Wisconsin’s Own: Twenty Remarkable Homes

Wisconsin’s Own tells the story of the considerable contribution Wisconsin’s historic homes have made to American residential architecture. It also answers questions you’ve likely asked when you’ve seen a notable historic home: Who built this house? What brought them here? Why did they select that particular style? How is it that this historic home still stands today, despite development pressures?

Authors M. Caren Connolly and Louis Wasserman and the Wisconsin Historical Society researched and carefully considered 1,500 potential houses before narrowing the selection to twenty of the state’s most remarkable residences built between 1854 and 1939. The houses are a mix of public ones you may have visited and private homes you’ve been hoping for an invitation to explore. The homes are representative of the varied architectural styles in Wisconsin, from an Italianate along the Mississippi and an interpretation of a sixteenth-century northern Italian villa overlooking Lake Michigan to an Adirondack-style camp in the North Woods and a fourteen-bedroom Georgian Revival mansion on Lake Geneva. The Prairie School is, of course, represented, with examples by Frank Lloyd Wright and his mentor Louis Sullivan. Richly illustrated with the photography of Zane Williams complemented by historical images and watercolors and line drawings by the authors, Wisconsin’s Own offers an intimate tour of residential treasures that have endured the test of time.