Property Record
711 N BRIDGE ST
Architecture and History Inventory
| Historic Name: | CHIPPEWA COUNTY COURTHOUSE |
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| Other Name: | Chippewa County Courthouse |
| Contributing: | |
| Reference Number: | 3170 |
| Location (Address): | 711 N BRIDGE ST |
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| County: | Chippewa |
| City: | Chippewa Falls |
| Township/Village: | |
| Unincorporated Community: | |
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| Year Built: | 1951 |
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| Additions: | 1953 1992 |
| Survey Date: | 19842021 |
| Historic Use: | courthouse |
| Architectural Style: | Art/Streamline Moderne |
| Structural System: | |
| Wall Material: | Concrete |
| Architect: | BERNIER AND KILP, GREEN BAY; Foeller, Schober, Berners, Safford, & Jahn |
| Other Buildings On Site: | |
| Demolished?: | No |
| Demolished Date: |
| National/State Register Listing Name: | Not listed |
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| National Register Listing Date: | |
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| Additional Information: | A 'site file' exists for this property. It contains additional information such as correspondence, newspaper clippings, or historical information. It is a public record and may be viewed in person at the Wisconsin Historical Society, Division of Historic Preservation. Projecting facade with two projecting entrance bays. WPA [Date Cnst:(CTY CTHSE SURVEY (CORNERSTONE)] At least since the late nineteenth century, designers of public buildings have favored classical architecture for its close association with republican values. But their interpretations of classicism have changed over the years. The opulent Beaux-Arts style found favor from the late nineteenth century into the early twentieth, with Chicago’s 1893 World’s Columbian Exposition popularized the gleaming porticoes and colonnades of the style. Americans came to expect that their courthouses and capitols should be cast in these idioms. But in the 1930s architects stripped away details, leaving only the formal symmetry and massing. Classical decoration such as festoons and acanthus leaves, round columns, and three-dimensional statuary gave way to the geometric or streamlined motifs of the Art Deco and Moderne styles: chevrons and zigzags, grooved or smooth pilasters, low-relief carving. This austere new form of classicism became so closely associated with the federal Public Works Administration that some architectural historians refer to a “PWA Moderne” style. Though the PWA was a New Deal agency, a product of the Depression, PWA Moderne design persisted for a time after World War II. In 1951, the Green Bay firm of Foeller, Schober, Berners, Safford, and Jahn designed the Chippewa County Courthouse in this stark but still unmistakably classical style. Along much of the length of the two-story limestone courthouse, smooth piers divide vertical bands of windows, which are split into two levels by spandrels carved with shells in low relief. In the entry bays on either end, bas-relief spandrels depict Native Americans and their first encounters with French-Canadian voyageurs. Feb. 2021: Addition constructed in 1992. |
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| Bibliographic References: | (A) Building inscription. (B) Buildings of Wisconsin manuscript. |
| Wisconsin Architecture and History Inventory, State Historic Preservation Office, Wisconsin Historical Society, Madison, Wisconsin |