Wisconsin Home for Veterans, King, Waupaca County, WI

Significance: The veterans cottages, part of the Wisconsin Home for Veterans Complex, are eligible for HABS recordation and are significant because they contribute to the Veterans Cottages Historic District that is part of the Historic Resources of the Wisconsin Veterans Home. a multiple resource unit listed in the National Register of Historic Places. They are significant under both National Register criterion A and C. The cottages contribute to the historic district under criterion A because, together, they are a good example of an historic planned retirement community for war veterans and their wives. The cottages were part of an important social program in Wisconsin, the care and housing of the state's Civil War veterans (and later, other war veterans) and their wives at a time when the state was only funding a small number of social institutions. The Veterans Home was also the direct result of a powerful political group the Grand Army of the Republic (GAR) actively pursuing a cause for their members. The veterans cottages also contribute to the historic district under criterion C, because they are part of an architecturally-significant planned community where common forms, details, and materials were used to create an architectural uniformity among individual buildings. Also, some of the cottages in the historic district can be directly attributed to noted Wisconsin architect, William Waters, of Oshkosh, Wisconsin. Waters was a prolific and progressive nineteenth-century architect in northeastern Wisconsin. A devotee of the Shingle architectural style, his most noted design was the Shingle-style Wisconsin Building at the Chicago World's Columbian Exposition in 1893.
Survey number: HABS WI-323
Building/structure dates: 1887 Initial Construction
National Register of Historic Places NRIS Number: 85001367