Lake Mills Downtown Commercial Historic District
102-131 East Lake Street, 113-203 West Lake Street, 103-211 North Main Street, 101-202 South Main Street, Lake Mills, Jefferson County
Architects: John Hunzicker, Van Ryn & Lesser, A. Moorman & Co., Claude & Starck
The Lake Mills Downtown Commercial Historic District contains a group of historic streetscapes of nineteenth and early twentieth century commercial buildings that surround two sides of a triangular block known as the Commons Park and these buildings constitute the still intact historic business center of the city of Lake Mills. Individually, the 38 contributing buildings in the district are very good brick or limestone-clad examples of the Italianate, Queen Anne, Romanesque Revival, Richardsonian Romanesque Revival, Neo-Classical Revival, and Twentieth Century Commercial styles, and of the Commercial Vernacular form.
Several of these buildings are fine examples of the work of important Madison, Milwaukee, and St. Paul architectural firms, but a larger group was designed by Lake Mills architect/builders John Hunzicker and Edward N. Hitchcock, whose buildings are fully the equal of the works designed by their better known out-of-town counterparts. Collectively, these buildings have a significance that is even greater than the merit they possess individually because these are not just the most intact group of surviving historic buildings in Lake Mills that were associated with that community's historic retail stores and other service-oriented commercial enterprises; they make up a large percentage of all the buildings that have ever been associated with the city's commercial history. |