4006 OLD STAGE RD

4006 OLD STAGE RD

Dane

Rutland

5

10

E

28

SE

SE

1845

1979

house

Greek Revival

Limestone

Graves, Sereno W.

No

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. See the "Stone Buildings of Rutland" site file too.

In the early 1840s, a group of settlers from Vermont and Maine arrived in the area that became the Town of Rutland. Among the newcomers was farmer Sereno W. Graves. As a young schoolteacher in Vermont, Graves had spent his summers learning stonemasonry. He arrived in Rutland in 1844 and became perhaps the area's most important nineteenth-century political leader, having held nearly every political office at one time or another. But his longest-lived legacy was the collection of well-crafted limestone buildings he constructed in Rutland, several of which have survived intact.

The most formal survivor is the Sereno Graves House, which he built for himself in 1846. It bears the distinctive hallmarks of the Greek Revival style, in particular the raked molding and the cornice returns at the gable ends. It took great skill to form fairly regular courses with irregularly sized limestone rubble and raised mortar joints and to shape openings and square corners with the rubble.

[Date Cnst:-1846] Sandstone exterior. Owner-built sig. stone Greek Revival residence. Home of sig. builder and local politician.

Buildings of Wisconsin manuscript.

Graves, Sereno W., House

Sep 29, 1982

Jan 01, 1989