418 2nd Street East
Wabasha, MN, USA

Clara and Julius Schmidt House

The Clara and Julius Schmidt House is a historic house in Wabasha, Minnesota, United States. It was built in 1888 in the Italianate style and features architectural details rendered in tin. The house was listed on the National Register of Historic Places in 1989 for having local significance in the theme of architecture. It was nominated for being a prominent example of the brick homes constructed by Wabasha's late-19th-century merchant class, one made particularly distinctive by its tinwork.


Description

The Schmidt House is a wood frame building with a brick veneer. The main section rises one and a half stories and is topped with a jerkinhead roof. A one-story kitchen wing at the rear gives the house an L-shaped footprint. A one-story sunroom was added to the side of the house in the early 20th century.

The house stands out for its tin window hoods, shaped as winged pediments resting on protruding bosses. Most distinctive is an ascending trio of small windows, which mark an internal staircase.


History

Julius Schmidt was born in 1857 to a German American family in Milwaukee, and came to Wabasha as a child in 1864. He apprenticed to a tinmaker, but went into business in 1882 as a partner in a hardware store. However, when he had this house built in 1888, he embraced the use of tinwork as a middle-class version of the architectural details that a wealthy homeowner would have rendered in stone. The tinwork was likely produced by Schmidt's foreman Herman Dieterle, who had built a regional reputation as a master craftsman and metalworker since 1862.

Schmidt became the sole owner of the hardware business in 1893 and ultimately served as president of the Minnesota Hardware Retailers Association. After his death, his widow Clara Schmidt donated to the city the open lot east of the house, which became known as Schmidt Park.

The Schmidt House is the last Italianate example of some 20 brick residences surviving from the 19th century in Wabasha. All were built by the first two generations of the city's merchant class, forming a distinctive architectural stock that contrasts with the elaborate wood-frame Victorian architecture that characterized most other communities in Minnesota. As time went on the choice of building material appears to have been a matter of local taste rather than accessibility, as Wabasha was not a major brick manufacturer compared to Lake City and Red Wing upriver.

National Register of Historic Places - Clara and Julius Schmidt House

Statement of Significance:

The Schmidt House is a late Italianate brick dwelling remarkable for its tinwork. The appropriate historical context for the Schmidt House is Agricultural Development and Railroad Construction. The construction date alone places it 17 years after the completion of the Chicago, Milwaukee and St. Paul Railroad line. It is also the last brick house in Wabasha to show significant Italianate detailing. The use of metalwork for ornament, in obvious imitation of carved stone, was--at least in commercial applications a familiar late Victorian period device for bringing picturesque detail within the means of the expanding middle class. Schmidt! s training in tinwork must have made him particularly receptive to its use on his own house; though the actual execution of the work is more likely attributable to his foreman, Herman Dieterle. Since 1862, Dieterle had distinguished himself regionally both as a master craftsman and as an important contributor to metal working techniques via the trade journals. The Schmidt House's tin ornament is thus expressive of both an unusual local condition and of the larger historic context of evolving building technologies in the Railroad Era.

As the home of a leading hardware dealer, the Schmidt House is also a landmark of the second generation of prosperous Wabasha merchants to build brick houses. Born in Milwaukee of German parents in 1857, Schmidt came to Wabasha as a young boy in 1864. After several years of apprenticeship in tinwork, he entered a partnership in 1882 with H.H. Jewell, owner of the pioneer hardware business in the city. Schmidt rose rapidly in the business, taking over sole ownership in 1893 and eventually achieving the presidency of the Minnesota Hardware Retailers Association.

The Italianate brick design of the Schmidt House, its striking and personal use of materials, especially the tin window hoods, and the importance of the owner in Wabasha's mercantile class qualify the building for inclusion in the multiple property listing, Red Brick Houses in Wabasha, MN Associated with Merchant-Tradesmen.