2010 Rock County Historical Society Historic Home Tour
Stephen and Cameron Pickering home, 120 Cherry St.
This 153-year-old brick Italianate house was built by Randall Williams between 1857 and 1858 for his family, who lived in the house until 1916. The home’s address changed in 1911 from 8 Cherry St. to 120 Cherry St.
Exterior architectural features of the house include cream brick sidewalls, brick lentils over arched windows, a covered front porch with square posts and beveled corners, a transom over the front door and an ornate side porch.
Inside, the house has a front stairway, two marble fireplaces, original woodwork and doors plus hardwood floors. An imitation black iron fence encloses the home’s front and side yards.
During the four years the Pickerings have lived in the house, they’ve made many improvements. This includes complete removal of lead paint and repainting all of the home’s outside woodwork.
Photo By: Bill Olmsted
Susan Hunt-Wulkowicz and Jan Hunt home, 220 S. Academy St.
This house, built in 1869 by architect and designer George F. Schulze, is a perfect example of the trend toward the elegant, smaller, less ornate versions of the Italianate style homes prevalent in the 1850s. It features a low-pitched hip roof overhanging eaves with brackets, decorative window hoods and a full veranda across the front with tapered columns on pedestals that support a tooth-like platform.
William Henry Tallman, son of William Morrison Tallman who built the Lincoln-Tallman House, bought this house in 1874 after its owner lost it to foreclosure. His family then lived in the house for more than 80 years.
The house was converted into a funeral home in 1957 until the end of the 20th century. Susan Hunt-Wulkowicz and her mother, Jan Hunt, both artists, bought the house in 2007 and live upstairs. Part of the main floor is used to display art and for music and social events while the rest of the first floor provides workspaces, studios and art storage. The basement houses a printmaking studio with an etching press.
Photo By: Bill Olmsted
The Buy, Rehab, Resell Project home, 189 S. High St.
In 1848, Whelden Hughes bought the lot this house sits on from A. Hyatt Smith and J.B. Doe. By 1857, S.W. Spencer, who worked at a planing mill, owned the home. And by 1862, Spencer’s widow ran a boarding house on this lot until 1866. But what happened between then and 1890 when the current brick house appeared is not known.
The two-story red brick Queen Anne with a hip roof, projecting gable, stone lintels and sills plus three-story polygonal tower features six-over-six windows, a front door with sidelights and second-floor balcony on the back.
Three other people owned the home before it became rental property in the 1970s. The city bought it in 2008 for the Buy, Rehab and Resell program.
Photo By: Bill Olmsted
Burdette Erickson home, 115 S. High St.
The land this Colonial Revival house sits on was first listed in 1835 as Michigan Territory on the abstract when Andrew Jackson was president. The home was built in 1908-09 for Albert Henry Bennison, who with his brother-in-law owned the Bennison & Lane Bakery. The bakery building today is the Speakeasy restaurant.
By the 1930s, the family had left Janesville, moved to Illinois and started another bakery, which sill operates in Evanston, Ill. Bennison is buried in Oak Hill Cemetery, Janesville.
Erickson is the current and sixth owner of the house, which underwent a major restoration in 2003-04 in preparation for the home’s 100th birthday that was celebrated in 2008.
The house features a gabled roof; Roman-style windows on the third floor and a symmetrical façade with a porch carried by single classical columns. It is decorated with many antiques from throughout the United States and Europe.
Photo By: Bill Olmsted
Kay and Neil Deupree home, 419 S. Franklin St.
This house, built as a side-by-side duplex, is one of 33 craftsman bungalows in the Old Fourth Ward neighborhood. It features clapboard siding, exposed rafters and full front porches.
A large family occupied the house at one point, but a door was cut between the sides in the upstairs hallway to make it a single-family dwelling.
Current owners Kay and Neil Deupree bought the house with a view of the Rock River in 1997. A year later, they bought the lot to the north. Their eclectic garden contains perennials, vegetables and berries.
Photo By: Bill Olmsted
Jim Eden home, 303 S. Locust St.
This side-gabled, craftsman bungalow was built in about 1916 and features 7-by-7-inch beams and posts that hold up the main floor in a style some call an “overbuilt house.”
John Koeberl was shop superintendent at Fifield Lumber, Janesville, when he built the house his family lived in until it was sold to its present owner.
Handmade cabinetry and woodwork are visible in every room of the house. The attic features tongue and groove pine throughout with built-in cedar closets. A covered porch, tile fireplace, beveled glass windows and exposed rafter tails are only a few examples of the home’s craftsmanship.
The home’s 60-by-84-foot corner lot has been transformed into a four-season garden.
Photo By: Bill Olmsted
Jo Ann Koltyk and John Miller home, 202 S. Franklin St.
This 1858 Italianate style home has a hipped roof, wide overhanging eaves with paired brackets, three house sections of varying heights, both elaborate and simple frames over the windows and three layers of cream brick on its exterior walls.
The home was built for David Noggle, an attorney who later became a circuit judge. He sold it in 1862 to Hamilton and Caroline Richardson. He was a businessman and Wisconsin senator. From 1889 to 1907, William S. Jeffris, another well-known Janesville businessman, lived in the house.
An addition was added to the south side of the house in the 1930s.
The home’s current owners have turned the house back into a single-family residence that features a piano studio with two grand pianos.
Photo By: Bill Olmsted
Teresa McKeown and Michael Johnson home, 176 S. Jackson St.
Rock-faced concrete blocks painted barn red were used by Fred H. Beilharz, superintendent of the P. Hohenadle Jr. Canning Co., Janesville, to build this house in 1905-06. Concrete was poured into block molds and stacked while they were slightly wet to provide a more sturdy construction.
This Queen Anne Revival square-built house features a large foyer both up and down and balcony view at the front. The original kitchen was in the raised basement of the home that still has a decorative tin ceiling and dumbwaiter. Originally, there was an upper porch and staircase that allowed servants to enter and exit the maid’s quarters at the back second story of the house.
Current owner Pat Thom bought the house in the mid 1980s then restored the floors and woodwork to their original luster. Her work on the home was featured in the June 1988 edition of Wisconsin Home Gallery Magazine.
Photo By: Bill Olmsted
St. Patrick’s Church, 315 Cherry St.
In 1844, the six Catholic families in Janesville erected a chapel. Logs were cut from the forest where the church now stands. Later, the families built a chapel on the grounds where St. Patrick’s Church stands today.
In 1850, the log church was replaced with a brick church, which was enlarged just two years later. In 1863, the present church was built. Seven years after that, a school and the convent of St. Joseph for the Sisters of Mercy were added.
In 1920, the present school was built on Lincoln St. The original convent was replaced by a new building next door that now houses the House of Mercy homeless center. The original building is now the parking lot.
St. Pat’s is the oldest church building still in use as a church in Janesville.
Photo By: Bill Olmsted
All Saints Anglican Catholic Church, 169 S. Academy St.
The earliest group of Lutherans to organize in Janesville worshiped in this cream brick Gothic Revival building for many years. Organized in 1865, the congregation built the original board and batten church in 1883. A cream brick veneer was added in 1885 and the steeple in 1893.
When St. Paul’s moved to the east side in 1955, the church building became the home of a Seventh Day Adventist congregation. In 1987, the building became home of All Saints Anglican Catholic Church. Janesville’s Ossit Church Furniture Co. built much of the church furniture.
Gothic Revival features of the church include stepped buttresses on corners and side walls, gothic arched windows decorated with brick arches, a large rose window on the front façade, a balcony with pinnacles, and a wooden ornamental band that runs along the sides of the church with brick brackets on the front façade.
Photo By: Bill Olmsted
Jana and Justin Vegge home, 518 Lincoln St.
This Queen Anne style home was built in 1892 for John Henning, who was later superintendent of Janesville Barb Wire Co. His daughter Irma Henning lived in the home until her death in the 1960s. That’s when the Orville Eagan family bought it. It was then sold to the Vegges in 2005.
The house features narrow clapboard siding, gingerbread carvings on the upper peaks and front porch, cedar shakes over the leaded glass front window, two differently shaped eyebrows over the first- and second-floor windows, a wrap-around front porch and a single-story addition at the back of the home with a decorative attached side porch.
While remodeling the garage, cardboard posters featuring early 1900s Parker Pens were found on interior walls where they had been used for insulation.
Photo By: Bill Olmsted
Janesville 30th historic house and garden tour
