| 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.
EDWIN WOLFGRAM WAS THE BUILDER. FALSE FRONT W/STEEPED CENTER PORTION. STOVEWOOD CONSTRUCTION SIDES W/CLAPBOARD FRONT & REAR WALLS. 18 INCH CEDAR LOGS UP TO 16 IN DIAM LAID IN MORTAR. ORIGINALLY W/ E & W FRAME WINGS & NEWER REAR KITCHEN WING. BRICK CHIMNEYS BUILT FOR MECIKALSKI BROTHERS JOHN AND LAWRENCE.
Served as general store, saloon, and rooming house. OTHER PHOTO CODES INCLUDE OLD WORLD WISCONSIN, AND 3077-90.
This is a rare intact example of stovewood construction, a singularly American form of folk construction. Stovewood construction occurred primarily in Wisconsin, Michigan, and Canada’s St. Lawrence Valley. It was cheap, required only small trees, and allowed a lone worker to erect a well-insulated building. The origins of the method are unclear, but scholars have suggested that French Canadian loggers pioneered it and passed it on to the German and Polish immigrants who built most of Wisconsin’s seventy or so documented stovewood buildings between 1880 and 1910. The few stovewood structures that exist in Europe are apparently the work of immigrants returning from North America.
John Mecikalski emigrated from East Prussia with his parents and came to Wisconsin in the mid-1870s. When he married, he bought 160 acres of land in the Town of Schoepke and created this combination general store, saloon, and boarding house. Here he served the transient lumberjacks of the Northwoods and the settled community of mostly Polish farmers.
Stovewood construction--also called the “cord wood,” “wood block,” and “stackwall” method--uses uniform lengths of stovewood that are stacked with the butt ends facing out. The mass of the stacked logs creates completely self-supporting walls that serve as framing. Unlike log buildings, requiring long, straight timber, these use waste wood. When Mecikalski built this structure, he used 18-inch lengths of cedar, some as large as 16 inches in diameter, and laid them in a bed of lime mortar. To make the building more imposing (and conventional looking), he added a clapboard false-front with a stepped parapet. The side walls remain exposed, enabling visitors to observe the technique.
The Mecikalski building is unusually large for a stovewood structure, measuring 24 by 33 feet. Two one-story wings flank the building, enhancing its amplitude. Large display windows light the interior from either side of the glazed-and-paneled double-doors. At the second story, Mecikalski gave his commercial building one elegant touch, a transom surrounded by stained-glass panes at the center of a tripartite window.
In 1985, the Kohler Foundation (which specializes in the restoration of Wisconsin folk art) rescued the buildings from near ruin, restored the main structure, and reconstructed the one-story wings. |
|---|
