McCarthy, Timothy C. and Katherine, House

About this property

The Timothy C. and Katherine McCarthy House is a grand 2.5-story Queen Anne-styled house a mile east of the capitol square in Madison, Wisconsin, United States, built in 1897 for prominent contractor McCarthy, whose firm would build much of the current Wisconsin State Capitol. In 2002 McCarthy's house was added to the National Register of Historic Places. Timothy C. McCarthy was born in 1853 - probably in Buffalo, New York - and came to Madison with his family the following year. He started as a stonemason and expanded his building skills until in 1883 he supervised construction of the Dane County Courthouse, a major project designed by Allan Conover and Lew Porter. Other projects he supervised are the UW's 1885-87 Science Hall, the 1888 St. Patrick's Church, the 1885-1886 UW Chemistry building, the 1891-93 UW Law building, the 1892-94 UW Armory/Gymnasium, and the 1897 Agricultural Dean's house. In that same year, McCarthy began building a new home for himself on Jenifer Street, from a design by Lew Porter. Porter had been a student at the UW studying civil engineering. He left his studies in his junior year to partner with his professor Allan Conover around 1885. They designed many of the buildings above that Tim McCarthy built: the Dane County Courthouse, Science Hall, the Chemistry Lab, and the Red Gym. McCarthy must have liked Porter's work because he hired him to design his own house. The house stands 2.5 stories, Queen Anne in style. McCarthy used it as both home and office, and he probably saw it as a showplace for the capabilities of his construction firm in residential architecture. The external foundation is rusticated rose-colored Superior sandstone, aiming to make the whole composition feel solid, as often done in Richardsonian Romanesque style. Above that rise walls clad in narrow clapboard, interrupted by various bays and ornaments. A full-width porch spans the front of the building, supported by graceful grouped Ionic columns, and with a balustrade above. Those columns place the design in the free classic subtype of Queen Anne style. Though the porch is symmetric, the protruding gable end above it is not, which fulfills the typical asymmetric façade of Queen Anne style. The gable ends are shingled - typical of Queen Anne, and some of the windows are recessed behind curved surfaces - a flourish more common in Shingle style. The roof is complex, with various dormers and cross-gables. Elaborate corbelled chimneys top the design. Flares at the eaves-line and the bottom of the siding help tie together the design. Other decorations are described in the NRHP nomination.

Location

Categories

Property data from the National Register of Historic Places, National Park Service (public domain).

Description adapted from Wikipedia under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 International License.

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