Property Record
N2665 COUNTY HIGHWAY QQ
Architecture and History Inventory
| Historic Name: | Wisconsin Veterans Home Walls and Gates |
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| Other Name: | Wisconsin Veterans Home Walls and Gates |
| Contributing: | |
| Reference Number: | 73146 |
| Location (Address): | N2665 COUNTY HIGHWAY QQ |
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| County: | Waupaca |
| City: | |
| Township/Village: | Farmington |
| Unincorporated Community: | King |
| Town: | 22 |
| Range: | 11 |
| Direction: | E |
| Section: | 35 |
| Quarter Section: | SW |
| Quarter/Quarter Section: | NW |
| Year Built: | 1936 |
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| Additions: | |
| Survey Date: | 1995 |
| Historic Use: | fence/wall |
| Architectural Style: | NA (unknown or not a building) |
| Structural System: | Masonry |
| Wall Material: | Granite Stone |
| Architect: | |
| Other Buildings On Site: | |
| Demolished?: | No |
| Demolished Date: |
| National/State Register Listing Name: | Not listed |
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| National Register Listing Date: | |
| State Register Listing Date: |
| Additional Information: | A 'site file' (Wisconsin Veteran's Home) 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. Of the several Union army veterans’ organizations that emerged in the North after the Civil War, none was larger or stronger than the Grand Army of the Republic. Founded in 1866, the GAR did much to define America’s obligations to its war veterans, fighting for veterans’ pensions and for the commemoration of Memorial Day, among other causes. In the 1880s, Wisconsin’s legislature imposed a county tax to fund a relief program for disabled and destitute Civil War veterans; around the same time, the state required communities to house indigent ex-soldiers and their wives and widows somewhere other than the traditional poorhouse. Thus arose the Wisconsin Home for Veterans. The City of Waupaca donated land, state and federal governments provided funding, and the GAR provided administration. In the 1920s, the legislature opened the facility to veterans of the Spanish-American War, the Philippine Insurrection, and the Boxer Rebellion. By that time, the GAR was literally dying, and official control of the facility passed to the state. Located along a wooded ridge overlooking Rainbow Lake--one of the “Chain O’ Lakes”--the Wisconsin Home for Veterans is a picturesque community of neat clapboard cottages, many embellished with Queen Anne details. The houses lining Bragg and Wright avenues, built between 1890 and 1925, include small cottages, larger staff residences, and dormitories. William Waters of Oshkosh devised the model for the oldest houses. They are generally plain front-gabled structures, one-and-one-half stories tall, with gabled dormers along the slopes of their roofs. Decorative shingling in their gable ends, includes fishscales, semicircles, and other patterns. The integral front porches were later screened in so that the resident staff members might have a comfortable place to sit after dinner, perhaps even to sleep on hot summer nights. The one-story cottages along Wright Avenue, home to married veterans regardless of rank, are much smaller. Several have only three rooms, arranged front-to-back, shotgun style. Tiny screened porches project toward the street. Whereas the veterans and general staff had modest homes, around 1890 Walters designed a much grander house (Building 101, on Wright Avenue) for the administrative commandant, on the edge of the residential district, overlooking the lake. A one-story screened veranda wrapping around the southeast corner of the house and a three-story turret with a dramatic bell roof accentuate the house’s pronounced asymmetry. Notice, too, the building’s rich array of contrasting textures. The first story’s clapboard walls give way to staggered shingles on the upper stories; then, in the high pediment on the northeast corner, the shingles shift to a radiating pattern. Latticework in the pediments and cottage windows--small rectangular lights surrounding a larger pane in the upper sash--add to the elegance of Waters’ design. The historic veterans’ facility also includes a wooden chapel, constructed about 1890, and a hospital, built in 1929. The nondenominational chapel (Building 303, at the southeast corner of Marden and Mitchell avenues) is a simple one-story structure with a front-facing gable. A boxy three-stage steeple suggests the Queen Anne style, with fishscale shingles cladding the second stage and a pyramidal roof crowning the composition. The old hospital (Building 501, at the western end of Mitchell Avenue) is a sprawling Georgian Revival edifice, built of vermilion brick with red-tiled hipped roofs. A three-story central core is flanked by two-story blocks connected to the center by recessed hyphens, forming an H plan. Classical details include a denticulated cornice and balustrades atop the hyphens. The large hospital replaced a smaller wooden structure, signaling the home’s move toward a more institutional approach and appearance. After World War II, that trend continued, with the focus of the veterans’ center shifting away from private residences and toward hospital and long-term nursing care. Many old cottages were razed and replaced with large institutional structures. Today, most of the historic buildings (other than the hospital) lie north of Marden Avenue, separated from the postwar structures by grassy parks. |
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| Bibliographic References: | Buildings of Wisconsin manuscript. |
| Wisconsin Architecture and History Inventory, State Historic Preservation Office, Wisconsin Historical Society, Madison, Wisconsin |