Wahle-Laird House

About this property

The Wahle-Laird House is a Classical Revival home built in 1904 in Marshfield, Wisconsin by Dr. Henry Wahle. It was later the boyhood home of Melvin Laird, U.S. Senator and Secretary of Defense, among others. Marshfield's "Pleasant Hill" neighborhood, which includes the Wahle-Laird house, was a prestigious place to build a home starting in the 1880s. Many of the early houses were Queen Anne style, and some of those survive today. One of the prominent residents was William Duncan Connor, a lumberman whose public service culminated in serving as Lieutenant Governor of Wisconsin under Robert M. La Follette from 1907 to 1909. W.D.'s large house stood on Cherry Street on the lot that Faith Lutheran Church now occupies. In 1904 Henry Wahle, a physician and surgeon, had the house pictured built across Cherry Street from Connor's home. It replaced an earlier home on the lot, and was in a new style, different from the rambling Queen Anne homes in the neighborhood. Its shape is a compact cube with a hip roof with broad eaves, the same as the American Foursquare style that was popular at the time, but the decoration is largely Classical Revival style. The front view is symmetric, with the front door in the center. Around that door is a raised portico supported by square columns and pilasters topped with Corinthian capitals decorated with acanthus leaves. On top of the portico is a balcony edged with a low balustrade, surrounding a bay window. The walls are clad in narrow weatherboard. The eaves are supported by modillions. Gabled dormers with cornice returns emerge from the hip roof, and the front one has a balustrade that echoes the one on the portico beneath it. At the top of the hip roof is a widow's walk, again with a balustrade. Behind that rises a large chimney. Inside the front door is a vestibule, which leads to a reception hall with cherry walls and a coffered ceiling. From there, cherry columns flank the opening into the living room which spans the south side of the house and has a large brick fireplace. The dining room has oak wainscot topped with a plate rail, designed in an Arts and Crafts style. The staircase at the middle back of the house leads to the second floor, with four bedrooms, and the stair leads on up to the third floor attic. A hatch in the attic ceiling gives access to the widow's walk on the roof. Along with local architectural significance, the house was placed on the NRHP for state and local significance in the area of social history, for its association with the Laird family. In 1923, W. D. Connor bought this house across the street as a gift for his daughter Helen Connor Laird and her husband, the Reverend Melvin Robert Laird. Laird was the pastor of First Presbyterian Church, which the Connors attended when he and Helen married ten years before. They had moved to Illinois and Nebraska, but moved back to Marshfield in 1924 with their first two children, just across the street from Grandpa Connor.

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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