| Additional Information: | A 'site file' exists for this property. It contains additional information such as correspondence, newspaper clippings, or historical information. It is a public record and may be viewed in person at the Wisconsin Historical Society, State Historic Preservation Office.
Set in a picturesque valley, the Schumann House is a rare example in Wisconsin of a true saltbox design, two stories tall in the front but just one in the back, with a side-gable roof and a long rear slope. Like many stone houses in northwestern Dane County, the building's walls are eighteen inches thick, made of locally quarried limestone rubble and trimmed with dressed stones. Frederick Schumann (or a mason who assisted him) laid the walls with a grid of beaded or raised mortar joints to create the formal look of cut stone known as "ashlar," and crowned the windows and doors with broad limestone lintels. The sun porch and bedroom additions to the south are recent.
Schumann, who in 1850 emigrated from Saxony, in northwestern Germany, was a carpenter and woodworker. He expressed pride in his fine craftsmanship by inscribing his initials and the date 1878 in the triangular lintel over the entry.
Resurveyed October 2012; visible changes include the residing of the south addition and the replacement of earlier 6-over-6 windows with newer 12-pane casement windows.
Obituary of one of the property owners: MADISON—John C. “Jack” Street, age 87, of Madison, died on Sunday, Aug. 6, 2017, at Agrace Hospice Care in Janesville. He was born in Chicago on April 3, 1930, son of The Rev. (later Rt. Rev.) Charles Larrabee Street and Louise (Rouse) Street, then of Sycamore, Ill. Burial will be in the family lot in Chicago’s Oak Woods Cemetery. He was preceded in death by his wife of 40 years, Eve Baker Street (1945-2014).
There was one non-academic accomplishment of which Professor Street was especially proud: the restoration of an 1878 stone salt-box house in Berry Township, northwest of Madison. Thanks to sheer luck he was able to purchase the fine old house—with considerable acreage and part of a small lake—for a very reasonable price in 1965. After much physical labor, and professional replacement of wiring, plumbing, etc., he moved into the house in 1966, and lived there (with his wife, after marriage in 1975) for over 30 years. In the meantime, with the help of the Wisconsin State Historical Society, he was able to get the building listed on the National Register of Historic Places; and in 1974 sold the lake property on his farm to the Dane County Parks Department for what has since then been called Indian Lake County Park. |
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