| Additional Information: | This house, although altered over the years from its original appearance, retains much of its original formal character, and now possesses much interesting detailing. Because of its commanding location immediately adjacent to the campus, and nearly facing Middle College, it is a significant landmark. It has been directly associated with the college throughout its life and the architectural changes which have occurred are intimately tied into personalities and events crucial to the history of the institution.
The house was built by Aaron Lucius Chapin, the first President of Beloit College, who commissioned Lucas Bradley of Racine to design it in 1851. Bradley was also the architect for North College (1854; c.f.), the First Congregational Church (1859-1862, NRHP, 1975), and made the design upon which Chapin based his design of South College (1958; c.f.). As built, the house was a two story transitional Greek Revival and Italianate, with formal Greek Revival facades, a Greek Revival entrance enframement with top light (and probably sidelights) and false parapets. However, the wide proportions, the hip roof, the eaves brackets and the shape of the window enframements were more in the Italianate mode. This version of the house was illustrated in the Wisconsin Magazine of History, in 1974-1975.
In 1871, just twenty years later, Chapin significantly enlarged and altered his house, thereby inccreasing the Italianate feeling of the structure. A large two story addition to the rear, a two story high bay window in the center of the new elongated south facade, a cupola (actually a clerestory) and some sort of covered front porch show in the 1874 Birdseye view of Beloit. Presumably the false pediments were removed at this time.
In 1937, during Irving Maurer's presidency, Beloit College received thehosue as a gift from Miss Ellen Chapin, and it was extensiively remodelled and modernized to serve as the President's home. At tis time, many of the Italianate embellishments were removed and now the only vestiges are the roof line, the high ornate chimneys and the bay windows (there is also a bay window on the north facade). Corner and central pilasters on the front facade, together with the Greek Revival entrance (not necessarily the original) gave the house an almost Federal air. In the later 1940s, during Carey Croneis' presidency, the last major alteration was the addition of the diminuative Doric portico with full pediment at the entrance which simultaneously returned the house closer to its Greek Revival origins and related to the remodelled versions of Middle College, North College, and South College, all of which are similarly simplified and "classicized" in the late 1930s.
The observatory has been removed.
Aaron Lucius Chapin was the first president of Beloit College (1850-1886). He was a teacher and writer on Economics and his department of History and Civil Polity assigned to him in 1853 is said to be the root of the Economics, Sociology and Political Science and History departments of the college today. Chapin died in 1892. Robert Chapin, the only son of A.L. Chapin, became part of the faculty as a professor of Political Economy at Beloit in 1892. He was an alumnus of Beloit College, and lived in the house all his life. |
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| Bibliographic References: | (A) Historical Sites and Points of Interest in Rock County, Wisconsin. Rock County Tourism Council, 5/1994.
(B) Helon Patton, "Lucas Bradley, Carpenter, Builder, Architect," Wisconsin Magazine of History, Vol. 58, No. 2, Winter 1974-75, pp. 111-112.
(C) Beloit Tax Rolls, RCHS Archives.
(D) "Beoit/1874," Birdseye View, Beloit College Archives.
(E) Robert H. Irrmann, Beloit College Archivist, October, 1981. |
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