Property Record
3407 CIRCLE CLOSE
Architecture and History Inventory
| Historic Name: | William V. Kaeser House |
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| Other Name: | |
| Contributing: | Yes |
| Reference Number: | 5765 |
| Location (Address): | 3407 CIRCLE CLOSE |
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| County: | Dane |
| City: | Shorewood Hills |
| Township/Village: | |
| Unincorporated Community: | |
| Town: | |
| Range: | |
| Direction: | |
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| Quarter Section: | |
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| Year Built: | 1951 |
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| Additions: | |
| Survey Date: | 1979 |
| Historic Use: | house |
| Architectural Style: | Contemporary |
| Structural System: | |
| Wall Material: | Stone - Unspecified |
| Architect: | William V. Kaeser |
| Other Buildings On Site: | |
| Demolished?: | No |
| Demolished Date: |
| National/State Register Listing Name: | Shorewood Historic District |
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| National Register Listing Date: | 11/29/2002 |
| State Register Listing Date: | 7/19/2002 |
| 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, State Historic Preservation Office. KAESER'S OFFICE AND HOME. Madison architect Kaeser spent a career trying, as he put it in 1937, to "return [architecture] to its organic and creative basis." His own house and studio articulates this Organicist sensibility, revealing the debt of his mature style to Frank Lloyd Wright. Like Wright, Kaeser employed geometric modules--here, triangles--and repeated them everywhere, even cutting them into the eaves. He also followed Wright in turning the back of the house toward the street and opening the living room and kitchen onto a private, terraced back yard. And like Wright, he blended his building into the natural environment. He shaped the house to its sloping site, placing his studio at the lowest level, under the bedroom wing. He used walls of limestone and horizontal board-and-batten to harmonize with the surrounding woods, and he built the massive fireplace of the same limestone, thereby bringing the outdoors in. A stone garden that extends into the house further blurs the line between art and nature. |
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| Bibliographic References: | Buildings of Wisconsin manuscript. Kaeser Building List. |
| Wisconsin Architecture and History Inventory, State Historic Preservation Office, Wisconsin Historical Society, Madison, Wisconsin |