| Additional Information: | A 'site file' (Wisconsin Home for the Feebleminded) 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 State Historical Society, Division of Historic Preservation.
Rough stone lintels linked by rough stone belt courses; projecting entrance bay with deck roofed open entrance supported by capped brick piers; decorative brick work along top of elevations; added two-story stairway bays.
Constructed from the original design for the dormitory buildings drawn by John Charles in 1896, Cottage #10 exhibits the hip roof, the hipped roof dormers and symmetrical facade arrangements of a very simplified Georgian Revival design suitable for utilitarian turn of the century public institutional architecture, changing the original design by Charles from gabled to hip roofed dormers and from a gabled portico to a decked roof portico. Sandstone window sills, coursings, belt courses, water table and foundation contrasting with the red brick further characterize the structure.
Part of the historic institutional care complex now known as the Northern Wisconsin Center for the Developmentally Disabled, Cottage #10 is architecturally significant as an excellent representative of institutional architecture as constructed at the turn of the century.
The Wisconsin Home for the Feebleminded was established by the state legislature in 1895 which appropriated $100,000 to purchase land and construct suitable buidlings. The first resident was admitted in June of that year. In 1923, the name was changed to the Northern Center for the Developmentally Disabled.
This building was probably constructed in 1908, and may have originally been used as a custodial building. A 1907 lesgislative appropriation provided for the construction of two dorms and a custodial building. Insurance bids for this building were made in 1909, indicating a 1908 construction date.
This building is of significant historical interest to the State of Wisconsin because it is part of the historic development of the Wisconsin Home for the Feebleminded. The creation of the Wisconsin Home for the Feebleminded established the State's commitment to the care of the developmentally disabled.
RELATED BUILDINGS: outbuildings (11/33, 34, 36, 37), residence (15/33), cottages (15/21, 22, 24, 26, 28, 30, 34, 36), admin/chapel (15/23, 31, 37). Was demolished as part of DOA project #8911-14 likely in 1990. But it is also shown as being demolished in the late 1980s according to the book "Island of Refuge" page #144. That book says that the Cottage was closed for patients in 1983. dormitory |
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| Bibliographic References: | (A) Wisconsin Blue Book (Madison: State of Wisconsin, 1909), p. 654-655.
(B) "Building Inventory," Northern Wisconsin Center for the Developmentally Disabled, (Eau Claire: Department of Health and Social Services), unpublished statistics.
(C) A History of the State Board of Control of Wisconsin and the State Institutions, 1849-1939, (Madison, Wisconsin: State Board of Control, 1939), pp. 179-180.
(D) Chippewa Falls (WI) Herald 20 March, 1896 and 1 April, 1896.
(E) Chippewa County Wisconsin Past and Present, vol. I (Chicago, 1913), pp. 289-290. |
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