205 North Prospect Avenue
Madison, WI, USA

Richard T. Ely House

The Richard T. Ely House is a Georgian Revival-style house built in 1896 in Madison, Wisconsin - designed by Charles Sumner Frost for Richard T. Ely, a prominent economics professor. In 1974 it was added to the National Register of Historic Places. It is located within the University Heights Historic District.


History

Richard Ely was one of Wisconsin's most important economics scholars. He was born in 1854 in New York and grew up on a farm there, absorbing Christian values from his devout father. He studied economics in Heidelberg University in Germany, learning a historical approach to economics that wasn't taught much in the U.S. yet. In 1881 he started teaching at the prestigious Johns Hopkins University in Baltimore. During this time he married Anna Morris Anderson and they started a family.

Up to this point, the classical approach to economics had dominated in the U.S. - the idea that free markets and laissez-faire treatment by government were the best way to promote economic growth. But along with economic growth, these ideas had led to evils like child labor. Ely was one of the early proponents in the U.S. of a new economics whose goal was not only growth, but also making people's lives better. He was a founder of the American Economic Association, and advocated public ownership of utilities, factory regulation, child labor laws, shorter workdays, labor unions, and restrictions on immigration. Many of these ideas lined up with Progressive reforms from that era.

In 1892 the University of Wisconsin lured Ely from Johns Hopkins to direct its new School of Economics, Political Science, and History. That winter Madison saw labor strikes resulting from attempts to organize unions at two Madison printers. Ely was then a leader of the Christian Social Union, which aimed to apply Christian principles to address social problems. The CSU had a printing job pending at the Tracy-Gibbs Printing Company, the second company to strike, and Ely happened to be in charge of that printing job. He urged the company owner to unionize several times, and hinted that if the company didn't unionize, the CSU might take their business elsewhere. The printer didn't unionize, and the CSU let the job go forward with Tracy-Gibbs. But the following year Wisconsin's Superintendent of Public Instruction Oliver Elwin Wells accused Ely of "believ[ing] in strikes and boycotts," and of being in "constant consultation" with the union organizer, and of asserting that "where a skilled workman was needed, a dirty, dissipated, unmarried, unreliable, and unskilled man should be employed in preference to an industrious, skillful, trustworthy, non-union man who is the head of family." Wells also condemned Ely's writings: "Only the careful student will discover their utopian, impracticable, and pernicious doctrines...." Wells got his accusations printed in national papers and the Regents had to investigate. A trial before the Board of Regents ensued, but Wells couldn't substantiate his more damning claims. In the end, the Regents exonerated Ely, but beyond that they supported academic freedom in the statement from which "sifting and winnowing" comes:

...we could not for a moment think of recommending the dismissal or even
the criticism of a teacher even if some of his opinions should, in some
quarters, be regarded as visionary. Such a course would be equivalent to
saying that no professor should teach anything which is not accepted by everybody as true. ... In all lines of academic investigation it is of the utmost importance that the investigator should be absolutely free to follow the indications of truth wherever they may lead. Whatever may be the limitations which trammel inquiry elsewhere, we believe the great state University of Wisconsin should ever encourage that continual and fearless sifting and winnowing by which alone the truth can be found.


The Elys had their grand house built a couple years later, in 1896. They commissioned a design by Chicago architect Charles Sumner Frost, who had designed the Old Law Building on Bascom Hill a few years before. Frost designed a textbook Georgian Revival-style house, with a nearly symmetric façade, a hip-and-deck roof, and eaves decorated like a cornice with modillions. The front entrance is surrounded by sidelights and fanlight beneath a portico supported by Ionic columns. A rail surrounds the top of the portico, with a window topped with a broken pediment behind and flanked by pilasters. Atop all this is a centered pediment with a circular window. The first floor windows on the front are also elaborate, topped with broken pediments.

In 1906 Ely helped organize the American Association for Labor Legislation, the American Association for Agriculture Legislation in 1917, and the Institute for Research in Land Economics and Public Utilities in 1920. With Ely's progressive ideals, he was a supporter of Governor Robert M. La Follette, but split with him when La Follette opposed U.S. involvement in World War I. Anna died in 1923. In 1925 Ely left the UW and the house in Madison, taking a position at Northwestern University.

In 1974 Ely's house in Madison was added to the NRHP because it may be the city's best example of a Georgian Revival home, and for the house's association with the important economist. The house was designated a landmark by the Madison Landmarks Commission the same year.

National Register of Historic Places - Richard T. Ely House

Statement of Significance:

The Richard T. Ely house is significant both because it is perhaps Madison's best example of the Georgian Revival and because of its historical associations. The client for the house, Richard T. Ely, was one of Wisconsin's foremost economics scholars. He was born in 1854 and received his PhD in 1879 from the University of Heidelberg, Germany, where the study of economic theory was far in advance of that in America during Ely's time. In the early 1890's, the University of Wisconsin raided the faculties of some Eastern universities, primarily Johns Hopkins. From thence came Richard T. Ely to Wisconsin in 1892, induced by a large salary upon the recommendation of Ely's former student, Frederick Jackson Turner, a nationally renowned historian. Ely was a progressive economist, for the American temperament, and was considered by some in Wisconsin a radical— even a dangerous radical. His discussions of Marxian socialism, which had ' hitherto had very little academic recognition, and his strictures upon corporate abuses made him very controversial. In 1894 a committee of investigation was appointed after Ely became involved in a labor disturbance. There was a formal trial which was a debacle for the accusers and a complete vindication of Ely and his teaching practices. A plaque just inside the entrance to Bascom Hall (one of the University's oldest buildings and the heart of the recently proposed Bascom Hill Historic District) bears the declaration of academic freedom which accompanied the committee's findings and the exoneration of Dr. Ely:

Whatsoever may be the limitations which trammel inquiry elsewhere, we believe the great state university of Wisconsin should ever encourage that continued and fearless sifting and winnowing by which alone truth can be found!

Naturally, Ely was also progressive politically, and was a staunch supporter of Robert M. LaFollette. They, however, had a falling-out over the American entry into World War I, as did almost all LaFollette's former university supporters.

In his Autobiography, Ely even saw fit to comment on architectural design and the University of Wisconsin campus: " They [the architects] constructed buildings with no regard for the natural surroundings. It seemed as if the architects were only interested in showing off all they knew about the architecture of ancient Greece and Rome." of contemporary eclectic architecture by Ely did not extend to the copying of Georgian Colonial styles, for this is precisely what was done at his own residence.

The well-known Chicago architect, Charles Summer Frost, was a graduate of the M.I.T. architectural program who moved to Chicago in 1882. In the 1890*s he designed several University of Chicago buildings, and he was primarily known as the architect of major Chicago structures, such as office buildings, hospitals and railroad stations. He first came to Madison when commissioned to design the Law Building on Bascom Hill for the University of Wisconsin, which was built in 1893, and has since been demolished. Apparently, Dr. Ely and architect Frost made their acquaintance at that time, for it was only three years later that Ely's house was built.