Arnott, Almond houses seem separated at birth
By WENDELL NELSON
Special to The Gazette
In the previous article in this series, we looked at several houses that were similar in their overall design and
in their most conspicuous feature, a large veranda around the front half of each.
In this article, we will discuss only two houses. They are nearly identical, so we might suppose they were built side-by-side in the same neighborhood. But, in reality, they have always sat about 15 miles apart, in two Portage County communities. And they were not, as the current popular question about look-alike people is, separated at birth.
Those communities are Arnott and Almond, and the houses stand at 4430 County Highway J and 142 North Main St., respectively. The houses are simple: two-and-a-half stories with a single-ridgepole, gabled roof, and with the end - as opposed to the side - of each serving as the front.
But what makes them distinctive is the large, two-gabled turret perched on the upper-right corner of the second story of each. Moreover, both houses face east, and each turret is on the northeast corner of its house.
Contrary to what we may think - and what would have been more likely if the houses did indeed stand side-by-side - they were not built in the same year, but three years apart.
The one in Arnott was built first - in 1909 for Nicholas Michalski. "NEW HOME AT ARNOTT," announced the front page of the June 23, 1909, (Stevens Point) Gazette. "N.J. Michalski, a prosperous farm implement dealer at Arnott, and who is also interested in (i.e., is affiliated with) the Stevens Point Automobile Co., will soon occupy a new and modern home which he is having built just north of Arnott station. The main part is 26 x 32 feet, with a kitchen and woodshed 18 x 26 feet. The house will be adorned with two bay windows and spacious porches will surround it on three sides. A portion of the full basement may be occupied by a heating system. Peter Mallison laid the stone foundation and M. Fisher is in charge of the carpenter work. About $3,000 will be invested by Mr. Michalski."
And the Gazette's Arnott correspondent reported in the Sept. 1 issue that "Nick Michalski has his fine new house about completed and is moving in."
What exactly the house looked like when it was completed - where the bays and porches were, and what they looked like - is unclear, because so much has been removed or changed since then. For example, the front porch is enclosed now, and another porch has apparently been removed, so we also can't know for sure what style of posts supported their roofs.
But turned posts support the roof of what is left of the south porch, so it is likely that they supported the other porch roofs, too. One bay was on the front wall, inside the porch, but it was removed, as were the porch posts. Where was the second bay - or did the Gazette correspondent consider the turret to be one of the bays? If it had a bay on the north wall, as does its Almond twin, that bay was removed. Likewise, new, wide siding covers not only the original, narrower siding but also any trim - such as ornamental shingles - the house may have had. If the house had any other kind of decoration on it - spindles or scrollwork, corresponding to the turned porch-posts - it has been removed or covered up.
Finally, several of the windows have been replaced with smaller, larger or modern-design ones. All in all, except for the turret, this house has been rendered drab and nondescript; it could have been built anywhere at any time, belonging to no particular architectural style or period of history.
Barbara Werachowski Adamski, a grand-niece of Michalski's wife, recalls that he had his office in his new house. She says the office had fine woodwork and a lovely red-tinted window. But all that ornament was removed when the house was remodeled - in about 1973, according to Adamski.
Traci Parrott, the next-to-last owner of the house, says the master bedroom, on the second floor, is the only bedroom with its original woodwork showing: unpainted and with the grain displayed.
Oddly, none of the articles about the construction of either house mentions the turret by name, though it is the most distinctive feature on each. Again, it is possible that the turret on the Arnott house was one of the "two bay windows" in the first Gazette article, but the usual architectural
nomenclature would consider the turret too large and oddly designed and positioned to be called a bay. If the Gazette reporter meant to include the turret as one of the bays, then the Arnott house had only one bay besides it.
The two turrets are similar in design and size. Both have five facets and two high-pitched, almost Gothic gables, each above a window. But they are different in one way: the turret on the Michalski house has four windows, while that on the Almond house has only three. But, like towers and cupolas, neither turret is an essential to its house; that is, it has no specific function, but is a piece of trim, a decorative feature in fashion at the time these houses were built. But both are interesting, and both make their respective houses distinctive. Here, the turret houses the master bedroom in each house, according to Traci Parrott and Wanda Yonke, the present owner of the Almond house.
The question remains about where both Michalski and Henry Briggs, the first owner of the Almond house, got the idea of building a house with a second-story corner turret. (It is a question that could be asked about any building of any style or age.) We have no specific information on why either man - or his wife or other relative or friend - built the house he did, but we do know that there were many sources, especially by 1909 and 1912, of house plans.
Popular magazines and newspapers - including the Stevens Point newspapers - carried house plans. Whole books of plans were available to contractors, carpenters, and owners to consult for ideas; and there was always word of mouth and first-hand observation: people heard about or saw a new house being built, liked its style, and wanted one like it.
Which of these sources did Nick Michalski and Henry Briggs use? Where did Michalski get his idea, and then did Henry Briggs drive through Arnott in 1909 or '10 or '11, see the Michalski house, and decide his new house would be in the same style? Perhaps, or perhaps neither man was ever aware of a house nearly identical to his stood only 15 miles away.
The construction of the Almond twin is well-documented, too. According to the tax rolls on the land - Lots 10-14 of Block I, D.E. Frost's Amended Plat to Almond Village - H.E. Briggs bought the property in 1911, but didn't build on it that year. The rolls show an increase in the valuation of the "Improvements" on those lots from zero in 1912 to $1,120 in 1913 to $1,500 in 1914, with no corresponding increase in the valuation of adjacent properties (no general property-tax increase) - clear evidence that something significant was built there.
The Almond columns in the Daily Journal corroborate that evidence, and add details. The first report appeared in the April 13, 1912, issue: "H.E. Briggs has started work on his new house on North Main street. D.D. Thompson has the contract to do the building." (Wanda Yonke recalls that David Thompson's nickname was "Dirty Dave," because he seldom bathed, and smelled like it.) The next notice appeared in the June 21 issue: "David Thompson and W.A. Pray of Belmont are working on H.E. Briggs' new house near the depot." (That depot served the Chicago & Northwestern Railroad, and sat on the northeastern edge of Almond, according to the 1915 Standard Atlas of Portage County.) And the final notice, in the Sept. 12 issue, reported on the "musical houses" that resulted from Briggs' house's completion: "Henry Briggs' house is nearly completed and the family will soon be at home therein. Rev. Smith of the Baptist church will occupy the house vacated by Mr. Briggs and J.H. Johnson will come in from the farm and occupy the house vacated by Rev. Smith."
Unfortunately, no reports on the house's construction have been found in The Gazette, and no detailed description of the completed house has been found in either newspaper. But, because the house is better-preserved than its Arnott counterpart, we can look at it now and see fairly clearly what it looked like when it was new.
Besides the turret and original narrow clapboard siding, it has a long front porch whose (HIP) roof is supported by Tuscan (smooth, rounded) columns, as one would expect of a house built between 1895 and 1915. (The porches on Michalski's house, again, probably featured turned posts, not Tuscan columns, perhaps because it was built three years earlier - three years closer, that is, to the Queen Anne period, when most porch roofs were supported by turned posts - or because Nick Michalski may simply have preferred them.)
It also has two shallow, simple bays: a wide one on the front (east end), inside the porch, and a narrower one on the east end of the north side, under the turret. A short, shingled cornice-return on the front gable, and two on the rear gable, add a further classical hint. And a small, horizontal window on the rear (west) wall, has leaded glass in geometric patterns.
Inside, according to Wanda Yonke, who has owned and occupied the Almond house since 1963, it is divided into a kitchen, dining room, living room, and open hallway on the first floor, and three bedrooms and a bathroom on the second.
The first-floor woodwork appears to be all oak, milled in simple designs: plain (ungrooved) window- and door-moldings, surmounted by a simple cornice - the standard pattern for houses built around 1900. The floors on the first story are solid maple.
(Next: A Sad History In Arnott.)