Property Record
9234 N 60TH ST
Architecture and History Inventory
| Historic Name: | Richard Franke House |
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| Other Name: | "The Citation" |
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| Reference Number: | 226024 |
| Location (Address): | 9234 N 60TH ST |
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| County: | Milwaukee |
| City: | Brown Deer |
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| Year Built: | 1968 |
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| Additions: | |
| Survey Date: | 2013 |
| Historic Use: | house |
| Architectural Style: | Ranch |
| Structural System: | |
| Wall Material: | Board and Batten |
| Architect: | Ray Prell & Associates |
| Other Buildings On Site: | |
| Demolished?: | No |
| Demolished Date: |
| National/State Register Listing Name: | Not listed |
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| Additional Information: | The home was designed by Ray Prell & Associates and built by DM Builders. Another example of the home is located at 9441 N. 60th Street. Although terminating at its north end with a front-gabled, attached garage with a trapezoidal garage door, the main block of this Ranch house is side-gabled. While largely covered with vertical board-and-batten siding, stone veneer accents the lower-third of the home and which angles up at the south end to cover the entire single-story height. Windows are comprised of a pair of slider windows at the north end, with a tripartite grouping located between the garage and the entry. An extended flower box underscores the north slider windows. This is one of two examples of “The Citation,” that are located along the project length. The other, which is reversed in plan (and identified as “The Citation II”), is found at 9441 N. 60th Street (also surveyed). The design was done by Ray Prell of Ray Prell & Associates, Brookfield, Wisconsin, and the house was built by DM Builders. This example was one of three model homes completed in the spring of 1968 by DM Builders along the east side of N. 60th Street and within the Fairy Chasm Manor subdivison. The four-bedroom home was advertised as a “rambling ranch with huge family room,” for $21,900 (plus the lot cost). The home’s first owner was Richard Franke, who would later add a family room to the rear of the home in 1977. Ray Prell, a designer of homes for fifty years, was indeed a designer of note. Born in Stevens Point in 1930 as Ray Przybylski, his training started with a good high school program in architectural drafting and his father was a builder. He attended UW-Milwaukee for two years but quit to do remodeling and building work. His interest in design overcame and he started his own design firm, Ray Prell & Associates. Much of their work was doing model homes for various builders throughout the United States; however, they also did individual commissions for larger and more expensive homes. The firm was at their peak in the 1960s and 1970s (with twelve designers on staff), during which time his firm was named among the Top Ten Designers in the nation. Prell acknowledged that his firm dominated in the state as far as a home designing plan service. Prell retired in 2000. He estimates that houses produced from the plans his firm produced number anywhere between 30,000 and 60,000. |
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| Bibliographic References: | “See the Big 3. . . in Brown Deer”; Permit file for 9234 N. 60th Street, original permit (22 November 1967), family room addition (21 March 1977). Although plans/elevations for the home were not included in this file, both were in the file for 9441 N. 60th Street, which included the title block and the name of Ray Prell. Ray Prell, Founder and (now retired) designer at Ray Prell & Associates, Brookfield, WI, Phone interview with Traci E. Schnell, 11 October 2013, Notes on file at Heritage Research, Ltd., Menomonee Falls, WI “Architecture and History Survey: N. 60th ST.” WHS project number 13-1214/MI. September 2013. Prepared by Traci Schnell for Heritage Research Ltd. |
| Wisconsin Architecture and History Inventory, State Historic Preservation Office, Wisconsin Historical Society, Madison, Wisconsin |