The John J. Suhr House is a historic house located on Langdon Street,

Madison, Wisconsin Madison is the county seat of Dane County and the capital city of the U.S. state of Wisconsin. As of the 2020 census the population was 269,840, making it the second-largest city in Wisconsin by population, after Milwaukee, and the 80th-lar ...

, United States.

History

Built in 1886, the house was admitted to the National Register of Historic Places listings in Dane County,

Wisconsin Wisconsin () is a state in the upper Midwestern United States. Wisconsin is the 25th-largest state by total area and the 20th-most populous. It is bordered by Minnesota to the west, Iowa to the southwest, Illinois to the south, Lake M ...

on June 17, 1982. The residence was built in the

French Second Empire The Second French Empire (; officially the French Empire, ), was the 18-year Imperial Bonapartist regime of Napoleon III from 14 January 1852 to 27 October 1870, between the Second and the Third Republic of France. Historians in the 1930s a ...

architectural style by the local prominent architect Captain John Nader, who also designed Holy Redeemer Catholic Church (1869), St. Patrick's Catholic Church (1888–89), the Suhr Bank Building (1887), and the city's first sewer system. The house features a mansard roof, stone window trim and fancy woodwork on the bays. Additional construction occurred in 1902. The house's first owner, John J. Suhr, was born in

Bremen, Germany Bremen (Low German also: ''Breem'' or ''Bräm''), officially the City Municipality of Bremen (german: Stadtgemeinde Bremen, ), is the capital of the German state Free Hanseatic City of Bremen (''Freie Hansestadt Bremen''), a two-city-state consis ...

, in 1836 and immigrated to Madison in 1857. He worked as a bookkeeper in the State Bank until 1871, when he founded the German Bank. He changed the name of the bank to the German-American Bank in 1885. John J. Suhr died in 1901. His family owned and resided in the Suhr House for two generations until the death of John J. Suhr's son, John J. Suhr, Jr., in 1957. In 1989, it became a

Alpha Xi Delta Alpha Xi Delta (, often referred to as A-''"Zee"''-D ) is a women's fraternity founded on April 17, 1893. Baird's Manual is also available online hereThe Baird's Manual Online Archive homepage at Lombard College in Galesburg, Illinois, United Stat ...

sorority house, and in 1994 it was sold to a private landlord. The house currently serves as off-campus student housing, like the majority of the former houses on Langdon Street.

References

{{DEFAULTSORT:Suhr, John J., House Houses in Madison, Wisconsin Houses completed in 1902 Houses on the National Register of Historic Places in Wisconsin Second Empire architecture in Wisconsin National Register of Historic Places in Madison, Wisconsin Alpha Xi Delta