Windway

About this property

Windway is a historic residential property located north of Kohler, Wisconsin. It was built in 1937–1938 by Walter J. Kohler Jr., future governor of Wisconsin and an executive of the Kohler Company. Kohler commissioned architect William Deknatel, who had been an apprentice to Frank Lloyd Wright in the early 1930s, to design the house. The property was added to the National Register of Historic Places in 1988. The home is currently owned by Windway Capital Corporation and is used as a residence for artists participating in the John Michael Kohler Arts Center residency program. Windway Capital Corporation is a holding company created by Kohler's son, Terry Kohler, that wholly owns The Vollrath Company, North Sails, Southern Spars and Edgewater Power Boats. The house is an example of International Style of architecture. The house was designed to accommodate Mr. Kohler, his first wife Marie Celeste, their three children, and three servants. The house is two levels roughly equal in area but with different, overlapping footprints. The first level is roughly T-shaped with the main section running east–west with a guest room, study, play room, and dining room. The kitchen and laundry rooms extend to the north and the living room extends to the south. The garage is also on the first level but is separated from the main house with a drive-through from the driveway to the court. The second level is L-shaped in plan with the one leg extending north over the driveway and above the garage and the other leg running to the east. The servants rooms were above the garage. One of the children's bedrooms was above the drive-through with the remaining two children's bedrooms located east–west in the south leg. The master bedroom suite was at the east end of the second floor. The second floor did not extend over the kitchen area or over the living room with a roof deck over the living room. The house has a steel and concrete framework which supports the wood roof and floor decks. There are concrete-encased steel beams exposed above the roofline. One runs east–west above the second floor, two are above the section of the second floor that is above the drive-through, two run north–south above the first floor living room extension, and there are two each above the dining room and kitchen areas of the first floor. The exterior brick walls are primarily a veneer over the concrete except the north wall which is a load bearing masonry wall. The suspended roof construction allows a level interior ceiling and full height windows. All the wood on the exterior was originally tidewater red cypress. The brick is a "tan" colonial that varies in color from tan to a reddish-brown and was laid with a recessed header row. The original roof was a level tar and gravel construction designed to hold 2 inches of water to help with summer cooling. Two small raised pools are located at the south end of the living room and on the east side of the dining room.

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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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