Jul 05, 2009
August Cornelius Larson House
The August Cornelius Larson House is a Prairie Style house built in 1911 two miles southwest of the capitol in Madison, Wisconsin. In 1994 the house was added to the National Register of Historic Places as one of Madison's finest Prairie Style houses. August Larson was born in 1875 on a farm in Wiota, fifty miles southwest of Madison. After finishing a B.A. in classics at Coe College in Cedar Rapids in 1903, he became Wisconsin manager for Central Life Assurance. Success there led him to be the secretary of the National Association of Life Underwriters. In 1911 August and his wife Ella had this house built. The house has two stories, with the first clad in brick and the second in stucco. It is a textbook example of Prairie Style, with the broad eaves, balcony, and string courses emphasizing the horizontal, with the grouped windows, with geometric designs in leaded glass in many of the windows. Two window groups on the second floor are arranged as unusual triangular bays. The balusters of the balcony rail are boards with a diamond cut-out. The main front door is golden oak with a leaded glass window, flanked by sidelights. Inside is a central foyer with quarter-sawn oak trim and a staircase to the second floor with newel posts and the diamond shape repeated. The first floor contains the living room with a tiled, oak-mantled fireplace, the dining room with its own fireplace, built-in china cabinets, and a plate rail on the wall. The first floor also contains a study, sun room, kitchen, bathroom, and guest bedroom. Upstairs are three bedrooms and an apartment. The house is generally credited to Louis Claude and Edward Starck because of many similarities to other houses they designed at the time, but no proof remains. (The dark red brick appears to be identical to that of their Collins house on Gorham.) August served as a director of Commercial Trust Company and later President of Randall Bank. He served on the state board of the YMCA. The Larsons lived in the house until 1940. Joseph Endres bought the house after the Larsons and rented it out. At some point it was remodeled into apartments, splitting the central foyer so that half of it held a kitchen. By 1991 the inside had been remodeled into four apartments. Then new owners converted the house back to a residence with one apartment.
August Cornelius Larson House
The August Cornelius Larson House is a Prairie Style house built in 1911 two miles southwest of the capitol in Madison, Wisconsin. In 1994 the house was added to the National Register of Historic Places as one of Madison's finest Prairie Style houses. August Larson was born in 1875 on a farm in Wiota, fifty miles southwest of Madison. After finishing a B.A. in classics at Coe College in Cedar Rapids in 1903, he became Wisconsin manager for Central Life Assurance. Success there led him to be the secretary of the National Association of Life Underwriters. In 1911 August and his wife Ella had this house built. The house has two stories, with the first clad in brick and the second in stucco. It is a textbook example of Prairie Style, with the broad eaves, balcony, and string courses emphasizing the horizontal, with the grouped windows, with geometric designs in leaded glass in many of the windows. Two window groups on the second floor are arranged as unusual triangular bays. The balusters of the balcony rail are boards with a diamond cut-out. The main front door is golden oak with a leaded glass window, flanked by sidelights. Inside is a central foyer with quarter-sawn oak trim and a staircase to the second floor with newel posts and the diamond shape repeated. The first floor contains the living room with a tiled, oak-mantled fireplace, the dining room with its own fireplace, built-in china cabinets, and a plate rail on the wall. The first floor also contains a study, sun room, kitchen, bathroom, and guest bedroom. Upstairs are three bedrooms and an apartment. The house is generally credited to Louis Claude and Edward Starck because of many similarities to other houses they designed at the time, but no proof remains. (The dark red brick appears to be identical to that of their Collins house on Gorham.) August served as a director of Commercial Trust Company and later President of Randall Bank. He served on the state board of the YMCA. The Larsons lived in the house until 1940. Joseph Endres bought the house after the Larsons and rented it out. At some point it was remodeled into apartments, splitting the central foyer so that half of it held a kitchen. By 1991 the inside had been remodeled into four apartments. Then new owners converted the house back to a residence with one apartment.
Jul 05, 2009
Posted Date
Sep 05, 2022
Historical Record Date
Jul 05, 2009
Source Name
Wikipedia
May 19, 1994
May 19, 1994
National Register of Historic Places - August Cornelius Larson House
Statement of Significance: Introduction The A. Cornelius Larson house was built in 1911. Published accounts all attribute the Prairie School design stylistically to the Madison firm of Claude and Starck. 2 The house faces east onto Grant Street at the corner of Jefferson Street, approximately one mile southwest of the University of Wisconsin campus in Madison. Setting The house is in a rectangular plat, called 'Wingra Plat, on what is now the near west side of Madison. It is situated on a square corner lot measuring 120' on each side. It faces east toward Grant Street. To the south the land slopes down to Vilas Park and Lake Wingra. An alley on the south side separates it from houses facing Grant and Adams streets. The plat was created in 1889. By 1911, when the house was built, this area was a fast-growing suburb known as Wingra Park. The neighborhood is easily accessible to the University and to Edgewood College, whose grounds form its western border. To the south are Vilas Park and Lake Wingra; to the north is a neighborhood shopping area along Monroe Street, a main artery leading into central Madison from the west. Homes in this neighborhood from Grant Street west are almost exclusively owner-occupied single family, whereas homes east of Grant Street are a mixture of owner-occupied and rental, single and multi-family. The lot, at the southwest corner of Grant and Jefferson Streets has several very large maple and oak trees framing it along both streets, two more modest maples along the alley, and a towering fir tree in the southeast quadrant of the lot. There are two large burning bushes on the property, one at the southeast corner, the other in front of the north end of the house on the Grant Street side, a very large, old hydrangea in front of the house, and many smaller shrubs and plantings. The walkway to the front entrance runs diagonally across the front lawn from the corner of Grant and Jefferson to the front entrance. It is framed at the corner by a pair of brick pillars capped in limestone that match the brick and limestone coursing on the house. There is a long driveway extending the length of the lot at the western edge, from Jefferson Street to the garage, which sits at the southwest corner of the lot. The house is a two-story, dark red brick and cream stucco structure. It is composed of a large side-gabled main block with two large projecting front-facing gabled pavilions. It measures approximately 54' by 33', with two attached porches. There is also a double garage, with a large turntable in the floor, facing north with access through a driveway from Jefferson Street. The garage was built at the same time as the house and matches the house in style and materials. Exterior The entire first floor of the building is dark red brick similar or identical to that used in other Claude and Starck homes in Madison built at about the same time. It appears to be identical, for example, to that used in the William Collins House, now a bed-and-breakfast, at 704 East Gorham Street. Limestone coursing bands the house at the skill level of the front-facing windows and continues all the way around the house The same brick used on the first floor of the house covers the exposed parts of the concrete foundation. There are small basement windows on three of four sides. The second floor and the garage are clad in cream colored stucco. A double string course molding wraps around the house on the second floor at mid-window level. The top piece of molding sweeps over the tops of the windows to form a drip mold. Both porches have railings on the second floor with detailing typical of the style. The front porch railing contains a diamond cut-out pattern that is repeated in the interior. The banding, window frames, bargeboards, porch railings, and garage trim are all painted dark brown. The house and garage roofs are asphalt shingle. There is some evidence that the original roof was slate4 A single chimney of red brick projects above the roof on the rear elevation. The original, and currently main, entrance is right of center between the two large, front-facing gables on the west facade. There is a broad, flat-roofed porch extending the distance between the gables. The porch ceiling has ornamental rafters extending from the house outward beyond the edge of the porch roof. Windows on the first-floor front of the main elevation are grouped in threes, with tall sets on either end and a small grouping of three in the center, sheltered by the porch. Above the porch is a very tall grouping of three windows with leaded lights in the upper quarter, flanked by smaller windows on either side. These are flanked by extensions of the house under the gables, each of which has a double window. On the north side of the second floor, above the large, enclosed porch, are two unusual variations on bay windows. Each bay consists of two windows projecting from the house at a forty-five-degree angle from the house, creating a triangular effect. All the windows on the east- and north-facing sides of the house (i.e., facing Grant Street and facing Jefferson Street,) contain the property's signature leaded glass, excepting casement windows in the north-facing, first floor porch. In addition, the leaded windows appear in a double set on the rear of the house near the northwest corner, visible from Jefferson Street. The front door is golden oak, with a large, ornately leaded light in the top half. It is flanked by vertical, leaded lights. There is a second, unobtrusive and currently unused, entrance at the other end of the porch, which was added to provide separate entrance to the apartments when the house was subdivided. At the southwest corner of the house, in the rear, there is a small two-story porch containing the rear entrance to the principal living quarters, the entrance to the accessory apartment, and a separate cellar entryway. The garage is a one-story stucco-clad, gable-roofed structure. It has two sliding doors, each having a series of small square lights at the top, that consume most of its north face, and two windows each on the east and west sides. Interior The house has a large central foyer, living room, dining room, study, bath and guest suite (bedroom and bath) on the first floor, in addition to a large, unheated, enclosed porch on the north side of the house, facing Jefferson Street and a small, open porch in the rear, facing west. On the second floor there are three bedrooms and one and three-quarter baths in the primary living quarters, as well as the accessory apartment with a kitchen, living room, bedroom, bath, and porch. The apartment enjoys a separate entrance. There is a full, walk-up attic and a full basement containing furnace and laundry facilities and a wine cellar. A portion of the basement is partially finished, including a bath. This area was used as an additional apartment at one time. The interior first floor is characterized by extensive quarter sawn oak woodwork true to the Prairie style, brass hardware and nine-and-one-half foot ceilings. The large, central foyer is crowned by wide oak molding, more ornate than that bordering the floor and contains the central, main staircase, with newel and balustrade containing a diamond pattern that is characteristic of the house. The woodwork frames doorways to the dining and living rooms, as well as two coat closets.
National Register of Historic Places - August Cornelius Larson House
Statement of Significance: Introduction The A. Cornelius Larson house was built in 1911. Published accounts all attribute the Prairie School design stylistically to the Madison firm of Claude and Starck. 2 The house faces east onto Grant Street at the corner of Jefferson Street, approximately one mile southwest of the University of Wisconsin campus in Madison. Setting The house is in a rectangular plat, called 'Wingra Plat, on what is now the near west side of Madison. It is situated on a square corner lot measuring 120' on each side. It faces east toward Grant Street. To the south the land slopes down to Vilas Park and Lake Wingra. An alley on the south side separates it from houses facing Grant and Adams streets. The plat was created in 1889. By 1911, when the house was built, this area was a fast-growing suburb known as Wingra Park. The neighborhood is easily accessible to the University and to Edgewood College, whose grounds form its western border. To the south are Vilas Park and Lake Wingra; to the north is a neighborhood shopping area along Monroe Street, a main artery leading into central Madison from the west. Homes in this neighborhood from Grant Street west are almost exclusively owner-occupied single family, whereas homes east of Grant Street are a mixture of owner-occupied and rental, single and multi-family. The lot, at the southwest corner of Grant and Jefferson Streets has several very large maple and oak trees framing it along both streets, two more modest maples along the alley, and a towering fir tree in the southeast quadrant of the lot. There are two large burning bushes on the property, one at the southeast corner, the other in front of the north end of the house on the Grant Street side, a very large, old hydrangea in front of the house, and many smaller shrubs and plantings. The walkway to the front entrance runs diagonally across the front lawn from the corner of Grant and Jefferson to the front entrance. It is framed at the corner by a pair of brick pillars capped in limestone that match the brick and limestone coursing on the house. There is a long driveway extending the length of the lot at the western edge, from Jefferson Street to the garage, which sits at the southwest corner of the lot. The house is a two-story, dark red brick and cream stucco structure. It is composed of a large side-gabled main block with two large projecting front-facing gabled pavilions. It measures approximately 54' by 33', with two attached porches. There is also a double garage, with a large turntable in the floor, facing north with access through a driveway from Jefferson Street. The garage was built at the same time as the house and matches the house in style and materials. Exterior The entire first floor of the building is dark red brick similar or identical to that used in other Claude and Starck homes in Madison built at about the same time. It appears to be identical, for example, to that used in the William Collins House, now a bed-and-breakfast, at 704 East Gorham Street. Limestone coursing bands the house at the skill level of the front-facing windows and continues all the way around the house The same brick used on the first floor of the house covers the exposed parts of the concrete foundation. There are small basement windows on three of four sides. The second floor and the garage are clad in cream colored stucco. A double string course molding wraps around the house on the second floor at mid-window level. The top piece of molding sweeps over the tops of the windows to form a drip mold. Both porches have railings on the second floor with detailing typical of the style. The front porch railing contains a diamond cut-out pattern that is repeated in the interior. The banding, window frames, bargeboards, porch railings, and garage trim are all painted dark brown. The house and garage roofs are asphalt shingle. There is some evidence that the original roof was slate4 A single chimney of red brick projects above the roof on the rear elevation. The original, and currently main, entrance is right of center between the two large, front-facing gables on the west facade. There is a broad, flat-roofed porch extending the distance between the gables. The porch ceiling has ornamental rafters extending from the house outward beyond the edge of the porch roof. Windows on the first-floor front of the main elevation are grouped in threes, with tall sets on either end and a small grouping of three in the center, sheltered by the porch. Above the porch is a very tall grouping of three windows with leaded lights in the upper quarter, flanked by smaller windows on either side. These are flanked by extensions of the house under the gables, each of which has a double window. On the north side of the second floor, above the large, enclosed porch, are two unusual variations on bay windows. Each bay consists of two windows projecting from the house at a forty-five-degree angle from the house, creating a triangular effect. All the windows on the east- and north-facing sides of the house (i.e., facing Grant Street and facing Jefferson Street,) contain the property's signature leaded glass, excepting casement windows in the north-facing, first floor porch. In addition, the leaded windows appear in a double set on the rear of the house near the northwest corner, visible from Jefferson Street. The front door is golden oak, with a large, ornately leaded light in the top half. It is flanked by vertical, leaded lights. There is a second, unobtrusive and currently unused, entrance at the other end of the porch, which was added to provide separate entrance to the apartments when the house was subdivided. At the southwest corner of the house, in the rear, there is a small two-story porch containing the rear entrance to the principal living quarters, the entrance to the accessory apartment, and a separate cellar entryway. The garage is a one-story stucco-clad, gable-roofed structure. It has two sliding doors, each having a series of small square lights at the top, that consume most of its north face, and two windows each on the east and west sides. Interior The house has a large central foyer, living room, dining room, study, bath and guest suite (bedroom and bath) on the first floor, in addition to a large, unheated, enclosed porch on the north side of the house, facing Jefferson Street and a small, open porch in the rear, facing west. On the second floor there are three bedrooms and one and three-quarter baths in the primary living quarters, as well as the accessory apartment with a kitchen, living room, bedroom, bath, and porch. The apartment enjoys a separate entrance. There is a full, walk-up attic and a full basement containing furnace and laundry facilities and a wine cellar. A portion of the basement is partially finished, including a bath. This area was used as an additional apartment at one time. The interior first floor is characterized by extensive quarter sawn oak woodwork true to the Prairie style, brass hardware and nine-and-one-half foot ceilings. The large, central foyer is crowned by wide oak molding, more ornate than that bordering the floor and contains the central, main staircase, with newel and balustrade containing a diamond pattern that is characteristic of the house. The woodwork frames doorways to the dining and living rooms, as well as two coat closets.
Posted Date
Sep 05, 2022
Historical Record Date
May 19, 1994
Source Name
National Register of Historic Places
