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Property Location
Property Features
A rare surviving stagecoach inn, this two-story clapboard house was a favorite stopping place for travelers on the plank road between Milwaukee and the territorial capital in Madison. Proprietor Nelson Hawks, known for the fine food and drink he served, also owned two early local mills and platted some of the land in town. His inn stood at the corner of Main and Genesee streets, but local preservationists moved it to this location in 1960 to save it from demolition.
Like the stagecoach inn preserved in Greenbush, the Hawks expresses a simple Greek Revival style. Instead of a classical portico, a one-story porch with simple Doric pillars and a balustraded deck spans the facade. The building originally had an ell housing a large kitchen and a one-story wing that was added soon after the inn was built. Both were gone by 1936. The front porch was missing, too, but the Hawks Inn Historical Society reconstructed it in the 1960s as a period-house museum. Later the organization built a kitchen wing that recalls but does not replicate the old one.
National And State Register Of Historic Places Listings
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COUNTY HIGHWAY F, 1/2 TO 1 MILE NORTH OF ALMA CENTER
74312
Located in Alma, Jackson County
15670 Blue Mound Rd.
79000118
Located in Brookfield, Waukesha County
