Wisconsin Public Television University Place Anna Andrzejewski Vernacular Architecture August 9, 2012 UP758    cc >> Welcome to University Place Presents. I'm Norman Gilliland. What do they have in common? A church, a farmhouse, a gas station? Well, in southwestern Wisconsin they could all be examples of what's called vernacular architecture, and we'll be looking at a fair number of examples of vernacular architecture with my guest today. She's Anna Andrzejewski who is a professor with the history of art department at the University of Wisconsin Madison. Welcome to University Place Presents. >> Thank you. It's great to be here. >> I'm looking forward to some fascinating pictures, but when we talk about vernacular architecture and you look at some of the descriptions or definitions of it, it's kind of like everything other than architecture with a known architect and maybe some kind of arbitrary use of materials. What does it mean exactly? >> Well, it's a tough term, actually. And it's a term that's not really in common use anymore, at least by those of us who study vernacular architecture, because for a long time it was a term that was associated, as you suggest, with buildings that weren't associated with architects. 

With architecture that was less than, say, a building designed by a prominent architect. So, we've come to try to use other terms such as common architecture or ordinary architecture. So when I talk about vernacular architecture, I'm really talking about architecture that was common in a particular place during a particular period of time. So if we go back a long time, it might be something that we would think of as folk building that was done locally, but if we look more in the 20th century, we can talk about things that are mass produced. Sometimes called prefabricated buildings. >> Really? >> Those can also be called common or vernacular architecture today. >> How much does the use of local materials have to do with vernacular or common architecture? >> It certainly does historically. For many, many centuries, thousands of years, millennia even, when transportation made it difficult to move materials around, vernacular architecture was almost always local. But, in more recent times, as materials move around, first with canals in the United States, then with the railroads, then with trucks and cars and that sort of thing, vernacular has really ceased to be something that operates locally and is local materials. >> What does this whole business relationship between form and function have to do with vernacular architecture? >> It does to some extent, certainly. 

And, again, looking historically, forms resulted from functional needs at a particular period of time. But, again, moving forward in time into the 20th century, the relationship becomes a little more confusing. And I think one of the things that those of us working in this field have struggled with is really how to deal with building erected during the past hundred years because function changes quite a bit in the modern age. So it's an interesting question to consider but one that's quite complex too. >> What if we go back a couple hundred years maybe, I know I, for one, am often surprised at first glance at a building that's 200 years old at how dark it is inside and sort of how measly the windows are, maybe how thick the walls, and also how irregular the shape of the building and the rooms. >> It is but if one studies enough buildings, let's take some of the pioneer buildings in Wisconsin, for example, by the first several generations of settlers. They've settled over time, now they are irregular, but if you actually study those buildings, you measure them for example, you find that they conform to quite rigorous patterns. >> Do they? >> Yeah. So, for example, in some of the buildings in southwestern Wisconsin, sort of following traditions, sort of going back to European traditions, buildings tend to be sort of built on four-foot modules. And that was sort of some of the tools they used but also just sort of pattern. 

>> A four-foot module. >> Yeah. There's pattern in folk building So, for example, houses often measure 16 by 20 feet. So, if you divide by four, four by five foot modules. >> Right. Why would that be? Why four foot bases? >> It's tradition. And that's one of the most fascinating examples when you start studying vernacular architecture is you tend to think because someone needs a house they sort of erect it based purely around functional needs, but that function is determined partly by what they know, by what's around them. >> So it's tradition. >> So pattern, tradition, all of those things feed into these traditions that we see manifest in the built environment. So, it may look irregular and sort of hand-crafted, and it can be, but the builder built based on things that they knew around him or her. 

And so, you tend to see these interesting patterns. >> And I guess there's not correlation between vernacular and the durability? It can go either way? >> It can go either way. There were buildings in the United States, for example, built of log. There were also buildings in the United States during the 19th century built of sod that actually didn't last on the Great Plains. The Kansas brick houses where they essentially cut up sod, stacked it up like it was bricks. That tended to not be too durable. They could withstand tornadoes, but after several generations, the rain did them in. >> Or they were just growing crops on the roof. >> Exactly. >> And it got out of control. 

Well, let's pull back from Wisconsin for a minute and get maybe a bigger perspective on other examples of vernacular architecture in the country I think we're starting with, I don't know, for some reason the minute I saw this, I was thinking Pennsylvania. >> And it absolutely is Pennsylvania. Here what you're looking at is a house built in Lancaster County, Pennsylvania, from the early 18th century. This is a house that one could visit. It's known as the Hans Herr House in Lancaster County, date around 1719. And it's a stone building. We'll see some examples of that later in Wisconsin. Stone wasn't used as the most common material in southeastern Pennsylvania, but it was common amongst Germanic settlers, many of whom settled in Lancaster County in the 18th century. And that's what you see here in the Hans Herr House. Beyond the material that you're  looking at, you can sort of see the irregular windows on the front facade. 

That, again, evidences cultural patterning. It sort of, you have a window or a door lighting or entering into each room. And so the door that you see on the left-hand side of the front facade enters into a hallway. The window right next to it lights the front room which is divided off. So, that was a pattern that one would see in Germanic parts of Europe at the time, and it made its way over here with the first settlers. >> Glass in those windows? >> Not at first, necessarily Often they were covered with shutters, but by the 18th century glass was becoming more common. Often imported, certainly. And so pretty quickly. By the mid-18th century we see glass fairly common. >> Wood shingles? >> Sometimes. 

It could also be slate shingles a lot of the time. >> Well, okay, this is something that I wouldn't have expected to see in a discussion of vernacular architecture. In fact, a discussion of architecture, period, we don't think immediately of gas stations for some reason. >> And I sort of set up these slides, in some ways, to sort of have that kind of disjuncture. This is about 30 minutes from that house you just saw. >> Is it really? >> That was definitely planned. So this is in Lansdale, Pennsylvania, but it's a gas station, a ubiquitous kind of gas station that you would see from the late 20th into the 21st century. You'd see it everywhere. But it's near the Hans Herr House. When we talk about vernacular architecture, we can talk about those handcrafted folk buildings, like the Hans Herr House, but as I mentioned at the outset, we can also talk about these national types that become common in, really, after World War II where you have what we think of as prefabricated buildings where the parts are mass produced. 

There may be an architect that designs the prototype, but then the parts are sort of churned out, and that's why you get these sort of chains where one looks the same in Pennsylvania as it does in California. So, again, if we try to define vernacular architecture, it takes us from those folk buildings to these more popular national types. >> What do gas stations tells us about architecture and the way it's used? >> Gas stations tell quite an amazing story, partly because of their placement on the landscape, where they're located. So, obviously, the first gas stations were located along roads. Then, after World War II, with the interstate highway system, you start seeing gas stations located alongside these interstate highways. Then, as this example suggests, you start seeing them in the suburbs on the fringes of cities to cater to the commuters that were living in the suburbs and then commuting elsewhere from their home to their jobs. So just in their placement in the landscape they tell a lot. But the forms, too, are rather suggestive. The earliest gas stations looked like little houses, in part to make them blend in with their surroundings. >> Make them a little more welcoming maybe? >> Perhaps. 

They fit in the neighborhood a little more. By post-World War II period, they looked more like they did along the highways, and then now they sort of have this efficient appearance which is what you want to do. You want to get gas and move on. >> Okay, another thing I would not have thought of as part of an architectural discussion: a silo. How creative can you get with designing a silo? >> When we tend to think about architecture, we think about monuments or we think about houses. But the vernacular, for those of us that study it, encompasses outbuildings as well, buildings that serve a support function. Things like silos. So the agricultural landscape of the United States is full of support structures like silos that serve to, essentially, make the farm function efficiently. >> Well, in the context of some of those round barns, in particular, where you have the barn build around the silo, that says a lot about the concept of efficiency, agricultural efficiency as it was a hundred years ago or more. >> Absolutely. 

And one of things I like to do in my classes is take students into the rural landscape of Wisconsin to actually study agriculture through the buildings because you can study silos over time and literally trace the history of farming on the landscape. >> Really? So how would silos change over time? We're still just talking a cylindrical form with some kind of a roof, right? >> Actually, it's more complicated than that. The earliest silos were pit silos. So they were horizontal silos. Then you go up with the round forms. The materials change. The technology changes slightly. Now we're going back to more horizontal forms that are baled. So you can, literally, sort of see how this changes by looking at the vernacular landscape in the buildings within it. >> Now, what this image says to me is that this is a building whose function has changed. 

>> Quite a lot. >> We see a lot of windows that are covered up. >> And another aspect of studying vernacular architecture is not only looking from rural buildings, rural sites like we just saw to more urban structures like this cotton factory in Columbus, Georgia, but is also about looking about how these buildings changed in their ordinary uses over time. Originally a building like this would not have been electrified. This was built around the early 20th century in the south. So all of the windows you see provided light so that the workers could see what they were doing, as well as provided air circulation. Over the course of the 20th century, those windows were filled in, the plant was electrocuted, electrified, and then it was air conditioned was installed. So, part of understanding common buildings is tracing the way that they changed over time and their common use and how it changed. >> We see a lot of that, don't we? These windows, you can, almost any or even town in the country you can see these once vast windows that have been bricked up. >> Absolutely and it really says a lot. 

If you learn how to read these common buildings, it can tell you a lot about history that we don't think about a lot of the time. >> And what we have here appears to be a fairly, I won't say common house design, but familiar kind of looking house. >> And again, I'm just trying to give a sense of the range here. We started out looking at a house, we're coming back to looking at a house here, but this was one of a number of what we talk about as speculative buildings. It was built as part of a row of five identical houses along a street on the east side of Madison. So it was built by a speculative builder. He lived in one, and then he sold the others to perspective buyers. >> Circa 1920 or something like that? >> These were built in 1915 or 1916, at the time on the east side of Madison. This campus was growing, the city of Madison was growing, and these houses would likely have been occupied by people working at the nearby east side industrial plants. So understanding these houses and why the appeared is partly understanding the shifting work landscape. 

>> A house like that, what would you call it? My thought was bungalow, but I'm not sure that's quite right. >> That's absolutely right. >> Is it? [LAUGHTER] >> This is a bungalow, and the idea of it was, essentially, to incorporate nature into the house. So the wide porch that you see that spans the front facade is an effort, with sort of an integrated roof, is an effort to bring nature into the house at the time and open up the house. >> So if we walk by that row of five houses, assuming they're all still there, would we see, do you think, today, modifications in them? >> A lot of these have been modified. But, again, a lot of it has to do with things like comfort. So, air conditioning and those sorts of things. You see those kinds of changes and then you see repair changes. New roofs for the most part and replacement windows to make it more energy efficient. >> And then there's the whole issue of the garage, too. 

Is a detached one-car garage or is it an attached two-car garage somehow modified. >> Absolutely. And in the case of these five examples, they all have detached garages that were in the back. That differs radically from the post-World War II period where you start seeing garages integrated almost always with the house itself. First one-car garages, then two-car garages. >> Now we're seeing three. >> Now you're seeing three. And, dare I say, four. [LAUGHTER] >> Now, one structure that I would think you would see considerable variation in because the function of it is fairly simple and would vary according to who's actually using the building would be a church. I would imagine even 200 years ago you could see a lot of variation in churches in Wisconsin. 

>> You can. This example happens to be from Oregon, located near Hood River just east of Portland. And this is a Methodist church. What's interesting about churches is that you see a lot pattern, obviously, in terms of sort of the denomination in particular. >> Right. >> So you will see the differences mainly between different denominations, but also you see differences based on materials. So, for example, in the southwestern part of the United States you will have stucco, for example, as a kind of ubiquitous material. Whereas, in the northwestern part of the country, as you see here, you obviously have a lot of wood, and that's a material you see fairly regularly. >> This looks, to me, like a classic Victorian era. Is that gingerbread up there in the eaves? >> It is. 

It was built around 1900 and is obviously lovingly maintained by its community today. I think one of the interesting things to see is obviously patterns and church going have changed over the course of the 20th century. A lot of these smaller buildings are no longer functional for their congregations. >> Right. >> So, it becomes interesting to see, this one was still used intermittently, if I recall, not regularly by its congregation. But it's still preserved because of its importance, historically, to the community, and that's part of vernacular architecture studies too is looking at questions of preservation and value that the structures had over time to their communities. >> It's kind of interesting in looking at some of the churches that some of the most ordinary looking, nondescript churches are the oldest ones. >> That's true, and we tend to think about the great cathedrals of Europe, for example. Some of us might think of that or Hagia Sophia, for example. >> Right, right. 

>> And it wasn't always the case, especially amongst the first generations of settlers here. And there's some wonderful examples of some small, one-room churches that you can't imagine being able to hold 10 people in rural parts of the state here which are really wonderful examples today. >> Now they would be big enough for some of those congregations. >> That's true. >> We don't think so much of an entire business district as being an architectural phenomenon and yet, again, a hundred years ago and more they used to build what were called business blocks that would be all one structure with a whole bunch of different things in it, or, in some cases, the downtown business districts just look like they were put up in the same couple of years. >> Right. Absolutely. One of the interests of vernacular architecture scholars working on American architecture right now happens to be on landscapes, and what you're  looking at here is Mineral Point, about an hour southwest of Madison, which was the first national register historic district in Wisconsin, listed in 1971. But these kinds of assemblages of buildings, it's hard to understand the Mineral Point Opera House, which is on the right-hand side of the slide here, without understanding its role within the community, within the street of Mineral Point, which is a functioning commercial street beginning in the 1840s and continuing, of course, to the present day. So, understanding how the Opera House also functioned partly as a city hall next to some of the stores in the town, it can only really be understood as a group, as a streetscape. 

And that's something increasingly scholars interested in American vernacular architecture are paying attention to. >> Well, those opera houses really were sort of the jewel and the crown jewels of a lot of these towns. To have one would be a matter of civic pride but, of course, is also a focal point. >> It was a focal point, and they're always either right along the main street or adjacent to the main street, which, again, tells of community priorities. And one of the reasons we look at vernacular architecture is to learn about people and what was important to them in the past. So, looking at landscapes like these main streets are really an important key in learning what mattered to people on an every day level. >> When I think of farm houses, I go two different ways with farm houses. I'm thinking on the one hand they're out there isolated, so they're less likely to have been changed over the years, but on the other hand, they are primarily there for function rather than form, and farmers can't afford to be too nostalgic about the aesthetics of the past. So they would be constantly changed for practical reasons. So, what do we have here? >> This is a remarkably preserved example, actually, of a Wisconsin dairy farm from the early 20th century. 

It's a great example, it's a beautiful photograph because it sort of shows you the whole farm landscape. And it's preserved, in this case, in large part because it worked for many, many years for the kind of dairying that really was successful in southwestern Wisconsin, throughout Wisconsin, the Dairy State, during the first part of the 20th century. It was, the barn that you see here, actually, and the silos, at least the concrete one there, were based on the pioneering Wisconsin dairy barn that was pioneered by Extension experts at the university during the first decade of the 20th century. So this was cutting edge when it was erected in the teens, and it was so functional and so efficient in terms of the way that it held hay, accommodated the cows, had air circulation through it that it worked perfectly well for a hundred years. Until the recent owner gave up farming about five years ago, it worked fine. He could accommodate up to 150 head of cattle. It worked very well, but, of course, commercial dairy farms have, to some extent, supplanted this. But, again, it worked terribly well. He added a silo. The blue silo that you see here was added in the 1950s, but otherwise it worked fairly well. 

What works in some of these rural communities, there's no need to change. >> Well, University of Wisconsin in Madison still has the livestock pavilion, for example, which goes back a hundred years and more, and also another barn or two that seem to go back at least that far. They still use them as far as I can tell. >> And this form of the barn and the ventilators on top, those were pioneered at UW Dairy Barn, a national historic landmark on campus today. >> Okay, well, we can't talk about even vernacular architecture in Wisconsin without mentioning that name Frank Lloyd Wright. Is this at all influenced by Wright, this structure we're seeing there? >> Well, this is a Frank Lloyd Wright structure. >> Okay, so very influenced by Frank Lloyd Wright. >> Very influenced by Wright, but what's interesting, and the reason I threw it in here, is you don't expect to see this when you're talking about vernacular architecture. This is his famous house, the Frederick C Robie House that he built in Chicago between 1909 and 1910, generally when it's attributed. And the reason that I talk about it in a lecture like this is at one level you can say this is absolutely not vernacular architecture. 

It was pioneering at the time it was built in the prairie style which responded to the landscape rather than previous styles. It was built by a famous, internationally famous even by that point, architect, Frank Lloyd Wright. There was nothing common about it. It stood out. It was built next to the University of Chicago campus. So you think that's not vernacular architecture. But one of the more interesting directions that scholars working in the field today have taken is to start asking what has been called vernacular questions of these kinds of buildings. So, instead of saying this is the product of the genius Frank Lloyd Wright, how did people live in the house at the time? >> That's a good question. Isn't that often a question with  a Frank Lloyd Wright house? >> Exactly. Exactly. 

And they often didn't like it. So, thinking about ordinary experience, how did the owners relate to the service staff? Many of Wright's houses, because they were for wealthy clients, had a service staff. So how does the relationship of the service quarters relate to the house? Or, how did Wright use local materials or respond to the landscape around him? >> So those two things would certainly make it tie in with vernacular, the use of local materials and tying it to the landscape. >> Exactly. >> Which were big hallmarks of Wright. >> And that makes Wright a fascinating figure to consider because he was interested in what was around him at the time. So he was a very interesting architect in terms of the way he responded to the common architecture of the time. Not that he wouldn't roll over in his grave to be called vernacular. [LAUGHTER] Because he certainly wanted to be avant-garde, but we can ask these kinds of questions and think about sort of common patterns even when we're looking at work by some of these architects. >> Well, there's always this question with architecture, too, of how well does it hold up over time? >> Sure, and that's another question that you can, again, think about patterns of use, priorities in a community. 

These questions about ordinary every day experience are what building of all sorts, be it architect designed or not, those are the kinds of things that it can tell us. >> I believe I see another farm among the horizon. >> Right, and I wanted to sort of talk more extensively now that we've sort of talked about these questions, about what is vernacular and what isn't, to talk about sort of our local vernacular. And I want to begin by talking about rural southwestern Wisconsin and the driftless region as it's known. This was the area known as the driftless region for its absence of glacial drift, the fact that the glaciers did not sort of cut through this area and level it off like other parts of the Midwest. And when we look at this farm, which is similar to the one we saw earlier, it's a dairy farm, it tells us things about dairying practice over the course of the 20th century. This happens to be the site of the farmstead where Robert M La Follette was actually born or grew up, his early years, it's debated. So this is in Dane County in the southern part of Dane County. He didn't live here. The house is much later than that. 

It dates to around 1896. But we look at it here to tell us about agriculture, dairying agriculture because you can see three different generations of barns here. >> Oh, really? >> The barn behind the silos at the center of the image, that main section, was built around the early 1930s, and it's a classic Wisconsin dairy barn like we saw before. The next section over is from the 1970s, necessitated by the need to expand one's herd. What's interesting about it, I've been inside it, and it's actually built of glue laminated lumber that was pioneered glue laminated trusses at the Forest Products Laboratory here on campus which is right next to the UW Dairy Barn, fascinatingly enough. >> Yes, quite the juxtaposition. >> Exactly. And then, the next section built later, in the later 1970s or early 1980s, was again necessitated by expansion, the need of this farmer to keep up by ever expanding his herd. So, these kinds of buildings within the landscape of southwestern Wisconsin's driftless region, you can look at the buildings to tell the story. The different generations of silos, there's also a heifer shed that you see in the foreground of the image. 

So there's different kinds of buildings that you can study and look at their change over time to understand how farming changed in the Dairy State. >> Is it always up to the farm owner or homeowner as to whether this house gets registered in such a way that would restrict modifications to it? >> Usually restrictions, in fact always restrictions are based on local ordinance, local laws, not the national registered designation. That sort of provides a level of protection for these people against federal actions, highway development, cell towers, those sorts of things. But, yes, it's entirely up to the property owner itself, and that can be tough explaining to them what sort of benefits that can provide. But as these farms are rapidly becoming abandoned, it's something that we try to encourage because they're not as common as they once were. >> So what we have here looks like a supper club on a very quiet day. >> It does, but in fact it sort of does tell us about the landscape of rural Wisconsin. But, in keeping with that theme of agricultural, this is a cheese factory, actually. Right down the road from one of the farms we saw earlier today. The River Forks Cheese Factory. 

This is in eastern Iowa County. It was established in the later 19th century, and farmers, like the farmers at the farm we just saw, about four or five of them would bring their milk to this building every morning to a cheesemaker, who usually lived in these structures as well, who would make the cheese. So, it sort of tells you, you see these little buildings, these curious little supper club-like looking buildings, dotting the landscape of the driftless region, and they're about every couple of miles at major crossroads. Those are cheese factories. And they haven't been used, really, since the late '60s, early 1970s, when milk starting being shipped out further. >> That's another thing that's become more centralized, less localized. >> Exactly And so these factories have died, but people have renovated these houses. This one is an artisan cheesemaker who worked here in the 1980s but gave that up and is now living here while he works elsewhere in the region. So, they're very popular. They're very trendy, actually, now. 

>> To live in? >> Yeah. And they're very efficient houses. They're linear in their organization. There's usually, as you can see in this example, a section of the building that was banked or built into the side of the hill. That was for cold storage, obviously. So that can come in handy for cold storage purposes as well as for dens. So they're very popular and efficient properties, and people also, in southwestern Wisconsin, have a sense of pride about their past, that these were cheese factories. So, it's an interesting case of adaptive reuse. >> All right, well, as long as we're on this cheese theme, this is a quintessential Wisconsin picture. >> It is now but it wouldn't have been 25 years ago. 

>> Too big? >> This is one of the commercial dairies that has supplanted the kinds of farms that we've been talking about earlier. Cottonwood Dairy. This is located in Lafayette County near Wiota. Cottonwood Dairy houses 1500 head of cattle at its farm in these free stall barns that you see here. This is where the cows spend their time eating and sleeping, presumably. They got to a large dairy facility to be milked three times a day. >> Is this, then, an example of vernacular architecture? >> Well, this is one of those cases like the gas stations that challenge us. We have to think about this as the now common architecture of these rural regions. So we go from the farms that we've been looking at so far today to looking at this, and while some of us may not like the realities of aspects of contemporary agriculture and commercial dairying, this is what we have. And one of the reasons that Cottonwood is interesting to me is that they are trying to have a sustainable form of this. 

They actually sort of recycle everything that they have there. They grow their own feed. So it is a very sustainable form of commercial dairying. Although, their milk goes to Chicago and eventually to New York for pizza cheese. So they've actually traced that which is interesting. >> I guess the bottom line is vernacular doesn't necessarily mean quaint. >> It doesn't necessarily. We have to get beyond that. It's not associated just with folk pioneers. We try to think about it as everything that is common at a particular place in time. 

>> Now, this is a structure that looks like it can be used for almost anything. >> It does, and it's been changed to some extent. It's just down the road from Cottonwood Dairy, and it's actually rented out by the dairy now for workers that work in the dairy. So it's actually used as a rental property. But it has nothing to do, historically, with agriculture in the region. This was actually, it's one of, arguably, the oldest buildings in our state, built by the earliest pioneers. It may date to as early as the 1820s. >> Really? Okay. So back to what I was saying about the oldest sometimes are just the most unassuming structures. >> And the reason it looks so unassuming to us today is that this was built for the early speculative lead minors in the region that came up from parts of Missouri and Illinois that came up to prospect lead during the 1820s. 

Galena is, of course, known as sort of the center of this, but, really, the first major period of white settlement in Wisconsin, outside of, of course, the settlements of places like Green Bay, was in the southwestern part of the state. >> Sure. >> It had a tremendous lead boom in the 1820s through 1848 when they left for the gold rush in California. >> The next precious metal. >> And this is an example of the first generation of houses, very few of which survive, but there's a concentration of these houses in Wiota, which is the small village. There's about four of them, and although they may not look like very much, a friend of mine named Dana Duppler has bought these, restored them, they would like approximately originally. It may not have had glass in the windows originally but has basically maintained their original appearance. >> We, I assume, other than the occasional wooden structure that has lasted perhaps miraculously all these years, probably had the most examples of early architecture in Wisconsin would be, what? Limestone? >> Right. And that's what makes the buildings in Wiota, all of which are built of wood, so extraordinary. They've survived, in large part, because they've been sort of neglected. 

Nobody really paid attention to them. They were so small and unassuming. But we tend to have in the United States, and it's really true elsewhere as well, more masonry buildings surviving, stone and brick, partly because of the durability. It doesn't necessarily represent what was out there at the time. But Mineral Point and the two house that you see here, which are part of the state Pendarvis historic site, is what you're looking at here. These limestone buildings are very prevalent throughout the southwest, and part of it had to do with the fact that when you mine lead, much of which was shallow, you had a lot of stone left over. So it was a material that you could use readily. But these buildings, which are part of the second generation of lead mining settlement in southwestern Wisconsin, these were built in the later 1830s, these were associated with the Cornish who settled in Mineral Point. And the Cornish were known for mining. They heard about the wonderful lead in Wisconsin. 

They came here during the 1830s, and they were also expert stone masons. And they built in the traditions that they knew back in Cornwall with the materials they had on hand here, which was limestone. >> The one on the left there looks as if it must have had some kind of steps or a porch or something, otherwise that first step out the door would be a dangerous move. >> The interesting thing about some of these houses in Mineral Point was that they were the product of early preservation efforts in the state during the 1930s, and a lot of these preservationists, in their desire to make the buildings look quaint, did a lot of regrading of land. So some of it may be that there was actually dirt there originally. They also removed things like porches that sort of obstructed the view, the pristine view that you have. >> I don't think of Wisconsin, unlike, for example, the south, as having a lot of houses that would have these deeps sweeping verandas, but I gather there are some. >> Well, it's a wonderful point, Norman, because this example, which is also part of the lead mining story, was actually built by someone from Tennessee. >> Okay. >> Daniel Morgan Parkinson, who came up to Wisconsin because of lead. 

And what you're looking at here is actually a stagecoach inn that was basically for the transient miners. >> And this is still there? >> Well, that's an interesting story. Built in 1834 and it's along the road State Route 23 between Mineral Point and Darlington. This building was restored in 1995 but has since really fallen into ruin because it takes a lot to maintain a structure like this, and it really is, although its owners have maintained it as much as they could, it's falling in danger of falling down. We were very fortunate. Recently I took a group to see it, perhaps for the last time on the interior because the roof is in bad shape and the floors are giving in. But this is really what the lead mining region was all about. In this poignant photograph where you see it sort of leaning here and sort of standing the midst of a prairie of the kind that the lead miners themselves would have seen. These kinds of structures really are all that's left of that era. We don't have any, or very few, sort of visual representations, even fewer literary recollections of what this period was like. 

So, by studying these remnants on the landscape, we can understand this early pioneer period in our state. >> Do those structures were actually, I guess, supplanted by the railroads and the whole kind of architecture that came along with that. >> Absolutely. >> And, of course, there's the automobile which would help to increase the business of a place like this. >> Like Mineral Point. And we were looking at that sort of pioneer structure. This is something else again. We're back on the main street in Mineral Point. And I brought it in to sort of think about the settlers in southwestern Wisconsin a little bit more because we saw the buildings by the Cornish miners earlier, we talked about Daniel Parkinson, that stagecoach inn being from Tennessee. A wonderful thing that I have always loved studying about southwestern Wisconsin are the different ethnic traditions there. 

>> Sure, yes. >> And how we celebrate them. >> Fairly well defined in Wisconsin unlike some states, aren't they? >> They are and they're celebrated and they're regurgitated. [LAUGHTER] As you see here at the Red Rooster Cafe in Mineral Point, which serves pasty daily to go. And so, certainly, the Cornish heritage was something the original preservationists in Mineral Point started celebrating in the 1930s, and it's still in evidence in the landscape today and in the food ways, which are, again, part of the common vernacular elements. So this sign tells us about the vernacular. So, too, does the food. >> This is sort of a postcard picture we have here. >> This is a postcard picture that also speaks to ethnic settlement. We might have the Cornish in Mineral Point, we have southern settlers coming up the Mississippi. 

This is in the same region near Wiota and Lafayette County. This is the East Wiota Lutheran Church as it's known. Norwegians were another popular settlement group in Wisconsin. And they leave their sort of ethnic footprint, if you will, in the vernacular buildings that they have, and that's no where more evident than in churches in which many Lutheran churches, ranging from the Harvey church in western Dane County to this church which is the, if I can get this right, the oldest operating sort of Lutheran church in the United States. >> Really? >> Dating back to 1848. >> Still being used? >> Still being used. Not every Sunday but they use it once a month. >> And there are, of course, some other, needless to say as you've mentioned, Ann, there are some other ethnic groups that are well represented, too. I think of the Swiss-German tradition as one that's, perhaps in a more almost commercial way, conspicuous. >> And that's, again, the sort of celebration of ethnicity. 

Not to say that there aren't Swiss-German elements in places like New Glarus. There are houses that very closely emulate Swiss examples in New Glarus. But some interesting things happened in Wisconsin in the 20th century such as the collapse of sort of the family farming industry, especially in dairy which hit places like Green County rather hard. In New Glarus in 1962, Pet Dairy closed and that was a major employer. The town leaders got together and decided we need to sell our town, we need to become a tourist mecca. And part of that involved what the locals term Swissification. [LAUGHTER] Which is basically making the buildings there more Swiss. So what you see in this slide are buildings that are typical of late 19th, early 20th century towns throughout Wisconsin, but they have these strange verandas and roof lines and sayings and shields. And this is the selling of ethnicity that has come into a lot of places in the region in the later 20th century. And it's not to say it's not bad. 

It's sort of part of the communal feeling around these sorts of places. It's very interesting to think about. >> Something you see occasionally, we see it in Madison, we see it in other cities in Wisconsin, I think of it as a federal style, I'm not sure that that's quite right, but these very solid, square, very durable houses. >> Right and we're moving now from southwestern Wisconsin to Madison, and it's an interesting connection to New Glarus as we just saw it because this was actually built by a Swiss-German settler to Madison. An entrepreneur in Madison. He ran a brick factory just down the street from this house on the east side of Madison. Built his house, as you see it here, of those bricks from his brick factory, and just like you said, he wanted to express his success and he wanted to do it in masonry which was durable in a solid sort of enduring form. And this is sort of very loosely sort of dating back to classical or, more appropriately, Renaissance palaces of the kind you would have seen in Florence. >> 1850s are we talking here? >> This was actually built in the early 1870s. But it harks back to some of the palaces that you would see in places like Renaissance Florence. 

That's the association. But with this odd roof line and the odd lentils which are sort of emblematic and associated with George Ott, Germanic heritage we think. So, you have a building that's sort of based on a large classical tradition, but with these ethnic flourishes, if you will, that at one level signal his allegiance to a broader popular style, at the same time his ethnic allegiances as well, which is really interesting to think about. >> And not the kind of thing that would be easily disguised by updates. You might tack something onto it, but you're not going to cut big holes in it and adapt it a lot. >> You're not going to hide that. You certainly aren't. >> Nor would you hide this. >> This is just down the street from the George Ott house as we were looking at it. When you look at architecture as part of a landscape, such as you can with the east side of Madison, one of the interesting things that we like to think about is the relationship between these homes and the workplaces that are part of it. 

So, the house that we just saw was about a block from this, and we don't know if the owner necessarily worked with it, but likely the bricks from his brickyard may have supplied this, perhaps. We don't know. What you're looking at here in machinery row was labeled as such because it was the site of agricultural implement shops that basically sold agriculture implements to the farmers that we were just talking about in the southwestern part of the state during the early 20th century. So not only did a place like this employ people such as the people on the east side of Madison, but it also brought Madisonians in contact with farmers in the southwest part of the state as we just talked about. >> They liked those turrets too, didn't they? >> They do and a lot of what you see when you get into the later 19th century, the so-called Victorian period, are these historical revivals. And that was popular nationally, but it was often done with local flourishes. And one of the interesting things when you study vernacular architecture locally is an interaction between widely popular ideas, these revival styles that you could see in places like Philadelphia and New York, Milwaukee, but it was done with a local flourish that was built of cream city brick, this lighter colored brick. So it probably wasn't from George Ott's brick house down the street. More likely from Milwaukee where the clay was such that it made that color. So, that's a nationally popular architecture style with the turrets but done in that local color. 

>> So we go from what I would think of as kind of a horizontal factory style to this latter-day stacking of stories. >> You do. And you also have different use here as a more modern mid-20th century building. Most likely just a small fragment of the Oscar Mayer plant on the east side of Madison. So about a mile from what we were just looking at at machinery row which was associated mainly with dairy agriculture in the southwestern part of the state. But what does Oscar Mayer tells us but that meat packing was just as big. There was certainly an active meat industry in Wisconsin as well. The size of the Oscar Mayer plant, the fact that historically it was one of the biggest employers in Madison,  speaks to that very history. Packers Avenue runs in front of it. We're taking the shot, really, from Packers Avenue. 

The name of the street attests to the prominence of meat packing. >> Were there many, we talked earlier about this series of five bungalows, but were there many actual planned residential areas in Madison or in Wisconsin before the turn of the century, say? >> That's a great question. Usually it was smaller in Madison. Probably partially because of the size of the city versus places like New York, those sorts of things later on in the 20th century, but this is an example of one of them right adjacent to Oscar Mayer across Packers Avenue. This is the Eken Park neighborhood. Much of which near Oscar Mayer was built in the 1940s and early 1950s, and it was part of planned development by a developer actually operating out of near Rochelle, Illinois, but he was working in Madison for a time. And he teamed with the Harnish -- Company, a manufacturer of prefabricated houses, to build these houses, and these are the cookie cutters that you think of typically post-World War II. The interesting thing about this development was that it was started during World War II which predates Levittown, one of the sites of this, by three or four years at least. So it's interesting to think that we have a sort of pre-Levittown example right here in Madison. And in these houses, they were sort of working with engineers at the Forest Products Laboratory here in Madison to try and pioneer prefabricated components and try to figure out what worked best, what kind of glue worked the best. 

>> They're big on glue at Forest Products Laboratory. >> And this was all for the workers at Oscar Mayer. That was who lived here, the workers at Oscar Mayer as well as the nearby French Battery Company which would eventually become Eveready at Union Corners. >> When you mention Levittown, I always think of a landscape that has been totally striped bare, and then you see this geometry of the neighborhood. >> Right. >> But, of course, as we're looking at this neighborhood in Madison, we see, what they call in realtor terms, mature yards. Do you suppose it looked sort of like this when it was put in? >> We don't have photographs, at least that I've found, of Eken Park. I would love to see some what it looked like originally. But city-planted trees that you can see here along the street have made it sort of evolve over time and look more lived in. But yet the pattern of the houses, you can still see even as people have updated their yards and put addition on the houses, the consistency is still remarkably apparent. 

So it may not have quite the monotony one might see in original photographs, but you can certainly see that these were all built on a sort of cookie cutter plan. >> Quite the opposite of the cookie cutter plan would be a neighborhood like University Heights in Madison, which, although those houses may be of a similar age, I'm not sure about that, but are making as big an effort as possible to be different, one from the other. >> It's absolutely true. And you have such a range in Madison. Partly from those sort of mass produced communities like you see in Eken Park. Too, more common on the west side, were these suburbs where they might have been developed by a single entity but the lots were sold off to individual owners who would then higher builders which is what happened in the case of the Bradley House here built by Louis Sullivan, or designed by Louis Sullivan in the nineteen-teens for someone at the Med School here at the time. So, certainly, that's a more common pattern in the west side suburbs. >> And would this be an example of an alpine look? Or what would we call it? >> It does to some extent. Sullivan didn't design a lot of residences later in his career, so it's sort of an anomaly, and it actually may have been done by folks in his studio more than him. So we're not quite sure. 

It has some prairie elements as well with the wide overhanging. But certainly in the ornament you can see aspects of Sullivan's style, but, like you said, they're separated by 20 years or so but you have such a range between the east side working class housing and then the west side suburban landscapes that were built. And it's interesting to think about where they're located on the east side which is always heavily sort of industrial where the railroads were and then the west side which was really the site of development, not exclusively associated with the university It was also the state capital and many entrepreneurs from the east side would move to the west side. But there always has been that division. >> Okay, well this that we're seeing here certainly doesn't fall into the University Heights category. >> It doesn't but you're pushing outward from University Heights as the city expanded, as the university expanded. In the middle part of the 20th century in the 1920s and '30s, the suburbs pushed ever outward, and Frank Lloyd Wright was absolutely sort of vital in that development. So, in the house that you see on the right, this is his Jacobs House, as it's known. The Herb and Katherine Jacobs House of 1937. This was Wright's model house for the masses that he intended to be prototype for mass produced suburban housing in the 20th century, and we have the first example of it here in Madison. 

It's a national historic landmark among other things. Certainly it's designed by Wright. You say that's not vernacular architecture, except Wright intended it to be which is fascinating. But, what happened immediately, his Usonian experiment, as he called it, never really worked but was that local architects started emulating him rather closely. So the house that you see on the other side of the slide here right next to it was actually just around the corner from the Jacobs House built a year later by William Kaeser who is a local architect working under Wright's influence. That is an exact replica in floor plan. It doesn't quite have Wright's proportions or finesse, so to speak, but it's a virtually identical house, and Kaeser built many of these kinds of houses throughout his career. >> I guess there's not exactly a copyright on the general design concept of a house. >> No and Wright is kind of Wisconsin's native son. His architecture was emulated quite a lot. 

There was a pride in Wright's work, the fact he was from Wisconsin, and his style. The prairie elements in particular were emulated very, very closely at the time. So, even though the ranch house, the one-story house, and you're looking at another example of that here, was popular nationally, there were always these sort of local touches that you see. You see, in Wisconsin, many, many flat or low roofs, low-pitched roofs which seems to make no sense at all in terms of the vernacular weather, if you will. >> Exactly. But you see those. >> But, as I've argued, that really does reflect, I think, Wright's influence, the fact that he always built with flat, overhanging eaves, flat roofs with overhanging eaves in this sort of sheltered way. Wright's influence ran deep here in our common architecture in our suburban neighborhoods. >> And here's somebody who's thinking big picture. >> Well, I brought this in to sort of talk about our contemporary vernacular. 

Again, what you're looking at here is a plan for the Middleton Hills subdivision which is located not in Madison but on sort of the far west edge of the city in Middleton. And this seemingly it's a planned community, planned after principles of the new urbanism which is this return to a walkable city center. At the lower part of the slide you see the city center, and then houses are all within a half mile walking distance of the city center. So there's ample parks for people to go outside. The houses are crowded together like they would be in an urban neighborhood. So it's this attempt to create a sort of small town. In Middleton Hills case, their example is a Wisconsin small town, and stylistically, the buildings within Middleton Hills also seek to emulate that. >> How does that square with the prairie style? Isn't that kind of an oxymoron to be small town prairie? >> Well, it is. It's sort of an interesting thing. So what Middleton Hills tries to do is have this uneasy alliance between sort of the nature that you see with parks and the wetlands that are there as well as the density of an urban environment, as this slide suggests. 

But you can build in one of several styles. I think there are craftsman, bungalow, and prairie are the styles they talk about that you can build in. But, as these examples suggest, I always call them neo-farmhouse. >> Sure. >> So they're the kinds of houses that you would see, the Victorian style farmhouses that you would see throughout the driftless region that we were talking about, and so it's this broad idea of new urbanism or creating these new urban-like environments in these places, but it's widely popular but it has its local flare. And that's part of the new urbanist is that you're supposed to build after the local. So it really is a nice way to think about vernacular architecture which is always a blend of ideas from far afield and what was local. So, it's a really interesting blend, and I encourage everybody, even if you don't live around here, but to visit it because it's interesting to think about. >> Well, it's certainly been an interesting romp through a lot of vernacular architecture. Thanks for joining me today. 

>> Thank you. It was great to be here. >> Ann Andrzejewski, it's been a pleasure. >> Thanks. >> I'm Norman Gilliland, and I hope you can join me next time for University Place Presents.