose a style for this retreat that suited his self-image.

Architectural Historian: It’s a terrific example of what you’d call Colonial Revival Period architecture.

Architectural Historian: It’s an architecture of American patriotism. The architectural vocabulary is drawn from American revolutionary culture. And the owners of Wadsworth Hall are saying, we are Americans. Our success has come from the success of America itself. So we picked an architectural style that’s expressive of the growth and success of American culture.

Michael Bridgeman: Wadsworth Hall has a noble colonial style on its exterior.

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Michael Bridgeman: But things change on the inside of the home.

John Nelson: Here all the rooms are slightly different. They’re not totally out of place in a Colonial building. They feel like they belong in there, but they’re not strictly period architecture.

Michael Bridgeman: For Norman Harris and his contemporaries in Lake Geneva, using different styles was a conscious choice. A good example of this is the library.

Architectural Historian: The style of the library is much more classical. He’s saying something about himself as a learned, educated person that he couldn’t say using the architectural style of house itself.

John Nelson: In a Colonial building you wouldn’t have a coved ceiling such as we do in the room that we’re sitting in right now.

Michael Bridgeman: That room is the great room, the heart of Wadsworth Hall. It’s punctuated by a magnificent staircase and chandelier. And it leads out to the terrace and Geneva Lake.

John Nelson: If, as in many cases in the old days, you arrived by boat, you would have actually come in through the doors behind me, rather than through the motor court in front. So this would be your introduction to the house.

Michael Bridgeman: One of the great room’s primary purposes was to entertain large groups of people. And by the turn of the century, Lake Geneva had a vibrant Chicago party scene during the summers. These extravagant affairs were serious business.

Architectural Historian: Partying was definitely part of that culture. So if you didn’t have a party, you weren’t among the people who were the status people, the image seekers.

Michael Bridgeman: At Wadsworth Hall, simply walking from the interior to the outdoors has a magical feeling to it. For example, the sun room, with its lovely view of the lake to the south, has a surprise in store for those who venture outside. A semi-circular portico creates a graceful transition from the house to the outdoors. And then this alle of beech trees draws the eye further into the landscape.

[music]

Michael Bridgeman: The original landscaping was done by the Olmstead brothers. They were the sons of Frederick Law Olmstead, America’s most famous landscape architect. Much of the Olmstead brothers’ framework has been preserved.

John Nelson: Now it’s been altered over the years, but there’s enough of the basic intent there that is really a landmark landscape as well as an architectural landmark.

Michael Bridgeman: To explore the grounds of Wadsworth Hall, is to be rewarded. For example, there’s a children’s play area. It includes bite-sized buildings and is hedged by a charming topiary sculpture. This village was added as part of the restoration done at Wadsworth Hall in 1999. The restoration was completed for home-owner Richard H. Driehaus, a Chicago businessman and philanthropist. When Richard Driehaus bought the house, the dining room ceiling was sagging badly. The architects devised a careful plan to secure it from above, and slowly pull the elaborate plasterwork back into place.

[music]

John Nelson: It had, over the years slipped, and miraculously didn’t start cracking or falling apart. Most of the plasterwork in there is the original, and once we got it secured again, it only took a coat of paint to bring it back.

Michael Bridgeman: Today, the home is in exquisite condition, a testament to its masterful renovation. Wadsworth Hall holds a special place among Wisconsin’s remarkable homes.

Architectural Historian: It’s really a house that reflects the trends at the time of the upper class; the way they lived, the business history, the social history, the cultural history. For all of those reasons, the house should be preserved.

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Michael Bridgeman: This home in Neenah was a very personal project for Havilah Babcock. He was one of the founders of the Kimberly-Clark Corporation and built his fashionable house on East Wisconsin Avenue. Havilah Babcock supervised every aspect of construction that went into his family’s home.

Peter Adams: My great-grandfather built this, and it was a labor of love. I mean, this was a whole focus of his private life.

Michael Bridgeman: Because the home has remained with the family to this day, it is unique. It’s story revolves around a man who built success from humble beginnings, and constructed his house as a form of self-expression.

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Michael Bridgeman: Havilah Babcock’s fascination with building began when he was a boy. He worked with his father on the Neenah lock. Then in his teens, Babcock got a job at a dry goods store and advanced quickly.

Peter Adams: He grew to be quite tall and good-looking, and dry goods was all about selling dress fabrics to women. And he could sell them all kinds of stuff on that principle of having good-looking clerks serve women in dress goods.

Michael Bridgeman: Within a few short years, Babcock and his friend, Alfred Kimberly, started their own dry goods store. A local newspaper attested that young Havilah was “a great favorite with the ladies” and went on to predict that women would not fail to shop at his newly-opened store. Babcock was just 19 years old.

Michael Bridgeman: Havilah Babcock and Alfred Kimberly were ambitious entrepreneurs. They partnered with F.C. Shattuck and C.B. Clark in 1872, forming what would become one of the largest paper companies in the world. Kimberly Clark and Company would make Babcock a wealthy man. But at a price.

Peter Adams: He and Alfred Kimberly, his partner, had to sell the store, which was Havilah’s great joy. I mean, it was the thing he really liked doing and did very well at.

Michael Bridgeman: But it didn’t take Babcock long to find a new way to channel his artistic energy. He set out to build his family a grand home. And because of his background in construction and fashion, Babcock was perfectly suited for the task. He hired prominent Oshkosh architect, William Waters, who drew up a Queen Anne style house. The family moved into their new home in 1883. But it would take Babcock several more years to complete the interior to satisfy his taste and style and to tell his story.

Architectural Historian: Architecture in the 19th century was seen as didactic. It was a learning tool. In the Babcock house, they’re using certain motifs to say something about what they valued and what they believed and what their culture was all about.

Michael Bridgeman: Victorian America emphasized the virtues of family life. And the home, more than anyplace else, is where character was formed. Havilah Babcock integrated moral lessons into the fabric of his new house.

[music]

Michael Bridgeman: Storytelling imagery abounds throughout the home. Socrates, Dante and Lord Byron argue their philosophies in the library. In the front hall, the perils of unbridled lust are cautioned through depictions of Lancelot and Guinevere. And, with a hint of self-deprecation, Havilah Babcock also shared stories about himself.

Peter Adams: At the vestibule doors in the front hall, you have a peacock and a pheasant. The peacock and the pheasant are both birds where the male is more ornamental than the female. And, this is kind of a reflection of his character. In the transom over these doors, is a parakeet. The parakeet is a bird in which the sex is identified by the male’s ability to sing which the female does not. And Havilah was a tenor in the church choir and a semi-professional singer. He’s telling you a little bit about himself, and it’s really rather intriguing.

Michael Bridgeman: Havilah included a tribute to his wife, Frances. The goddess Pomona overlooking the front hall stairs bears something of a resemblance to Mrs. Babcock.

Michael Bridgeman: Life in the late 1800s in a high-status home like Havilah Babcock’s was strictly regimented by the different zones of the house.

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Architectural Historian: These are perceived as being these very large houses. And they are, but the lives were not spreading out wide and far. They were rely very much circumscribed into smaller areas.

Michael Bridgeman: The Victorian house was indeed a highly organized, contrived space. There were male spaces of the house like the library, which was where the man of the house could read, but was also a space where he could showcase his worldly knowledge. Whereas women essentially had a sitting room, perhaps, where they would entertain.

[music]

Michael Bridgeman: There was one room, however, that the entire Babcock family certainly shared together.

Architectural Historian: The dining room was really, for them, the center of family life. The ritual of dining was huge. Meals were served in courses, it was the best china, crystal, tablecloths. And so it was this very elegant, very stately type of experience.

Michael Bridgeman: The Havilah Babcock House was built during a time of rapid technological advancement. It was the first home in Neenah to be wired for electricity. But with a boiler used for heating, why did it have so many of these? This was a modern home. It was warmed with central heat, yet fireplaces appear in every room. A practical backup system to be sure. But also a tangible reminder of the family hearth. The fireplaces in Babcock’s home were decorative and most of them were never used.

Peter Adams: It was one of those things that were put in because it just made you feel more comfortable. There were ducts built in the walls to take the heat up to the second floor, so that when it came to converting to forced air it was very easy for us. We thank him for that.

Michael Bridgeman: Havilah Babcock’s great-grandson, Peter Adams, now lives in this home with his wife, Patricia Mulvey. It has remained in the family more than a century after Havilah’s death and is remarkably unchanged, thanks to two of his daughters.

Peter Adams: After Havilah died, his wife stayed on and ultimately it was just Helen and Elizabeth, the oldest and the youngest, who made this their home. They were terrified of changing anything that Father did because it was all-important to him, it was an embodiment of him. And we just ended up doing the same.

Michael Bridgeman: And this is why Havilah Babcock’s house remains so true to its past. His descendants simply did not make changes. So the extra-long couch in which tall Havilah took naps still beckons in its spot. The unique tufted dado in the parlor remains intact. And the ornate library ceiling continues to attest to Havilah Babcock’s design sensibility. All as it was some 125 years ago. An incredible family treasure, and something of an inspiration.

Peter Adams: Throughout Wisconsin, throughout the U.S. for that matter, there are people who, every day, lose beloved family homes. They don’t know what to do. They don’t think it’s possible. The reality is you can do it. And you don’t necessarily have to have a pile of money, because this didn’t come with any money. This was just the house. You just have to develop a plan. We’ve been here forty-some years, so we’ve made it work. It has not been easy. It’s been a lot of hard work.

Michael Bridgeman: Today Babcock’s house gives us an authentic glimpse into the world of wealthy Victorians in Wisconsin. And the home remains a captivating expression of the colorful, handsome man named Havilah Babcock.

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Michael Bridgeman: On an island in the Mississippi River at Prairie du Chien, sits a Wisconsin gem. It’s called Villa Louis. Open to the public, it’s now a museum run by the Wisconsin Historical Society.

Museum Director: Villa Louis is one of the premier historic house museums in the country. Nearly 90 percent of the collection is original to the family and to the household here in Prairie du Chien.

Michael Bridgeman: That means much of what’s inside this house is well over one hundred years old. And the story of the family who built Villa Louis is as dramatic as the setting itself.

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Michael Bridgeman: Hercules Dousman came to Prairie du Chien in 1826 to work for the American Fur Company. But the fur trade was just a few years away from a total collapse.

Museum Director: Hercules is one of the lucky ones. He’s able to take money he made off of the fur trade and reinvested, mainly in land speculation.

Michael Bridgeman: Land investments made Hercules Dousman one of Wisconsin’s wealthiest men. He built a grand home whose entrance led up from the Mississippi River. Built on high ground, Hercules named it the Brick House on the Mound.

Museum Director: He lives in the home here with his wife Jane until he dies in September of 1868. At the time of his death, it leaves his widow Jane and the one son that they had who’s always referred to as Louis. And Louis then decides that this first home that he’s living in with his mother isn’t modern enough.

[music]

Michael Bridgeman: Hercules’ son, Louis Dousman, was just 20 years old. But he was wealthy, ambitious, and wanted a new home fitting of his station. So he sought out the most prestigious architect money could buy.

Architectural Historian: Edward Townsend Mix was the most prominent architect in the state of Wisconsin. He was the status architect. And people were hiring him because they knew that they’d get something worthy of their place in the world.

Michael Bridgeman: Less than 30 years after its construction, the spectacular Brick House on the Mound was torn down. Louis built his new home on the same spot. But it was mostly his mother, Jane, who resided there. Louis’ ambitions led him away from the state. By the time he returned to his Prairie du Chien mansion, he had a beautiful wife, Nina, and five children. And Louis and Nina Dousman were about to launch an extraordinary plan.

Michael Bridgeman: Villa Louis is a prime example of an elegant Victorian home. In the latter half of the 19th century, interiors for wealthy families like the Dousmans were marked by highly ornamental wall and floor coverings, objects and art on prominent display, and rich colors. But you had to be careful where you stepped. In the 1880s, Harper’s Bazaar magazine acknowledged that the latest taste could be… “…a little overcrowded, scarcely giving rest enough to the eye or mind…” But went on to add, “It is crowded only with beauty.”

[music]

Museum Director: When you tour the home today, you see these beautiful blues and reds and golds. And they flow throughout the house in all the textiles and prints and furniture and Mrs. Dousman had upholstered.

[music]

Michael Bridgeman: Villa Louis is filled with colorful ornamentation everywhere you look. Today, it’s preserved to its Victorian grandeur in the 1880s. And the catalyst for the striking style of this home came from an unlikely source.

[horse whinnies]

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Michael Bridgeman: In 1883, Louis undertook a bold and exciting new venture, a stock farm for breeding and racing trotting horses. Knowing she’d be entertaining an influx of eager horse investors, Mrs. Dousman felt it was time for an upgrade.

Museum Director: She wants to add her own sense of style and flair to this house and they start this remodeling process in this real British Arts and Crafts style.

Architectural Historian: Arts and crafts was about embracing the values of hand crafted goods while understanding that machines produced goods. So rather than to make it look machine-like, they tried to make it look craftsman-like. And that’s the aesthetic that the Dousmans are borrowing when they redesign their house.

Michael Bridgeman: But Louis Dousman did not get much time to enjoy his home’s transformation. Just a couple of years later, he became ill.

Museum Director: They’re not sure what’s wrong with him. He’s complaining of these pains. He dies from appendicitis. Louis’s only 37 years old, and that left his wife, Nina, a widow at 33 with five young children.

Michael Bridgeman: In the Victorian age, Mrs. Dousman’s options were limited. It was considered improper for a woman to speak about the racing and breeding of animals, so she had to sell off the stock and close out Louis’ farm. And she was expected to mourn her husband’s death for two and a half years.

Architectural Historian: There was tremendous pressure on women in Victorian America. Those expectations were socially in place. They were also codified in the extensive advice literature about what women were supposed to do. And these were enumerated. There were roles that were listed one by one in those books about expectations.

Michael Bridgeman: After an unsuccessful second marriage, Mrs. Dousman refocused her attention on her children.

Museum Director: Her oldest daughter is 19, her second oldest daughter is 18. It’s now time to find prospective husbands. She’s doing it as a single woman. And in society she’s a wealthy woman. She’s considered a beautiful woman. And that’s a challenge to others when it comes to entertaining. Who wants this wealthy, single woman sitting next to your husband at a dinner party?

Michael Bridgeman: Nina now called the estate Villa Louis in tribute to her late husband. And by the summer of 1894, her children were enjoying a vibrant social life of parties held at the home. But these happy times would not last long.

Museum Director: Mrs. Dousman’s middle child, Nina Sturgis Dousman, was getting ready for a house party. She was curling her hair, as girls do, and the curling iron was like ours of today, but had to be heated up over a heat source.

Michael Bridgeman: Kerosene lamps were a common fixture in homes in the late 1880s. But they had one major flaw, when conditions were just right, the whole lamp could explode.

[music]

Michael Bridgeman: An explosion did occur. And by the time her mother extinguished the blaze with a quilt, 14 year-old Nina Dousman was horribly burned.

Museum Director: She was cared for for six weeks at the house and infection set in. They weren’t quite sure how to treat burns like this back then. She dies on September 14th, 1894. The family closes up the house and they go up to St. Paul for the winter. And that’s something that Mrs. Dousman continues to do every year, not celebrating Christmas here in Prairie du Chien.

Michael Bridgeman: But the Dousman family continued to return to Villa Louis every summer. Mrs. Dousman loved entertaining, and the home was a perfect setting for parties. Its striking glass veranda provided an excellent spot for indoor fun.

Museum Director: It’s an extended space where they can sit and enjoy themselves in the evening hours, but be protected from the Mississippi mosquitoes. They played card games. At one point, there’s a pump organ out there.

Michael Bridgeman: The veranda was an ideal focal point for house parties. And the Dousman women were having as much fun as their male counterparts.

Museum Director: They just weren’t having teas and sitting straight in the parlor. They were golfing, they were playing archery, they were shooting guns.

Michael Bridgeman: Summer parties at Villa Louis were not one-day affairs. Many friends were staying at the home and nearby hotels for weeks at a time, possibly at the peril of their waistlines.

Museum Director: Mrs. Dousman loved to dine. She loved to dine elegantly. And you get a sense of that when you see the dining room table.

Michael Bridgeman: One particular guest gave compelling testament to the bountiful food at Villa Louis.

Museum Director: Frederick Bigalow, his name shows up in the guest book quite often. And one passage that he writes talks about how he gained “seven pounds, three quarters net” during one week’s house party.

Michael Bridgeman: Mrs. Dousman’s plan for her daughters was right on course. With no expense spared, these summer-long parties were attracting plenty of eligible bachelors. There was only one problem, Nina Dousman was running out of cash.

Museum Director: The wealth is lagging. And with the depression in 1893 we start to see the coffers are being depleted a little bit. And so she’s working on finding these matches so that her family can continue to keep the same status that they’ve been used to all of their lives.

Michael Bridgeman: Mrs. Dousman’s parties paid off. For example, one guest, Frederick Bigalow, the suitor who wrote that he gained seven pounds and three quarter net, married the second daughter, Virginia. A magnificent and dramatic era for the Dousmans came to a close.

Museum Director: By 1913, the children are married, the house is in need of some repairs, and it’s not really fashionable any longer to have such a grand estate.

Michael Bridgeman: Mrs. Dousman, her son Louis and his family, moved out of Villa Louis for good in 1913. They leased the home to a boys school, but voided the contract after four years. The boys were simply too rough on the house. A solution for the property was finally reached when the Dousman family turned it over to the city of Prairie du Chien in 1935. Fifteen years later, the Wisconsin Historical Society took ownership and made Villa Louis its first historic site. Today, the home is open to the public. It’s been painstakingly restored to its splendor in the 1880s. Villa Louis magnificently captures the grandeur of the Victorian era, and the drama of the Dousmans.

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Michael Bridgeman: An hour’s drive north of Eau Claire is a small island on Red Cedar Lake. It’s called Stout Island. There, nestled among the trees, is a unique summer lodge.

Lodge Manager: What our guests talk about most is that this is the first time in their life they relaxed. They’re not checking their phone to see who e-mailed them or who texted them. They leave it in the room. They don’t think about it. They think about who they’re with.

Michael Bridgeman: Stout’s Island Lodge was originally a private vacation home that Frank Stout built for his family. He called it the Island of Happy Days. And it was certainly that, even though at one point Stout had to burn it to the ground.

[music]

Michael Bridgeman: Frank Stout was a financier and banker in Chicago, but his wealth was rooted in Wisconsin forests. His father helped make Knapp, Stout and Company one of the world’s largest lumber providers.

Architectural Historian: Northern Wisconsin was covered with virgin timber, and the king of all that timber was white pine. It was like gold to these early lumbermen. These trees were huge, five, six feet in diameter. And that’s where the fortune really was.

Michael Bridgeman: Frank Stout inherited a portion of his father’s vast wealth in 1900. That included this island on Red Cedar Lake. And Stout decided it would be perfect for his vacation home.

Michael Bridgeman: The Island of Happy Days was completed in 1903. Frank Stout and his family traveled there from Chicago every summer. He had a special track built off the main railroad line to get family, guests and supplies to Red Cedar Lake. Then from water’s edge, everything had to arrive by boat.

[engine starts]

Michael Bridgeman: Today, the shuttle ride is just a leisurely ten minutes to Stout Island. And the charms of the lodge are on display as soon as the boat approaches the dock.

Lodge Manager: The boathouse is one of the areas that gets the most attention. It’s the first moment of, ahh, kind of magic. Because there’s not a lot of these kind of boathouses left.

Michael Bridgeman: Up the stairs from the boathouse, the sprawling lodge beckons as it did a century ago. That is, after it was completely rebuilt.

[music]

Michael Bridgeman: Frank Stout modeled the Island of Happy Days, which refers to the home as well as the island itself, on the famous Adirondack great camps in upstate New York. These compounds were summer getaway homes for the wealthy. And Stout wanted his home to be especially rustic.

Lodge Manager: Frank Stout, when he built this, insisted that the bark be left on the wood. Within a few years, his house became infested with bugs. And he was forced to burn his house down. He wanted to rebuild on the same homestead, but also he needed to get rid of the bugs. So, he spent 1.5 million dollars, at that time, to do this.

Michael Bridgeman: That means Stout used the equivalent of approximately 36 million in today’s dollars to rebuild The Island of Happy Days. It was enough to buy the best of the best. And that’s exactly what Frank Stout did.

Michael Bridgeman: When Stout rebuilt the lodge, he brought in wood and stone from around the country and around the world. In the great room, he kept this fireplace, fashioned of stone quarried at nearby Mount Hardscrabble.

Lodge Manager: This is a time of artsman, and craftsmanship. Frank Stout brought in pink granite from the Blue Hills locally. He brought in these amazing beams from Germany that are in the dining room.

Architectural Historian: It’s very, very finely crafted. So even though it looks rustic, it’s the finest craftsmanship that money could buy. All of the hardware is hand-wrought. They built the bookcases right into the log building itself. They carved elaborate surrounds around the bookcases. The dining room has bow-tie ties so the hardwood floor never got cracks from the wood swelling and shrinking.

Michael Bridgeman: All of these materials and fine workmanship create spaces that are inviting, warm and cozy. But it’s outside where the Stouts seemed to have their biggest adventures.

[music]

Michael Bridgeman: Frank Stout and his wife, Clara, had five children. The family and their guests spent a lot of time at their getaway home. And they left behind plenty of evidence that their time on the Island of Happy Days was incredibly fun.

Lodge Manager: We see these great pictures of them swimming on these huge slides that go down into the water, and water skiing on these planks of wood. And in the winter, sledding down and skiing across the snow. I don’t think they had dull moments here.

Michael Bridgeman: The Adirondack style emulates the rustic look of a pioneer’s log cabin on a grand scale. The style developed at a time when Americans were feeling wistful about pioneer days, and far safer among the elements.

Architectural Historian: When you were a pioneer, and you move out to the wilderness, the wilderness was your enemy because the wilderness could kill you. You could starve, you could freeze to death. After the industrial revolution, technology helps us to be more comfortable in the natural world. The architecture comes to express that difference in attitude, where we no longer fear the natural world, we wish we lived in the natural world.

Michael Bridgeman: But were the Stouts “living in the natural world” at the Island of Happy Days?

Lodge Manager: This was not roughing it, by any stretch. They would come with huge caravans with their china and their silver and their servants.

Architectural Historian: The irony about the Adirondack style is these are people of great wealth and great privilege, and they don’t want to rough it. They wanted to have the idea that they were getting away to the natural world, but they wanted all the amenities that they had back in the city.

Michael Bridgeman: The Stout family spent many winter holidays and summers in the home, until 1927, when Frank Stout was nearing the end of his life. And there was only one place he wanted to be for that. Frank Stout developed heart trouble and was determined to return to his north woods retreat for his final days. But he died en route, in nearby Rice Lake, only a few miles from what he called “the dearest place on earth.”

Michael Bridgeman: After Stout’s death, the family visited the Island of Happy Days less and less, until selling it in 1948. The home went through various owners and was abandoned for many years. It was eventually purchased in 1990 by its current owners, who renamed it Stout’s Island Lodge. It’s one of America’s few remaining original Adirondack great camps.

Architectural Historian: Almost none of them are open to the public. They are still kept as family compounds, for the most part.

Michael Bridgeman: Today, the lodge is open to the public. And it retains all of the charm it must have had when it was known as the Island of Happy Days.

Lodge Manager: The vistas are gorgeous. You look internally at the buildings and they’re miraculous in their architecture and their attention to detail. Everywhere was well thought out. I have found nowhere that speaks to my soul and my heart as much as this place does.

[music]

Michael Bridgeman: Brooks Stevens was a 28 year-old industrial designer when he built his home in 1939. Its stark, modern look was completely at odds with the more traditional houses in Stevens’ upscale suburban neighborhood.

Architectural Historian: He’s making a statement. It’s almost like Brooks Stevens personified. He was daring people of means who had already lived in the neighborhood to rethink what it was to be living in a modern age.

Michael Bridgeman: Brooks Stevens approached designing his home the same way he did designing products. It was always about the future.

Michael Bridgeman: Brooks Stevens enrolled at Cornell University in 1929 to pursue a degree in architecture. But when he found he was more interested in drawing cars than buildings, he quit school. Stevens returned to his hometown of Milwaukee during the worst economic downturn in American history.

Architectural Historian: In the 1930s, Americans are looking to the future, because in the present, you’re living in the Depression. And it’s a terrible time. They’re looking at what life will be when we get out of the Depression. And they see that life influenced by the modern inventions of science.

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Michael Bridgeman: The science of aerodynamics led to the age’s futuristic-looking ships, airplanes and trains. And to get Americans buying again, manufacturers applied this look of aerodynamic design, or streamlining, to products. This was where Brooks Stevens found his niche when he started his industrial design business at the age of 24. By 1939, Stevens was a rising star in the industrial design world. And he wanted a new home that would express his visionary take on the future.

Architectural Historian: Here’s a designer, that in his everyday role for us, he’s deciding, what should an iron be? What should the inside of a train car be? How does that give us a sense of where we’re going as a progressive nation? What’s the future look like? He has a chance to do that in his own home.

Michael Bridgeman: The home that Brooks Stevens designed for himself and his family is not like its neighbors, traditional houses that look to the past for inspiration. The Stevens house is a bold statement about the future.

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Michael Bridgeman: Stevens built his house in the village of Fox Point, a fashionable Milwaukee suburb. He collaborated with architect, Fitzhugh Scott. The house they devised was very modern. Historians have since dubbed the style, Streamline Moderne. And when it was built, some neighbors derisively called Stevens’ new home the only Greyhound bus station in Fox Point.

Architectural Historian: Streamline Moderne was adopted for train stations, bus stations, and it’s because it came from trains and buses that were being designed. So they were looking for continuity, a look about the future, and movement, speed, travel. So when you apply that to a house, it’s almost contrary to the values of a typical house as we think of it. We want it to be rooted.

Architectural Historian: The house comes out of the way that Brooks Stevens sees the goods that he’s designing. Brooks Stevens took his house and then wrapped it in a shroud to make it slick and clean and simple and modern-looking.

Michael Bridgeman: Brooks Stevens and his wife Alice were still newlyweds when they built their home. Its exterior expressed his career and ambitions. But the interior was a different story.

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Architectural Historian: Brooks Stevens was someone who made his career in embracing the future. That doesn’t mean his wife necessarily played from that playbook.

Michael Bridgeman: Alice didn’t exactly buy into her husband’s design sensibility.

Architectural Historian: She felt that she wanted something more traditional. So she got her traditional interior, and he got his modern exterior.

Architectural Historian: They must have been at loggerheads. I mean, I would love to have been a fly on the wall and hear those conversations.

Michael Bridgeman: The interior of Brooks Stevens’ home wasn’t entirely unrelated to its modernist wrapping. For example, throughout the home, Stevens used aluminum.

Architectural Historian: In the ’30s, it’s the new material. It’s finally come down in price. So they’re starting to use it for architectural details. Brooks Stevens is all over it. So from the entry door to the balustrade of the staircase, those details in the house reinforce the idea of something that’s modern.

Michael Bridgeman: And the only window with a view of the neighbors took its cue from streamlined ships.

Architectural Historian: That one window that you look back toward the neighbors is a porthole window. And it’s almost like a lens. You’re seeing back in time to history and how old those houses look.

Michael Bridgeman: Brooks Stevens has been described as a showman. His house, the home for his growing family, was also a kind of stage set for a modern man of business.

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Michael Bridgeman: When hosting clients, Stevens saw his home as the perfect backdrop to sell his vision of the future.

Architectural Historian: Well, he’s selling his personality, he’s selling his business, his design acumen. But he’s also selling a lifestyle. Brooks Stevens was designing modernity in the context of an English country house. It is all of the beauty of the garden and the house on the hill, but it’s modern. You don’t have to reject society to be modern. That progressive thinking and innovative thinking can exist within a corporate context. And that’s the sales pitch.

Michael Bridgeman: Stevens became a nationally prominent industrial designer. Some of his best-known work included the Miller Beer logo, the Jeep Wagoneer and the Oscar Mayer Wienermobile. When Stevens was asked to identify a favorite among his thousands of designs, he replied, “None. Because every one would have to be restudied for the tastes of tomorrow.” He was always thinking about the future.

Michael Bridgeman: Brooks and Alice Stevens lived in their home for more than 40 years, raising their four children. Brooks Stevens died at the age of 83.

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Michael Bridgeman: The current owners of the home bought it from the Stevens family in 1985. They have renovated the house to suit family living today. And yet it remains a wonderful landmark of the 1930s.

Architectural Historian: The house is probably better than it’s ever been, because the new owners really understand both the time period as well as what Brooks Stevens was trying to achieve in the 1930s. So there’s no longer any conflict between the interiors wanting to be French Provincial and designer with Streamline Moderne on the exterior. Now the building envelope, the spaces of the rooms, the furniture within the rooms, and the objects on those pieces of furniture are all within the context of the 1930s, and it’s spectacular.

Michael Bridgeman: The Brooks Stevens house reminds us of an America positive about its future, and a designer who brought that future to life.

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Michael Bridgeman: This home, nestled in the prairies of southeast Wisconsin, was one of Frank Lloyd Wright’s favorites. He designed it for Herbert Fisk Johnson Jr., who was known as “Hib.”

Architectural Historian: Hib Johnson would enjoy saying that when they started the project he was in charge, and when they ended the project Frank Lloyd Wright was in charge. And that relationship, I think, is very indicative of how this project was designed.

Michael Bridgeman: It was a collaboration of two iconic Wisconsin men. One, a daring captain of industry with a great love for flight. The other, a 69-year-old architect embarking on a phase of his career that would secure his status as a legend. The result, Wingspread.

Michael Bridgeman: In the 1920s and early 30s, Frank Lloyd Wright’s commissions were sparse. His distinguished architectural career had stalled. Yet his most heralded design work still lay ahead.

Architectural Historian: Frank Lloyd Wright viewed the 1930s as a set of opportunities, where the crash of the stock market was a kind of a wake-up call to America. That we needed to think about our culture differently, we needed to think about architecture differently.

Michael Bridgeman: In 1936 Wright was contacted by Hib Johnson, president of the Johnson Wax Company. Johnson expanded the company through the Depression years with bold decisions and clever marketing. He often flew his own airplane to create publicity sensations around the country. Hib Johnson commissioned Frank Lloyd Wright to design a new headquarters for his company. The outcome was the Johnson Wax Administration Building. It helped shine the spotlight on Wright once again, and it delighted his patron.

Architectural Historian: Johnson told Wright that if he could only sleep at that administrative building, he would be quite happy. And Wright said, “Well, how about we design a house for you?” And Wingspread was the result of that conversation, as the story goes.

Michael Bridgeman: Wingspread was completed in 1939 in Wind Point, just north of Racine. The house was named for its four wings, as would be seen by Hib Johnson when he flew home from business trips. The 14,000 square foot home was the largest residential project of Wright’s career. And it would exemplify his philosophy of organic architecture.

Michael Bridgeman: Wingspread is not an imposing mansion. It sits low and horizontal on the landscape. Even entering the home feels inviting and cozy.

Architectural Historian: You come in through a very low entrance. There’s almost nothing grand about it until you come into this main space, which almost shocks you.

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Michael Bridgeman: This central core encompasses several rooms in one space, an idea Wright refined throughout his career. The Johnson family could use the different areas as they needed.

Architectural Historian: What Wright does is create an enormous space, but he very carefully segregates that space into places that can be enjoyed, a small sitting area for example. That central space, by being divided into a number of different subsectors, provides that sense of intimacy that you would otherwise never have.

Michael Bridgeman: Moving to the outdoors at Wingspread often happens through large French doors, under generous overhangs, and out onto paved terraces. Organic architecture includes the notion that a home should be in harmony with its environment.

Architectural Historian: The idea in the 20th century was how do you incorporate the natural world with the design of your house? How do you break down that barrier between the inside and the outside? So you break down that distinction by having spaces that are kind of transitional spaces between the inside and outside. You have a patio that opens out into the natural space. And you situate your house in a way that makes it part of the natural environment.

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Michael Bridgeman: Hib Johnson and Frank Lloyd Wright would become friends through the project. But Johnson’s role was perhaps larger than the famously autocratic architect was used to. The genesis of Wingspread was unusual for a Wright project. It was the client, Hib Johnson, who came to Wright with a sketch of a house with four wings, a zoned plan that Wright expanded and refined. As Wright later wrote, “I respect hunches of others, that is, should they correspond with mine.”

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Michael Bridgeman: One thing Wright and Johnson shared was ambition. They believed in the American dream and that it could be achieved. Wright built this idea into the heart of Wingspread.

Architectural Historian: The fireplace core represents this aspirational quality of the house. The fireplace is the thrust upward to the heavens, and what that does, is it provides that additional sense of movement. You’re not just moving around in a circle, but you’re also imagining yourself going up. Wright made that movement literal in this stair that goes all the way up to the crow’s nest, from which you can see the entire lay of the estate.

Michael Bridgeman: It has been said that Johnson’s two children came up with the idea of the crow’s nest. Sam and Karin could get a bird’s eye view of their dad as he flew back home.

Michael Bridgeman: By 1938, building Wingspread was costing more than expected and the work was slow. That year, Johnson’s enthusiasm in completing the home waned due to a personal tragedy. While Wingspread was under construction, Hib Johnson’s wife died, and he lost interest in finishing the house. With Wright’s encouragement, he did complete the work, and in 1939, moved in with his two children and later remarried. This was Johnson’s home for 20 years.

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Michael Bridgeman: In 1961, the Johnson family formally dedicated Wingspread to The Johnson Foundation. It is used by organizations around the world to meet and discuss solutions for environmental and community issues.

Architectural Historian: It’s as if Wright thought that was going to happen one day. And to be able to talk to other leaders in the field in a place like Wingspread is, in a way, the perfect expression of the architecture of this building.

Michael Bridgeman: By the time Wingspread was completed, Wright was in his 70’s. The work for Hib Johnson helped Wright build fresh momentum. The next two decades would be the most productive in Wright’s long career.

Architectural Historian: Wright’s true brilliance as an architect is that he was able to take what was popular stylistically at any point in time and filter it through his ideas of organic architecture, and in the end come up with something that is very much about him as an architect and the way that he saw the world. And I think Wingspread is one of the remarkable buildings that you get to see that in.

Architectural Historian: Wright felt that we could build an American architecture here in the prairies of the Midwest. And I think Wingspread is really a poem to the land that it resides in.

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Michael Bridgeman: These remarkable Wisconsin houses are not simply artifacts. Today they are beloved private houses, captivating museums and dynamic meeting places. Each of them is as vital as ever. And yet, they are unique in the way they tell us about our past.

Architectural Historian: These buildings, they survive in the present in a way that writings can’t and of course people don’t. So they really do give us visible, tangible reminders of our heritage.

Architectural Historian: We can’t save every building everywhere. But I think we have to save the best. And these are markers. They’re historical cultural markers of our progress in design and taste, but also in cultural development.

Michael Bridgeman: We all have aspirations today. There are things that we yearn for and that we want. And these are the houses that tell us about the dreams of people who came before us.

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Announcer: Remarkable Homes of Wisconsin is funded in part by the Jeffris Family Foundation of Janesville, Wisconsin. Dedicated to Midwestern Historic Preservation and Friends of Wisconsin Public Television.