321 South Hamilton Street
Madison, WI, USA

Joseph J. Stoner House

The Joseph J. Stoner House is a historic house located at in Madison, Wisconsin, United States. It was added to the National Register of Historic Places on January 17, 1980.


History

In 1865, the house was purchased by Joseph and Harriet Stoner. The Madison Landmarks Commission designated it a landmark in 1972. In 1983, the house was gifted to the Wisconsin Architects Foundation by Madison Newspapers. The foundation went on to move the house to a different location 100 feet away and extensively renovate it at a cost of more than $200,000.

National Register of Historic Places - Joseph J. Stoner House

Statement of Significance:

The Joseph John Stoner house is significant historically as the residence of the "central figure" in the bird T s-eye-view business in the late nineteenth century, and architecturally as a good example of an indigenous sandstone detached Italianate townhouse

HISTORY
"The golden age of city bird's-eye-view publishing spanned the years between the Civil War and World War I. During that period, no individual was more central to this trade than Joseph John Stoner." The bird 1 s-eye-views published by Stoner and others were lithographed aerial drawings, taken from a forty-five-degree angle, depicting the panorama of the city. Often, they highlighted buildings important to the city's commercial or cultural life. While certainly an ornament, they were also advertisement for both businessmen and real estate investors. They helped to sell a city. Although Stoner did not invent the process or develop the idea, he, and Madison, soon became the focal point of the business.

Drawing on his background as a traveling book agent, Stoner arranged for his artist to tour a city to make a preliminary sketch. He then used the sketch to court endorsement by the local newspaper and to solicit subscriptions. When enough orders were received, a final sketch was sent to the lithographer. Several months later, Stoner or an assistant would return to the town to fill the orders and sell additional copies.

Stoner settled in Madison in 1864. In 1869, he and the prolific bird's-eye-view artist Albert Ruger joined forces to publish twelve views of Midwestern cities. Over the next three years the geographical scope of the company expanded as Ruger moved southeastward through Ohio, Tennessee, and West Virginia. At the same time, two other publishers, Mortimer Fowler and Howard Heston Bailey, based their view publishing businesses in Madison.

In 1872, Stoner began to publish on his own. He employed at least two artists: a young Chicagoan, Herman Brosius, who toured Wisconsin, the Dakotas, and Colorado, sketching cityscapes, and Augustus Koch, who traveled through Texas. In 1879, when Stoner was entering the most productive period of his career, the Milwaukee lithography firm of Clemens Pauli and Adam Beck formed. Soon, Stoner patronized them exclusively, and for the next five years he commissioned several artists to produce one hundred and five views of cities from Maine to Oregon and south to New Mexico. Throughout this productive period Stoner lived and based his operations in the house at 321 S. Hamilton.