Wisconsin’s grand mansions are as diverse as the industries that built them. Beer barons, lumber kings, and the odd architectural genius like Frank Lloyd Wright all left their marks on the state’s landscape, crafting homes that are equal parts status symbol and cultural artifact.
Take the Pabst Mansion in Milwaukee — an elaborate Flemish Renaissance Revival ode to the city’s brewing glory — or Taliesin, Wright’s Spring Green masterpiece that redefined what a home could be. Then there’s the Octagon House in Watertown, an eight-sided curiosity rooted in 19th-century experimentation, and Black Point Estate in Lake Geneva, a lakeside escape dripping with Queen Anne style points.
Whether it’s the precision of Tudor Revival, the rustic modernism of Wright’s Usonian design, or the theatrical flair of Ten Chimneys, each house is a reflection of Wisconsin’s industrial grit and cultural uniqueness.
16. David Taylor House – Sheboygan
The David Taylor House, built in the early 1850s, stands as a brick-and-mortar reminder of Sheboygan’s history during Wisconsin’s formative years. Judge David Taylor, a man with his hands in everything from law to railroads, built this Federal-style home with the kind of neat symmetry and unembellished brickwork that reflected mid-19th-century sensibilities.
Through the years, the house moonlighted as a sheriff’s office and jail — bars on the windows, no less — before the Sheboygan County Historical Society turned it into a museum in the 1950s. Along the way, the original porch vanished under a wave of mid-century “updates,” a fate many historic homes endured in the name of progress.
The 2006 restoration peeled back those layers of well-intentioned meddling, replacing the ersatz porch with a replica truer to its 1850s origins and removing a fire escape that clung to the building like an unwelcome guest. Brick tuckpointing and wood repairs completed the transformation, restoring the house to its understated prime.
15. Kneeland-Walker House – Wauwatosa
The Kneeland-Walker House, built in 1890, is a Queen Anne showpiece with a Shingle-style twist, making it a standout in Wauwatosa’s architectural lineup. Rising three stories, the house flaunts an onion-domed tower, while its gambrel-roofed dormer and tall fluted chimney add to its eclectic charm. The exterior layers are a study in texture: a sturdy limestone foundation, a brick-clad first floor, weatherboard on the second, and shingles crowning the top.
Norman L. Kneeland, a Civil War veteran turned prosperous farmer, built the mansion after selling off land that became Washington Park. His design choices hinted at the era’s obsession with mixing grandeur and utility. Step through oak pocket doors and you’ll find a curved staircase leading upward. Out back, a carriage house with horse stalls and a cider shed go back to its days as part of a working estate.
After passing through the hands of engineer Emery Walker, the house was preserved by the Wauwatosa Historical Society in 1987. It now serves as their headquarters, a museum, and a tribute to Victorian ingenuity in the heart of suburban Wisconsin.
14. Octagon House – Watertown
The Octagon House in Watertown, Wisconsin, is an architectural oddity that managed to combine 19th-century experimentation with functional ingenuity. Built in 1854 by John Richards, a lawyer and mill owner who clearly didn’t shy away from geometry, the structure measured 50 feet in diameter and came equipped with a series of porches that once wrapped around the structure like a Victorian belt.
Inside, Richards showed off his flair for innovation. A spiral staircase, made from cherrywood harvested on his own land, winds upward like the house’s spine, doubling as a hub for four chimney flues. Passive air ducts built into the brickwork ushered cool air throughout the rooms. The roof’s funnel shape collected rainwater into a third-floor tank, feeding indoor plumbing decades ahead of its time. The basement kitchen featured a Dutch oven large enough to bake 24 loaves of bread.
13. Villa Louis – Prairie du Chien
The Villa Louis in Prairie du Chien is a brick-and-mortar time capsule that celebrates the grandeur of the fur trade. Ornate interiors and manicured grounds overlook the Mississippi, embodying the rugged elegance of Wisconsin’s frontier wealth.
Built in 1871, the mansion was the vision of Louis Dousman, heir to a fur trading fortune amassed by his father, Hercules Dousman. Milwaukee architect E. Townsend Mix delivered a home that was as much a statement as it was a residence — cream-colored brick, ornate woodwork, and all the modern indulgences of the time, including indoor plumbing and central heating.
Set atop an ancient mound that once held Fort Crawford, the estate’s layered history mirrors Wisconsin’s own evolution — from Native American grounds to military post, and ultimately to a Gilded Age sanctuary.
After Dousman’s untimely death in 1886, the property became known as Villa Louis, a tribute by his widow. By the mid-20th century, the mansion transformed again, this time into a historic site managed by the Wisconsin Historical Society.
12. Hilda and Gustav Pabst House – Milwaukee
The Hilda and Gustav Pabst House is a 1907 Neo-Classical gem that wears its beer-baron roots with understated swagger. Built for Gustav Pabst, heir to the Pabst Brewing Company fortune, this Milwaukee home in the North Point South Historic District is as sturdy and stylish as the brand that made its name on blue ribbons.
The facade is dressed in carved limestone, with four monumental pillars framing the entryway — each hewn from a single block of stone, a flex in craftsmanship if ever there was one. Hammered copper accents add a metallic sheen, grounding the classical motifs with a touch of industrial cool.
At $70,000 in 1907 (over $2 million in today’s dollars), the house wasn’t about frills but about making a statement of solid, refined affluence. As part of the North Point South Historic District, the Pabst House stands as a reminder of Milwaukee’s golden age, when brewing dynasties turned hops into high style.
11. Albrecht C. Ringling House – Baraboo
The Albrecht C. Ringling House in Baraboo is a Romanesque Revival spectacle of circus-sized proportions. Built in 1905 by the eldest Ringling brother, Al, at the height of his circus empire. Constructed of red sandstone quarried from Wisconsin’s quarries, this 18,000-square-foot marvel boasts a porte-cochère fit for horse-drawn carriages (or, eventually, those newfangled automobiles), a grand staircase leading to a sunlit conservatory, and more stained glass and woodwork than you’d expect from a small Midwestern town.
Designed to eclipse his brothers’ increasingly ostentatious homes, Al’s mansion was a social hub, a monument to showbiz grandeur, and a stage for lavish parties. Its billiards room, dining room, and separate his-and-hers bedrooms ooze period charm.
Fast-forward to today, and Joe Colossa — a former circus train master turned preservationist—has turned the mansion into a vibrant museum and event space. He and his wife are restoring its grandeur while hosting everything from tours to weddings, with plans to add a brewpub in the Elks Lodge’s 1948 ballroom addition. The Al Ringling Mansion remains a Baraboo icon, a lasting tribute to circus royalty in all its show-stopping glory.
10. Pabst Mansion – Milwaukee
The Pabst Mansion in Milwaukee is what happens when a beer baron decides to outdo everyone else on the block. Built in 1892 by Frederick Pabst—yes, the PBR guy—it’s a towering Flemish Renaissance Revival home withs serious architectural chops.
Architect George Bowman Ferry’s design is all about symmetry and flair with shaped gables, carved stone accents, and terra cotta ornament. The men’s parlor is decked out in dark mahogany, while the ladies’ parlor is an exercise in light and white enamel. The dining room, hidden for decades under a coat of archdiocesan beige, has been restored to its original riot of color.
The Pabst family lived here until 1908, when the Archdiocese of Milwaukee moved in, turning the conservatory into a chapel and adding its own layers of “modernization.” By the 1970s, the mansion was on the chopping block, slated to become a parking lot. Luckily, preservationists stepped in to save it.
9. Taliesin – Spring Green
Taliesin is Frank Lloyd Wright’s magnum opus of reinvention – a 600-acre estate near Spring Green, Wisconsin, where architecture, tragedy, and genius collide. Built in 1911, Taliesin is a Prairie School symphony of low-slung limestone, broad horizontals, and windows that blur the line between indoors and out, all nestled into the Driftless Area’s rolling hills.
Wright designed the original house, Taliesin I, as a retreat with his mistress, Mamah Borthwick, after leaving his Oak Park life behind. Its name, Welsh for “shining brow,” reflects its location on the crest of a hill, an embodiment of Wright’s organic architectural philosophy visualizing buildings in harmony with their landscapes. But this dreamscape didn’t stay idyllic for long. A 1914 attack and fire claimed seven lives, including Borthwick’s. Wright rebuilt, only to see Taliesin II gutted by an electrical fire in 1925.
The third iteration, Taliesin III, became a canvas for Wright’s evolving vision, blending function with the bold aesthetics that would define modern architecture. This was no ordinary rural hideaway; it was Wright’s laboratory, where he conceived Fallingwater, the Johnson Wax Headquarters, and othe rprojects.
Today, the estate remains an architectural landmark, its scars and brilliance alike a testament to Wright’s unyielding vision and the tumultuous life that shaped it.
8. Charles Allis House – Milwaukee
The Charles Allis House in Milwaukee is a 1911 Tudor Revival mansion that’s part art vault, part Edwardian showpiece. Designed by Boston-born architect Alexander Eschweiler, this was one of the first private homes in the city wired for electricity — an upgrade meant as much to protect Charles and Sarah Allis’s art collection as it was to power a few electric lamps. With walls made of concrete and an exterior clad in mauve Ohio brick trimmed with Lake Superior sandstone, the house was as much about safety as style.
Inside, Eschweiler didn’t skimp on flair. The French Parlor features Circassian walnut paneling, while embossed Lincrusta Walton wallpaper gives the first-floor rooms an upscale, textured vibe. Marble fireplaces? They’re everywhere, and each one seems to outdo the last with materials like Florido Crème and Tavernelle Clair.
Charles, son of Edward P. Allis and first president of Allis-Chalmers, and his wife, Sarah, amassed an art collection spanning 2,000 years — from ancient glass to early 20th-century paintings. They intended their house to become a public treasure, and it now operates as the Charles Allis Art Museum.
7. Herman Uihlein House – Whitefish Bay
The Herman Uihlein Mansion is a Beaux-Arts masterpiece that blends Renaissance Revival grandeur with the kind of opulence only a Schlitz Brewing heir could muster. Built between 1917 and 1919, this palatial villa commands attention with its limestone façade, classical symmetry, and hip roof, all perfectly framed by its Lake Michigan backdrop.
Designed by Milwaukee architects Roger Kirchoff and Thomas Leslie Rose, the house is an academic study in Beaux-Arts sophistication. The two-story mansion opens with a central hall dominated by a sweeping grand staircase adorned with wrought iron railings — a labor of love that took Milwaukee ironwork virtuoso Cyril Colnik three years to complete. The hall also boasts an Italian Renaissance-style fireplace crafted from Amherst sandstone.
Each room offers its own stylistic themes: the French classical drawing room gleams with a parquet floor and canvas murals, while the Jacobean-inspired library features pegged walnut floors and a Tudor-arched fireplace.
Originally built on the former site of the Pabst Whitefish Bay Resort, the suburban mansion has been a National Register of Historic Places darling since 1983.
6. Jessie and John F. Kern House – Milwaukee
The Jessie and John F. Kern House, completed in 1900, is a no-nonsense showcase of German Renaissance Revival style tucked into Milwaukee’s North Point North district. Built for Wisconsin industrialist John Kern, it’s the kind of house that announces its pedigree without trying too hard. Architects Crane & Barkhausen made sure of that.
The façade is all business: brick with arcaded corbelling, a nod to the villa style favored by Milwaukee’s wealthy German community. The octagonal bartizan at the front adds just the right amount of drama — enough to suggest a turret without going full medieval cosplay. The stone-arched front porch is grand but not gaudy, balancing the weight of the building with a bit of understated flair.
Inside, it’s a masterclass in late-19th-century craftsmanship. Honduran mahogany in the parlor? Naturally. Stained-glass windows in every room? Of course. Floors with intricate inlaid wood? Wouldn’t have it any other way. Cyril Colnik, Milwaukee’s resident ironwork genius, left his fingerprints here, too. And let’s not forget the early zoned air-conditioning system — a technical flex that keeps the house cool in more ways than one.
5. Bernard & Fern Schwartz House (Still Bend) – Two Rivers
The Bernard and Fern Schwartz House, fondly dubbed Still Bend, is Frank Lloyd Wright’s 1938 Life magazine “Dream House” brought to life — a Usonian manifesto realized in the quiet town of Two Rivers, Wisconsin. Unlike Wright’s single-story Usonian staples, this rare two-story design embraces verticality while keeping its democratic architectural soul.
At 3,000 square feet, the Schwartz House displays Wright’s knack for making everyday living extraordinary. The design features warm brick, cypress wood, and vast bands of windows that usher in natural light. The interior showcases Wright’s signature open-plan layout, with the living and dining spaces flowing seamlessly into one another under the soft glow of indirect lighting.
The house boasts one of the country’s oldest continuously operating in-floor heating systems. The bold L-shaped floor plan hugs the landscape, ensuring privacy while offering views of the surrounding nature.
One of the few Wright homes where you can spend the night, it’s an architectural pilgrimage site where design buffs can sleep, dream, and wake up surrounded by Wright’s genius.
4. Herbert F. Johnson House (Wingspread) – Wind Point
Wingspread, set on the Wind Point peninsula near Racine, is Frank Lloyd Wright flexing his architectural muscles at the height of his career. Commissioned by S.C. Johnson heir Herbert Fisk Johnson Jr., this 14,000-square-foot sprawling marvel of Prairie School design was completed in 1939 and represents Wright’s grandest (and most wallet-emptying) residential vision.
The house radiates from a central hub topped with a dramatic domed ceiling and clerestory windows. Four long wings unfurl from this nucleus, each tailored for specific functions: a parents’ wing, a children’s wing, a service wing, and a guest wing. The center is the heart of the home, housing living spaces that soar with Wright’s signature horizontality, natural light, and earthy materials. A viewing platform crowns the hub, offering panoramic views of the 12-acre grounds Wright himself landscaped to mimic the unending prairie.
Overseen by a young John Lautner during construction, Wingspread seamlessly combines form, function, and extravagance. At the time, it was Wright’s costliest residential project —a fitting counterpoint to his concurrent work on the Johnson Wax Headquarters.
Donated to The Johnson Foundation in 1959, Wingspread now serves as a conference center, where visitors can marvel at its meticulous design and experience Wright’s genius unfurled across the prairie.
3. David McMillan House – Stevens Point
Built in 1873, the David McMillan House in Stevens Point is High Victorian Gothic at its most theatrical with steep gables, narrow windows, and scroll-sawn bargeboards. Constructed of brick, the house showcases tall, hood-molded windows and hammer beam accents framing its steep rooflines. Elaborate wooden trim creates a visual rhythm from ridge to gable. The semi-circular bargeboards repeat across smaller gables like a gothic refrain.
David McMillan, a New York transplant turned Wisconsin lumberman, spared no expense in creating this architectural statement. After years of rafting logs down the Plover River to markets as far as St. Louis, McMillan retired in 1873 and channeled his fortunes into this home.
2. Henry & Marie Harnischfeger House – Milwaukee
Built in 1905 on what’s now Wisconsin Avenue, the Henry and Marie Harnischfeger House was a limestone giant with all the hallmarks of German Renaissance Revival style. Architect Eugene R. Liebert delivered projecting bays, corbelled oriel windows, and a recessed entrance that once opened to a sweeping carriage drive. Soldiers carved in stone still stand on the second-floor balcony, silently guarding what remains of this industrialist’s mansion.
Inside, the house once dazzled with a grand staircase and finely detailed ceilings. A second-floor chapel overlooked the portico, and a ballroom occupied the third floor. But WWII transformed the home into utilitarian dormitories for factory workers. The grand staircase was swapped for a generic schoolhouse version, walls were hacked apart for plumbing, and ceilings were dropped, hiding much of the craftsmanship beneath.
The 8,810-square-foot house — originally set on a limestone foundation with an arcaded loggia — is now a mix of history and renovation. Recent updates have begun to undo the damage of decades, but many of the finer details remain lost.
1. Ten Chimneys – Genesee Depot
Ten Chimneys in Genesee Depot is where Broadway met the Wisconsin countryside and stayed for good. Built by Alfred Lunt, Milwaukee-born stage legend, and his English wife, Lynn Fontanne, this estate is as much a theatrical set as it is a home. Designed in layers over decades, it started modestly in 1915 and grew into a sprawling, eccentric complex that balances artistic flair with farmyard pragmatism.
The main house, expanded in the 1930s, is an eclectic mix of architectural indulgence and practical living. Swedish corner fireplaces warm nearly every room, while Claggett Wilson’s murals bring pastoral landscapes and biblical scenes into unexpected corners. The Flirtation Room leads visitors through a maze of interconnected spaces, including a secret-passage-equipped library and a Music Room that feels like a midwestern riff on European grandeur.
Lunt and Fontanne, devoted Wisconsinites despite their global stardom, spent summers hosting guests like Laurence Olivier and Helen Hayes while managing their gentleman’s farm. The property grew to include a chicken coop turned Swedish-inspired cottage, a rehearsal studio shipped from Sweden, and a functional farm operation producing butter, eggs, and vegetables.
Today, Ten Chimneys operates as a living museum, preserving the Lunts’ theatrical legacy and offering visitors a peek into their vibrant, unconventional home.
