The Early Buildings of Historic Cooksville – Part I, by Larry Reed

The early buildings of the Village of Cooksville, constructed  in the 1840s and 1850s by the first settlers, were study and serviceable with just enough architectural detail to define their simple styles and to distinguish them as works of genuine merit recognizable today, almost 175 years later.  Restoration and rehabilitation efforts during the past 50 years have helped reveal those significant characteristics.

The mid-19^th century construction techniques and architectural designs were early American styles brought to the frontier from New England and New York, which in turn had come from the British Isles and Europe.  These building forms and styles were, of course, simplified and modified to meet the needs of the American frontier, including the Village of Cooksville established in the 1840s on the Wisconsin prairie in oak openings alongside the Badfish Creek.

The earliest style of village architecture, other than the utilitarian log cabin, was Greek Revival, a popular style inspired in America by Greece’s democratic revolution in the 1820s, which had created admiration for ancient Greek architecture with its columns and symmetrical formality. The style of Cooksville’s houses was a simplified “country” Greek Revival. Its distinctive symmetry and vaguely temple-like facades interpreted with flattened columns (pilasters), modest cornices and trim boards at the roof lines, and returned eaves and hooded doors and windows.  These elements are visible in the Van Vleck House, Newell House, Van Buren House and other early homes, which were invariably painted white to resemble the weathered bare-stones of ancient Greek temple ruins (but which actually originally had been painted very bright colors).

Van Vleck House, c. 1852

Van Buren House, c. 1848

The construction of Cooksville’s early residences and commercial buildings was simple, practical, and solid. Structurally they were post-and-beam or braced-frame construction with hand-hewn structural members and locally milled floor boards, trim, and exterior clapboards   Some houses were constructed of the famous locally-made Cooksville brick from the village’s two brickyards, with soft, sandy, light-colored mortar.

Cooksville bricks are a distinguishing feature of the architecture in the village and the area. The handsome vermilion-colored brick resulted from the local clay being baked for weeks with wood-burning fires, resulting in the special pink-orange color. One brickyard was located on the southern edge of the village operated by Hubbard Champney and later William Johnson, and the other was on the John Dow farm just west of the village.

Frequently, soft bricks that had not been suitably baked and hardened for exterior use were inserted as brick- nogging in the interior walls of some homes, for insulation and structural support.

Foundations were generally constructed of limestone cut from “quarry hill” north of Cooksville, and chimneys for the heating and cook stoves were made of Cooksville brick. (Only one original wood-burning fireplace was constructed inside a Cooksville home: it still functions in the Duncan House.)

Cooksville’s commercial buildings were most likely built in a “vernacular” style, which meant a simple local, functional design with few if any stylistic architectural details, such as the extant General Store. One exception was the village’s tavern and inn, Waucoma House, no longer standing. According to a simple sketch it was a Greek Revival building resembling other such stage-coach inns of that era. Like the residences, these commercial buildings were generally one or two-stories, well-proportioned, well-crafted, solid, simple and graceful. Unfortunately, most of the commercial buildings—the saw mill, the farm implement factory, the meat market, the “opera house,” Waucoma House, and several blacksmith shops—have been lost to fire or demolition. The existing General Store, Graves Blacksmith Shop, and the Cheese Factory represent three examples of functional commercial vernacular design, as do photographs of the lost buildings.

When the new Gothic Revival style of architecture became popular in America beginning in the mid- 19^th century, replacing Greek Revival, it too appeared in Cooksville. Gothic design featured steeper roofs, pointed-arch windows and hoods, decorative sawn-work in barge-boards and trim (“gingerbread”) at the roof line or on porches. Some of these elements can be seen in the Longbourne and Isaac Porter houses. Again, this Gothic style was simplified by the local self-trained Cooksville designers and carpenters who may have consulted popular architectural books of the time, such as A.J. Downing’s The Architecture of Country Houses (1853).

Longbourne House, c. 1854

Late 19^th century architectural styles also appeared in the village, here and there, in simplified form, such as Romanesque Revival, Queen Ann and other “picturesque” styles.  Some of these newer stylistic elements were incorporated in the design of the Cooksville Congregational Church (1879) and the Norwegian Lutheran Church (1897). They also influenced the exterior up-dating or “remodeling” of the exteriors of a few residences in the late 19^th century as the village tried to keep up-to-date, architecturally. Such elements as projecting bay-windows, decorative brackets, and fish-scale shingles in the gables can be seen, and in several instances the remodeling engulfed the older existing Greek Revival building as “modernization” took place.

William Porter House, c. 1855 and c. 1890

As time went by, these architectural efforts of the pioneers gained greater appreciation by later generations of family members, new-comers, architectural historians, historic preservationists and visitors.

[To be continued.]