The Thomas B. Hart House is a Gothic Revival-styled house built in the 1840s in Wauwatosa,

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 ...

. Its most distinctive feature is the many elaborate bargeboards decorated with various patterns. It was added to the

National Register of Historic Places The National Register of Historic Places (NRHP) is the United States federal government's official list of districts, sites, buildings, structures and objects deemed worthy of preservation for their historical significance or "great artistic v ...

in 1985, and is today one of Wauwatosa's oldest surviving houses.

History

Wauwatosa was once called "Hart's Mills," named for Charles Hart, who built a grist mill there in 1837 with financing from his brother Thomas back east. This house bears Thomas's name, but it wasn't associated with him until thirty years after it was built. With . The house was probably built in the early 1840s, shortly after Hart's Mills was founded. The builder is unknown and the first occupant is uncertain, but it may have been

Perley J. Shumway Perley J. Shumway was an American blacksmith, farmer, pioneer and politician from Wauwatosa, Wisconsin, Wauwatosa, Wisconsin. Shumway was born in Worcester, Massachusetts in 1810 to a family descended from Frenchmen. He learned to blacksmith in M ...

, a

blacksmith A blacksmith is a metalsmith who creates objects primarily from wrought iron or steel, but sometimes from #Other metals, other metals, by forging the metal, using tools to hammer, bend, and cut (cf. tinsmith). Blacksmiths produce objects such ...

who also owned a tavern called the ''Wauwatosa House'', which may have been part of the

Underground Railroad The Underground Railroad was a network of clandestine routes and safe houses established in the United States during the early- to mid-19th century. It was used by enslaved African Americans primarily to escape into free states and Canada. T ...

. Shumway was active in politics and was elected to Wisconsin's State Assembly in 1848. In 1856 he sold the house to Cortland D. Rose. In 1874, after a few more changes of ownership, Thomas B. Hart bought the house. Thomas had joined his brother in Hart's Mills early on, helping to operate the grist mill, dealing in real estate, and serving on the first town board of supervisors in 1837. Thomas and his son T.W. owned the house until around 1912. Later Dr. Stanley J. Seeger bought the house. He was Chief of Staff at Columbia Hospital and Children's Hospital, a nationally acclaimed surgeon, and a pioneer in burn treatment. In 1937 the Hemps bought the house and divided it into apartments. In 1982 Roy and Mary Jo Cole bought the house, and began restoring it. The house was originally smaller than now, two stories with a T-shaped foot-print. Over the years, many additions have been made. (The NRHP nomination among the references below contains an educated guess at how the floorplan grew over the years.) As of a 1912 photograph, the front facade looked much like today. The

bay window A bay window is a window space projecting outward from the main walls of a building and forming a bay in a room. Types Bay window is a generic term for all protruding window constructions, regardless of whether they are curved or angular, or r ...

, the lancet-arched windows, and the style of the porch are all hallmarks of Gothic Revival style, as are the bargeboards. The elaborate bargeboards decorating the gable ends are the striking feature of the house, displaying several designs. The board over the front door and several other gables have a

quatrefoil A quatrefoil (anciently caterfoil) is a decorative element consisting of a symmetrical shape which forms the overall outline of four partially overlapping circles of the same diameter. It is found in art, architecture, heraldry and traditional ...

design cut with a scroll saw. On the south gable the board is an oakleaf pattern. On the southeast gable is a trefoil floral pattern. The "barn" behind the house is decorated with a board with a simple scroll design. But the NRHP nomination says that of the bargeboards, " e most spectacular is over the lancet arched window. It is a hand-carved, delicately rounded, lacey scroll." The Hart house is the oldest house on the earliest residential street in Wauwatosa. It is located within the Church Street Historic District.

References

{{DEFAULTSORT:Hart, Thomas B., House Houses in Milwaukee County, Wisconsin Carpenter Gothic architecture in Wisconsin Houses on the National Register of Historic Places in Wisconsin Wauwatosa, Wisconsin National Register of Historic Places in Milwaukee County, Wisconsin Individually listed contributing properties to historic districts on the National Register in Wisconsin