Property Record
3706 NAKOMA RD
Architecture and History Inventory
| Historic Name: | Old Spring Tavern |
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| Other Name: | |
| Contributing: | |
| Reference Number: | 38660 |
| Location (Address): | 3706 NAKOMA RD |
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| County: | Dane |
| City: | Madison |
| Township/Village: | |
| Unincorporated Community: | |
| Town: | |
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| Year Built: | 1854 |
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| Additions: | |
| Survey Date: | 1983 |
| Historic Use: | inn |
| Architectural Style: | Greek Revival |
| Structural System: | |
| Wall Material: | Brick |
| Architect: | Charles Morgan |
| Other Buildings On Site: | |
| Demolished?: | No |
| Demolished Date: |
| National/State Register Listing Name: | Old Spring Tavern |
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| National Register Listing Date: | 1/21/1974 |
| State Register Listing Date: | 1/1/1989 |
| National Register Multiple Property Name: |
| 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, Division of Historic Preservation-Public History. Map Code is 070928320145. J IN THE PHOTO CODES IS SHORT FOR JMD. The Charles E. Morgan House is also a contributing building in the Nakoma Historic District. Madison Landmark: 3/20/1972. Charles Morgan, a prominent local merchant, constructed this house out of clay bricks made on site. The framing is oak. He retained the house until 1860. James W Gorum used the house as The Groom's Spring Hotel until his death in 1881. His wife Helen may have added the two story kitchen. She was known for her baked goods and operated a bakery business from the house until approximately 1895. She died in 1916. Mr. and Mrs. W.T. Stephens purchased the house in 1939 and used the house as a Red Cross work station. Morgan felt this location was a good stopping point on the stagecoach road between Madison and Monroe and ran an inn here for six years. The stage ran through what is now the house's backyard and the house was originally oriented for that street. After 1925, when the Gorham family sold the house to Professor James G. Dickson, the two-story front porch was added and the orientation of the frond and back switched. Stagecoach drivers and mail carriers once welcomed the sight of this tavern along the old Madison-Monroe road leading to southwestern Wisconsin's lead-mining district. The road passed just to the northwest of the house. The tavern building was built in 1854 as a part of a gentleman’s farm beside a large spring, now a duck pond draining into Lake Wingra. Around 1860, James W. Gorham turned it into Gorham's Hotel, which became a favorite watering hole for Civil War soldiers based at Camp Randall. In 1895, Gorham closed the hotel and made the building his private residence. The original front is now the rear of the building. Charles Morgan, the gentleman farmer, constructed the two-story inn on a sloping site, so that the basement level was exposed, creating the illusion of a three-story building on that side. A separate entrance to the basement later provided access to the taproom. Morgan himself made the reddish-pink bricks, using clay from the back slope of the property. He laid the bricks three layers thick at the first floor and two layers thick at the second and third stories, fashioning a handsome building in the popular Greek Revival style. The side-gabled roof with cornice returns at the gable ends and the flat stone lintels above the windows are hallmarks. In 1923, Professor James G. Dickson, a well-known plant pathologist, purchased the house and reoriented it to the newly built Nakoma Road by replacing an old porch with the present three-story assemblage with square columns and geometric railings. Dickson modernized the house, adding central heat, electricity, and the stone wall along Nakoma Road. The kitchen was turned into a garage. Mrs. Dickson maintained that Frank Lloyd Wright supervised the stone work. |
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| Bibliographic References: | At Home in Nakoma: A Walking Tour, Madison Trust for Historic Preservation, 1998. Buildings of Wisconsin manuscript. March 19, 1855 letter in WHS archives from Charles E. Morgan to brother-in-law Silas J. Seymour addresses continuing construction. 7/3/1976 Capital Times article quoted May 1855 letter that the family was in the home, but sleeping in the barn as the roof wasn't on yet. Sandstone and Buffalo Robes: Madison's historic buildings, third edition, 1975. |
| Wisconsin Architecture and History Inventory, State Historic Preservation Office, Wisconsin Historical Society, Madison, Wisconsin |