Old World WIsconsin

Koepsell Farm House(1859)

The Koepsells were a Pomeranian (German) family who migrated to Washington County in 1857.  The house was constructed in the same way as the Kilbourntown House, heavy timber framing with brick infill, except for this was not sided, the timbers and brick are the very outside of the structure.  This shows the difference between country settling and city/in town settling.  While similar construction methods tie the two together, Benjamin Church would have been more concerned with appearance being in the city closer to his neighbors and holding a higher social position.

David Handlin writes a good chunk about why early settler architecture (most of what is seen at Old World Wisconsin) varies so much from building to building as well as the lack of refinement.  He writes this about seventeenth and eighteenth century settlers, however the reasoning hold true for the examples shown at Old World Wisconsin, which were mostly from the nineteenth century.  Settlers were coming over from different backgrounds, moving to different areas, and were often few and far between.  Farm houses and other country buildings were usually built as temporary, the families not knowing how long they could/would be staying.  If they ended up staying there indefinitely, they added on as the family grew (Handlin, 14-15, 22).

This is what happened at the Lowell Damon House in Wauwatosa, WI.  The main square in the plan below is the original house, then the front larger rectangle was added later on as one of Lowell's sons started a family.

Benjamin Church House (Kilbourntown House)

On our second trip out in Milwaukee, we visited the Kilbourntown House, Built by Benjamin church in 1844.  The house was originally built at Court St on Fourth St here in Milwaukee.  It now resides in Estabrook Park on Capitol Dr.

It is a whitewashed plank sided house with four columns guarding the front entrance, a clear example of Greek Revival style.  Although from the outside it looks like a modest, one story home, the front facade eludes to the grand nature of the house.  The two windows symmetrically flanking the front entry share a common datum line at with the top of the door, making them taller than standard windows, and stretching out the visual height.  This height is then repeated inside with the ~11' ceiling in the main parlor.

The walls of the house were built heavy-timber framing with brick infill as insulation.  The walls were then plastered over inside and sided wood plank sided on the outside.

Milwaukee Public Museum

Native American Architecture

We are beginning the class chronologically with Native American Architecture.  We took a trip to the Milwaukee Public Museum to look at the outstanding Native American exhibit, with it's wonderfully crafted and presented dioramas of the different types of architecture from pre-colonist America.  The types displayed include: the Earth Lodge of the prairies and Northwest, the Pueblo of the Southwest, the Tipi of the Great Plains, the Longhouse of the Northeast, and the widespread Wigwam of the Northeast.  I chose the Earth lodge to catalog and studie more in depth.


The Earth Lodge is dated back to 300 A.D. (Walker 22).  Earth Lodges of the Southeast prairie, which is the type on display at the museum (shown here) were used in much the same way as the Longhouses of the Northeast.  They were communal dwellings housing upwards of 40 people in a 40' diameter circular room, hard to imagine by todays standards.  The only privacy allotted was from willow matt or leather partitions hung between each "house" where each family slept (Walker 23).

As diagramed, the lodges were structured by to octagonal rings of heavy logs.  The earth was dug out below them anywhere from 4 to 8 feet to utilize the warmth given off by the earth as well as to minimize draft.  The lodges were skinned in sod, pine needles, willow brush, and so on.  This skin was quite thick, especially on the Kalapoya Tribe style because they would walk on the roof and enter through the smoke hole at the top.  The Mandan Tribe of the Southeast prairie put there entrance on the side(shown in the sketch below).

GOOOOOOOOOOOOD MORNING VIET...uh...Internet

Helllooo Internet!

My name's Erich, I'm an Interior Architecture + Design (IA+D) student at Milwaukee Institute of Art and Design (MIAD).  My fellow classmate Aaron and I get the exciting task of blogging with you our experiences in our Architecture in the Field (AitF) class this semester.  It is a studio class, but we thought it'd be fun to go more in depth into the history of what we look at, past the technical lessons gained.  Hope you enjoy, firsts posts coming very soon!

This blog - aitf-erich.blogspot.com
Aaron's blog - aitf-aaron.blogspot.com

And yes, we DO like acronyms.