1-2 Thorstrand Rd
Madison, WI, USA

Thorstrand

Thorstrand is a historic estate located in Madison, Wisconsin. It was listed on the National Register of Historic Places in 1980 and on the State Register of Historic Places in 1989.


History

Originally 50 acres (20 ha) of cornfield, the land was purchased in the 1890s by Magnus Swenson (1854-1936), a Norwegian who immigrated to America at age 14, and made his way from working as a blacksmith's helper to a career as a chemical engineer, an internationally known inventor, businessman and humanitarian. Among his many achievements, Swenson patented over 200 machines and processes, built hydroelectric dams on the Wisconsin River, and founded the Norwegian-American Steamship Lines.

Magnus Swenson named the property “Thorstrand” (which means “Thor’s Beach” in Norwegian) after the place where he grew up in Norway. The road from University Ave through this land still bears the name Thorstrand Rd.

Magnus, his wife Annie and their four daughters, lived near the capitol square in Madison and would make regular trips to the property to picnic and plant a variety of trees, until 1922, when they had two Mediterranean Revival style homes built there, designed by Madison Architects Law and Law. One house was for Magnus and Annie Swenson (#2 Thorstrand Rd.), the other for his married daughter, Mary Swenson North (#1 Thorstrand Rd).

Over the years, some of the land was sold. After Mary Swenson North died in 1977, the remaining 15.29 acre estate was sold to the City of Madison in 1978, to be preserved as an addition to “Marshall Park”, for use as a passive recreation area. When it was learned that the homes would likely be demolished, they were declared Madison Historic Landmarks, protecting them from such a fate.

The homes were subsequently sold to individuals, but the land continues to be owned by the city and a portion associated with each home is leased to the homeowner through a 99-year land lease agreement. Mary Swenson North's daughter, Mary North O’Hare, bought back her mother's home, and it has remained in the family since that time. In 2011, Mary North O’Hare died, and at the time of this writing, (September 2018) the home had just been put on the market for sale.

National Register of Historic Places - Thorstrand

Statement of Significance:

The Magnus Swenson house and the Mary North house are significant primarily for their association with Magnus Swenson, a nationally significant Norwegian American figure, and "one of Wisconsin's most versatile and colorful citizens.

Magnus Swenson (1852-1936) emigrated from Norway to Janesville, Wisconsin in 1867 at the age of fourteen. According to his obituary in the Wisconsin State Journal, "his was the Horatio Alger life of an immigrant boy who worked his way to become a chemist, inventor, administrator, capitalist and builder. -'' He first became well known in Madison through the presentation of his University of Wisconsin thesis "The Chemical Analysis of Madison Well Waters," in which he contended that 96% of Madison's well water was contaminated and unfit to drink. The Common Council asked Swenson to set up a small testing station on the university campus to monitor the quality of the city's well water (this station has since been replaced by the State Laboratory of Hygiene). After he graduated in 1880 with a degree in engineering, Dean Henry of the Department of Agriculture appointed him the second faculty member of that new department. In that position, he began to study the refinery of sugar from sorghum, a study which attracted national attention because of the scarcity and high cost of sugars imported from the Philippines and Cuba.

As a result of his work, he was asked to manage a large sugar refinery in Texas and spent the next several years as a consultant in sugar refining throughout the South. In Fort Scott, Kansas he worked out a special chemical process which made the refining of sugar from sorghum so successful that he was hailed throughout the nation as "the Eli Whitney of sugar," He won international attention when the U.S. government tried to prohibit him from patenting the process because he was employed by the government for a short time. After a lengthy dispute which was battled even on the floors of Congress, Swenson won his right to patent his invention.

Swenson then founded the Fort Scott Foundry and Machine Works (latter the Walburn Swenson Company) to research, develop and manufacture multiple-effect evaporators and other machines for the sugar industry. In the 1880s he branched out to developing an ore concentrator for the mining industry, and machines for the processing of salt, caustic soda, paper pulp, glue and fertilizers among others. He developed a round cotton baler, a feat which had been attempted unsuccessfully for 50 years before, during this period he patented over 200 machines and processes, including such basic equipment as the surface condenser, spray separator, heat interchanges and centrifuges. His combination of mechanical ability, chemical knowledge, and practicality (his motto was "Save the Waste"), insured him of an almost instant fortune, so that by the year 1900 he could retire from the industry and return to Madison a rich man,

In Madison, he began a series of exciting capital investments. He built the hydroelectric power dams on the Wisconsin River at Kilborn and Prairie du Sac, the first great hydroelectric developments west of Niagara Falls, an enterprise which earned him another nickname — "the Electricity King." He was one of the organizers and later the American president of the Norwegian-American steamship Lines. In Madison, he founded and became president of the U.S. Sugar Beet Company on the east side (now Garver Feed and Supply) and was for a long time on the Board of Directors of the First National Bank.

He was active not only in business, but in humanitarian endeavors, also. During WWI he served as the federal food administrator for the state and as the chairman for the Wisconsin Council for Defense. After the war, Herbert Hoover sent him to Europe as the post-war director of food supplies in northern Europe. He was one of the promoters of a chemical engineering department at the University of Wisconsin and served as chairman of the Board of Regents for ten years. He also was an active promoter of the first University Extension system in the United States, a progressive concept embodied in the slogan "the boundaries of the campus are the boundaries of the state." He served as chairman of the building commission for the new state capitol and was for many years the president of the national Norwegian-American Association. In 1918 Woodrow Wilson selected Swenson to visit Mount Vernon as the representative of Norwegians of American birth.

According to one commemorative article, Magnus Swenson had a dream from the time he was a student at the University to build a home on the shores of Lake Mendota. When he was living in Chicago in the 1890s, he bought fifty acres of cornfield on the lake which was to later become his estate. Through the years the family planted thousands of trees on "the Farm" so that today it is a mature woodlot. In 1922 he commissioned the Madison architectural firm of Law and Law to design two large houses for his estate. James and Edward Law's firm was the most active architectural firm in Madison in the 1920s. The firm was known for its residential designs in traditional modes. Drawing heavily from European forms of ornament for the exterior detail, their domestic designs were often set out on a modern, open interior plan. The firm was also known for its commercial design work, including the Tenney Building, the Wisconsin Power and Light Building, and collaborative work on the Harry S. Manchester Department Store.