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Summary
Agnes and Ruth Lenfestey Mark House
1336 Ridgeway Boulevard, De Pere, Brown County
Architect: John C. Tilleman
Date of Construction: 1963
Situated on a prominent corner parcel, the one-story-tall Agnes Lenfestey and Ruth Lenfestey Mark House was built in 1963 and it is one of only two architect-designed Modern Movement single-family residences known to have been built in the city of De Pere in the 1950s and early 1960s. The clients were 88-year-old Mrs. Agnes Hurlbut Lenfestey, who had been living for many years in a very large, still-extant late nineteenth century Shingle Style house located some 10 blocks to the west on N. Broadway, and her daughter, Mrs. Ruth Lenfestey Mark, who was then sharing the N. Broadway house with her mother. By 1962, both women had lost their husbands, but the Hurlbut and Lenfestey families were socially prominent ones and both women were still active in social and civic circles in both De Pere and Green Bay.
Unusual circumstances arose in that year that prompted the two to consider moving to a smaller, more easily managed one-story house. To design it they choose John C. Tilleman, a young Green Bay architect who had opened his own practice in Green Bay in 1956. Their site was a spacious one and the house Tilleman designed for it consisted of a rectilinear plan front-gable-roofed main block that contained a living room, dining room, kitchen, den, three bedrooms and two bathrooms. Placed next to the house was a two-car gable-roofed garage block of similar design that was connected to the house by a covered breezeway, and both the house and garage were clad in a light grey concrete brick that was manufactured by the F. Hurlbut Co. of Green Bay, a family-owned concern. The design of the house, with its shallow-pitched roofs, broad transom lights in the gable ends, and exposed beam ends, reflects the influence of California houses of the 1950s that were pioneered by architects working for developer Joseph Eichler and it is the only house of this type in De Pere.
It is a private home and is not open to the public.
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Designations
State & National Registers of Historic Places
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Agnes and Ruth Lenfestey Mark House Listed in the National Register of Historic Places
Wednesday, September 27, 2023
The Wisconsin Historical Society announces the listing of the Agnes and Ruth Lenfestey Mark House in the National Register of Historic Places on September 11, 2023.
