Wisconsin's Own

The houses profiled in Wisconsin's Own are a mix of public buildings you may have visited and private homes you've been hoping for an invitation to explore. These homes are representative of the varied architectural styles in Wisconsin, from an Italianate along the Mississippi and an interpretation of a sixteenth-century northern Italian villa overlooking Lake Michigan to an Adirondack-style camp in the North Woods and a fourteen-bedroom Georgian Revival mansion on Lake Geneva. The Prairie School is represented, with examples by Frank Lloyd Wright and his mentor Louis Sullivan.

Richly illustrated with the photography of Zane Williams complemented by historical images and watercolors and line drawings by the authors, Wisconsin's Own offers an intimate tour of residential treasures that have endured the test of time.

Wisconsin's Own was generously funded by the Jeffris Family Foundation of Janesville, committed to funding projects that preserve Wisconsin's cultural history through the preservation of regionally and nationally important buildings and decorative arts projects.

“A richly detailed, generously illustrated study of historic, opulent Wisconsin homes. This is not a pretty coffee-table book. With its clear, intelligent essays and color photography, it is the hardbound equivalent of a friendly and knowing docent walk through theses manses.”

—Jim Higgins, Milwaukee Journal Sentinel

“Wisconsin’s Own: Twenty Remarkable Homes is so visually and intellectually stunning that you can forget the iPad or Kindle. You’ll want to hold this exhaustively researched book in your hands. It’s easy to lose hours savoring the photos, detailed historic images, and informative text. Many people think the state’s architectural legacy begins and ends with Frank Lloyd Wright. Milwaukee architects-cum-authors M. Caren Connolly and Louis Wasserman prove them wrong. They studied 1,500 residences to produce this private tour of the state’s 20 most architecturally and historically significant homes. The pedigrees of these homes—built between 1854 and 1939—derive from the industrial magnates and celebrities who once owned them. A must-see for lovers of historic homes.”

—Mary Van de Kamp Nohl, Milwaukee Magazine

“The domiciles are artfully yet simply represented with 380 color and black-and-white images. The book is highly readable from cover to cover but will also offer new information and inspiration to readers who wish to browse. Sidebars provide concise answers to questions about architectural styles and architects. Beautiful images of the homes, their rooms, and architectural details can be found on every page.”

—Valerie Nye, Library Journal

“Each of these indeed remarkable homes is presented in detail with stunning color illustrations, which include Zane Williams’s new photography of each impeccably preserved site, historical photographs of the homes from the time of their first residents, maps, and exquisite full-color elevations and plans hand drawn by Connolly and Wasserman. The drawings are so impressive—serving both as nuggets of information and tiny works of art—that one is grateful for and delighted by the appendix that describes the authors’ drawing process in full detail. The images alone that grace Wisconsin’s Own are enough to keep this book placed prominently on the coffee table, but the illuminating, well-researched, and pleasantly narrative text will keep readers from simply flipping through it like a picture book.”

—Kara Mason, ForeWord Reviews