The Stanelle Farmhouse is located in a rural area one mile north of the unincorporated community of Forest Junction and about six miles northwest of the city of Brillion. It is a two-story, square Italianate residence with one-story side wing. Both sections are finished with clapboards or with composition wood siding that replicates the original. The roof of the main block is crowned with a square cupola. The house and wing were both completed in 1887.

The Stanelle Farmhouse is significant as an excellent and intact example of Italianate residential design, incorporating boxy form, front porches with beveled square posts, front door with sidelights and transom, polygonal bay windows, and broad eaves with paneled cornice boards and scrolled brackets, distinguishing elements of that style. The house’s elaborate exterior ornamentation and interior woodwork is particularly fine and shows the influence of the Stick style. Stick style flourishes include the heavy, turned balusters and spindle friezes that embellish the porches, the window hoods with stylized consoles and inset panels with carved geometric motifs, and the gable end kingpost truss with pendant drop, inset with triangular, scroll-sawn panels. On the interior, the first and second-floor staircases exhibit heavy, turned newel posts, while tall wood baseboards, surrounds with fluted pilasters and bull’s-eye corner blocks, and four-panel wood doors are found throughout the house. Hand-stenciling enriches the walls in two second-floor rooms.

Johann Gottlieb Stanelle (1834-1923) and Johanna Beata (Franzke) Stanelle (1838-1925) were both born in Silesia, then a part of Prussian Germany. The couple married in 1859 and immigrated to the U.S. in 1862. The Stanelles initially settled in Waukesha County, working on a farm there until they were able to purchase 80 acres in Brillion Township, Calumet County, in 1865. The present farmhouse was built for them on this property in 1887. Gottlieb Stanelle was hailed as a “progressive” farmer, who employed up-to-date scientific farming methods and shared what he learned to benefit his neighbors. Stanelle was a successful and prosperous farmer, as his high-style Italianate house attests. He was an early convert to dairying and embraced the role of “thresherman.” Between about 1850 and 1940, agricultural production in the Midwest evolved from labor carried out with hand tools and a team of horses to a fully-mechanized process. The mechanical thresher was an expensive yet labor-saving device that sped up threshing, increasing farmers’ profits. The thresherman purchased a mechanical thresher and traveled from farm to farm, threshing for his neighbors. He played a pivotal role as the mediator between farmers employing traditional farming methods, and modern mechanized agricultural production, facilitating this transition. The Stanelle Farmhouse remains in the Stanelle family.

It is a private home and is not open to the public. Please respect the privacy of the property owner