From the country road in Waukesha County, you’d never know you were driving
by the most expensive home in the five-county metro area. The entrance to the
remarkable Swanson residence is marked only by a small, easily missed sign, and
from there you take a potholed dirt road that winds through the woods for nearly
a mile.
Ultimately, you come upon a statue of a deer that looks almost real and is
guarding a small parking lot. Now you can see Oconomowoc Lake stretching out
along a 50-acre estate, and you can approach the 13,000-square-foot Twenty
Gables mansion. Two 19th century buggies sit on the porch of the white Victorian
home, a reminder of the days when the area was known as the “Newport of the
West.”
One of the last of the Gilded Age summer “cottages” of Midwestern
millionaires, the Swanson home is now surrounded by modern mansions of 18,000
square feet and more. But Twenty Gables still reigns supreme, at least as far as
price. Based on assessed value, it’s the most expensive private residence in the
five-county metro area.
In searching for magnificent mansions, we used recent sales data and
equalized assessment values to find Milwaukee’s most expensive homes. We were
surprised by what we found: The explosion in home values has pushed values so
high that more than 50 homes are worth $3 million or more, and 20 of them are
worth at least $4 million.
That’s rich for Milwaukee, though nothing compared to real estate around the
nation: the $70 million oceanfront estate in Florida’s Palm Beach that sold in
2004, Oprah’s $50 million Santa Barbara palace, Chicago’s $20 million mansions
or even the Chicago spillover of $9 million estates in Lake Geneva. All of which
make Milwaukee’s mansions look like veritable bargains.
No home in the Milwaukee area has ever actually sold for more than $4 million
– yet. The highest selling price was on an Oconomowoc Lake home sold privately
in 2003 for $3,825,000. But the assessed values in most cases probably
understate the likely selling price.
The area’s highest-valued homes are clustered in three small communities –
Chenequa and Oconomowoc Lake in Waukesha County and River Hills in Milwaukee
County – super residential settings where you’ll find large lots, private drives
and exclusive, country club-type settings. But property values for Milwaukee’s
Lake Drive mansions are approaching $3 million, too, while pockets of
ultra-high-end homes dot the horizon in places you’d expect, such as Elm Grove,
Bayside and Mequon, and in some you wouldn’t, such as Oak Creek and the Town of
Polk.
The range of home prices in the metro area is quite striking: The top-priced
home is $5.6 million in Chenequa but $2.6 million in the City of Milwaukee and a
mere $476,900 in South Milwaukee.
At the top is the Village of Oconomowoc Lake, where one-acre lots fetch $1
million and more and the property’s 1,800 feet of shoreline accounts for much of
the equalized value of the $5.9 million Swanson home.
But it’s not price alone that makes a home extraordinary. Sometimes it’s the
architectural pedigree or historical roots that make for a one-of-a-kind,
irreplaceable home, even though it isn’t in the $3 million-plus club. We visited
some of those as well.
Among those who own these elite homes, we found CEOs of public companies,
heirs to family fortunes, physicians, professional athletes and successful
entrepreneurs. Some live in sprawling new estates with swimming pools, home
theaters, workout rooms and immense walk-in-closets; others in lovingly restored
Victorians and baronial mansions adapted to reflect their owner’s taste.
One thing is certain: Milwaukee’s magnificent mansions are as diverse as the
personalities of their owners. That became clear as soon as we began stepping
over their thresholds.
The Rich Are Different
Jack Swanson and his wife, Karen, heiress
to the Miller Brewing Company fortune, rescued the 1882 Merrick estate on
Oconomowoc Lake from demolition in 1964. The newlywed couple were then living
modestly in a two-and-a-half-room apartment on Chicago’s Sheridan Road, so they
had almost no furniture to put in the massive mansion at first.
Forty years later, that’s no longer a problem. The home is an unusual
amalgamation of beautiful oil paintings, bricks from Milwaukee’s historic
streets, remnants of long-gone local mansions, Bible study materials and family
photos.
Jack Swanson, a Rutgers-educated former accountant and sports buff, has a
passion for two things: antiques and Jesus. A sign on the front porch announces
that “Jesus Christ Lives in This House.” Swanson vividly recalls the “era of the
Jesus People,” when he and his wife took in hoards of homeless hippies
(typically known as Jesus freaks) in the 1960s and ’70s. “At that point, we had
people sleeping in almost every room of the house,” he recalls.
The couple also raised five children in the home (several of them adopted)
and put on a sizeable addition in the 1970s, expanding the home by nearly a
third and adding a three-car attached garage. Today, there’s a huge room
overlooking the lake dedicated just to Bible study meetings.
Inside the home, a seashell collection greets guests, while bird cages and
fish tanks line one side of the dining room. Autographed Brett Favre and Reggie
White helmets rest alongside turn-of-the-century medicine bottles, like Dr.
Clark Johnson’s Indian Blood Syrup, the original elixir still inside.
At the far end of the house, in the newer wing, is where Jack wrote two
books, Out of Oconomowoc and Farewell to Fences, both part memoir,
part local lore. Many writers pray for inspiration, but Swanson leaves nothing
to chance: He has an altar with a crucifix and stained-glass window across the
room from the octagon-shaped alcove where he writes.
Friendly and casual, with a Lincoln-esque silver beard, Swanson improvised
as he renovated, buying and bartering historic pieces to fuse together his
home’s addition until he felt the home was “an extension” of himself.
With an Italian marble fireplace rescued from Milwaukee’s demolished
Plankinton mansion, Twenty Gables at times suggests a museum, but one with a
lived-in, charmingly messy humanity. It’s not quite the ambience you’d expect in
Milwaukee’s most expensive mansion.
East Side and North Shore
Well before the wealthy were building summer cottages in Oconomowoc, they
were building year-round homes not far from Milwaukee’s Downtown. The East Side
homes built on Prospect Avenue and Lake Drive have a rich blend of architectural
heritage: Tudor, Flemish, French and especially German influences from the
city’s 19th and early 20th century immigrants.
Writer and architectural design consultant H. Russell Zimmermann has
documented many of these treasures in his books throughout the years, including
in his 1976 The Heritage Guidebook and his 1987 Magnificent
Milwaukee. Zimmermann is one of the foremost experts on Milwaukee’s historic
architecture and has consulted on the restoration of such treasures as the Grain
Exchange Room in the Mackie Building.
A number of the mansions Zimmermann has written about have since been razed,
turned into museums or office space or broken up into condos. But quite a few
still remain in the hands of private owners.
Turnover in ownership can result in an interesting blend of old and new, as
in the early 20th century Uihlein mansion on Lake Drive. Built by Herman and
Claudia Uihlein, of the Schlitz brewing family, it now sports gold leafing and
an Indian influence reflecting the birthplace of its current owner, entrepreneur
Kailas Rao.
The Italian Renaissance mansion features the renowned ornamental ironwork of
Cyril Colnik and a smooth, buff-colored Bedford limestone exterior. Rao and his
wife, Becky, bought it in 1993 for $1.3 million from Peter and Mary Buffett,
whose music production company, Independent Sound, was briefly located at the
Whitefish Bay home.
Interior designer Jon Schlagenhaft oversaw the renovations, which included
the creation of murals depicting the Taj Mahal, a white Bengal tiger and other
elements of India’s countryside. And then there’s the 27-seat multimedia theater
with nine-speaker surround-sound, the billiards room, wine cellar and grooming
area for the Raos’ show dogs. Becky Rao’s Richfield farm, Rao Farms, breeds
champion Brittany dogs and Appaloosa horses.
The Raos proudly documented their home’s renovations in the book
Restoration of a Masterpiece, which they published in 2003.
Even today, Kailas Rao has to pinch himself to believe the home is his. “You
know,” he says, “I didn’t come from old money. I was a professor.”
At $3.3 million, the home is one of the most expensive in the county, with
the highest equalized value of any house in Whitefish Bay. Other historic East
Side residences don’t quite reach that value but are impressive nonetheless.
Take the Goldberg mansion on Newberry Boulevard in Milwaukee. Real estate
investor Jim Wiechmann had his eye on this Queen Anne Victorian for 20 years
before he and his wife, Sue, bought it in 1980. But Sue was intimidated by the
Gothic, castle-like exterior at first. “For the first year we lived here, I
didn’t even come in the front door,” she recalls. “I didn’t feel like I belonged
here.”
But she ended up falling in love with the warm, cozy feeling of the 1896
interior, the wooden arches, stained-glass windows and sunny solarium off the
dining room. One of the most distinctive features of the home’s exterior is the
three-story tower, yet on the inside, it seems to disappear because the
Wiechmanns’ grand window treatments and other decorative touches integrate it
with the rest of the home.
The woodwork almost glows, a testimonial to 40 years of meticulous care by
former owners optician David Wald and his wife, Lenke, who bought lemon oil by
the case to give her wood a hand-rubbed luster.
The mansion’s history has its share of intrigue. The man who had the home
built never lived there. Attorney Benjamin M. Goldberg was disbarred before its
completion for misusing trust fund money. The first residence built on Newberry,
the home has some of the same style details as the historic Pabst mansion (2000
W. Wisconsin Ave.), built just a few years earlier. A number of the original
chandeliers were melted down to make bullets during World War I, but otherwise,
the home is in mint condition.
“We brought it back to its former glory,” says Sue Wiechmann, who grew up in
a ranch home and never thought she’d end up in a Victorian mansion. The home’s
2005 assessed value was about $1.4 million.
Just a few blocks away, on Terrace Avenue, live retired business executive
Bob Elsner and his wife, Barbara, and their home couldn’t be more different.
Their 1916 home was dubbed “the only important residential project by Frank
Lloyd Wright in Milwaukee” by Zimmermann in The Heritage Guidebook.
Today, he goes further, calling the Elsners’ home “probably” the best of
Wright’s creations in the entire state. That’s high praise, considering other
Wisconsin masterpieces like Taliesen East and Wingspread. Jim Draeger,
architectural historian at the Wisconsin Historical Society in Madison, agrees,
calling it one of the finest examples of the Prairie period.
The Elsners didn’t know much about Wright when they moved from Whitefish Bay
to this home in 1955. They were just looking for a bigger place to raise their
kids. But they’ve since become experts on the architect, welcoming major Wright
scholars and architectural experts from around the world into their home.
They’ve learned to appreciate the complexity of the design and how it creates a
sense of quiet that envelopes the house and how Wright played with height and
eschewed walls for open spaces. “There’s something about his proportions,” says
Barbara Elsner. “It’s like a magic genius.”
In the 1950s, decorators advised the young Mrs. Elsner to paint over the
woodwork and knock out a wall in the kitchen, substituting a bay window for the
exposed brick wall that lets in carefully placed rectangles of light. “This was
a time when beige rugs and white walls were it,” she recalls. But knowing in her
gut that the interior aesthetics are just as much a work of art as the outer
design, she left these elements intact and gradually furnished the home with a
collection of Wright-designed pieces.
The Frederick C. Bogk residence, as it’s known, hasn’t been listed on the
market for decades and is irreplaceable, both architecturally and historically,
so its current value is all but impossible to estimate. Given that Wright
designed every detail, including a wooden built-in radiator cover, the home may
be worth more in pieces than as a whole. But as passionately as Mrs. Elsner
feels about historic preservation, that’s not likely to happen anytime soon.
The Elsners live just a few blocks away from a proposed condo tower
development, and they can feel the neighborhood changing around them. Not so for
the residents of ultra-private River Hills, whose five-acre lots and long,
winding driveways hide the mansions from view and whose municipal codes seem to
prevent change from ever happening. Incorporated in 1930, the village founders
outlawed commercial development and decreed that the streets would have no
sidewalks, curbs or even lane lines – all in keeping with residents’ desire for
“country living.”
But in 2003, Zimmermann got unprecedented inside access when the River Hills
Foundation commissioned him to write the first book about the village’s history.
In researching River Hills: As It Is and As It Once Was, he studied the
architecture, snapped gorgeous full-color photos and chronicled the history of
this exclusive community.
For the cover photograph, Zimmermann chose what he refers to as “probably the
best and most important home in River Hills,” Jack and Joan Stein’s $3.1 million
estate on the Milwaukee River. The slate-roofed 17-room mansion was built in the
late 1920s and is now a Milwaukee County landmark.
“We waited a long time for this house,” recalls Joan Stein, whose husband
owns Stein Gardens and Gifts. Before buying it in 1986, the couple had lived
around the bend in the river and admired it from afar for 15 years.
The grand estate originally belonged to Walter S. Lindsay, a Scotsman who
came to Milwaukee in 1911 and made his fortune with the Lindsay-McMillan Oil
Company. Lindsay became one of Milwaukee’s elite, serving on the Northwestern
Mutual Life board of directors and becoming the first River Hills village
president.
A little village of outbuildings forms around the home’s courtyard, but since
the Steins do not employ a chauffeur to fetch the car from the coach house (as
they speculate the prior owners had), they converted a laundry room into an
attached garage.
With a two-story front foyer, paneled library and brick red-hued den, Joan is
hard-pressed to choose her favorite place in the home. “I’m crazy about every
room,” she says. “I love this house.”
Another of Zimmermann’s River Hills favorites is the home of Donald and Donna
Baumgartner, whose 15-acre estate is estimated at $3.3 million. What’s stunning
about this one is the landscaping, with extensive walkways, manicured lawns and
a stately fountain that serves as a focal point. The Baumgartners even went so
far as to create their own ponds and rivers on the land.
“I was jealous that my neighbors were on the river and I wasn’t, so I built
my own river,” quips Mr. Baumgartner, founder and chief executive officer of
Paper Machinery Corporation. Shelter magazine called the 1929 English
Georgian-style house a “fantasia,” highlighting the work of their interior
designer, Jon Schlagenhaft (who also redid the Rao home) in a 2002 cover story.
But Zimmermann still likes the landscaping the best.
The Lake Country
As gorgeous as Milwaukee County’s mansions are, Waukesha County’s Lake
Country has become the hotbed of prime local real estate. Since the 19th
century, when millionaires from Chicago and St. Louis built summer cottages
there, the lakeside settings and quiet, country lifestyle have appealed to the
area’s wealthy.
Today, the most coveted lakes are Pine, Oconomowoc and Beaver, though real
estate on parts of Nagawicka, La Belle and North lakes can also command a pretty
penny. Sailing is possible on the larger lakes, and although Pine Lake has no
municipal sewer service (and Oconomowoc’s is very limited), their exclusion of
all commercial development gives them the edge when it comes to secluded,
resort-type living.
It’s no secret that lake home values are sky-high. But exactly what these
homes are worth is often hard to pin down. Assessors tend to wait for a critical
mass of sales to accumulate before revaluing the homes. For instance, Clark Oil
heiress Wendy Gahn-Ackley sold her historic home on Oconomowoc Lake in October
2005 for $3.55 million, while the home still only carried an equalized value of
about $2.2 million.
But some have stretched the market too far. A castle-like mansion on
Oconomowoc Lake with a $3.4 million equalized value was listed a couple of years
ago for close to $6 million before finally being taken off the market because it
didn’t sell.
In some communities, the values set by assessors can provoke the ire of the
wealthy landowners. In Mequon, for example, several residents who own the
highest-assessed properties are suing the city over valuations stemming back to
2002. They even tried (unsuccessfully) to get the Mequon assessor removed from
his job, saying his valuations are too high.
No lake has more high-end homes than Oconomowoc Lake, with 19 worth more than
$3 million. One of those is a Georgian Colonial built in 1960 for Pabst brewery
heiress Elsa Pabst, great-granddaughter of Captain Frederick Pabst. Marie Kasten
purchased the home in 2001.
Kasten, whose former husband is Doral Dental co-founder Craig Kasten, grew up
on 45th and Hadley streets. Her dad was an airline pilot. “We were working
class,” she says. “We used to drive along Lake Drive and fantasize about living
in one of the mansions.” Now, with her Oconomowoc Lake home valued at $3.6
million, she is living her fantasy.
Among the renovations Kasten has done are the French ice cream parlor added
at the back of the house for kid-friendly summertime treats and a new sound
system, which includes a 1,200-movie DVD library and a grand player piano hooked
up to play in synch with the flat-screen TV.
The house has 11 bathrooms, 11 fireplaces, a library and three kitchens.
“It’s massive,” says Kasten of the 18,000-square-foot, 39-room mansion. The
challenge, she explains, is “bringing it down so that each room is
friendly.” She and her three daughters go back and forth throughout the year
between the lake house and their not-inconsiderable 7,800-square-foot Mequon
home, which features a beauty salon complete with pedicure basin on the third
floor and a full gym in the basement.
Another elite area is Pine Lake in Chenequa, with 15 homes valued at more
than $3 million. Several homes currently on the market give a glimpse into the
lifestyle there.
Deborah Marek is asking $4.3 million for the white, 9,500-square-foot Greek
Revival home she and her husband built in 1997. The home has a workout room and
tanning bed, marble-like columns and a great room with a two-story mirror.
Outside, a majestic staircase leads down to the lot’s prime Pine Lake frontage.
The assessed (equalized) value is about $3.3 million.
Next door to Marek is another 1997 home, for sale at $4.3 million. The brick
home features high-end woodwork, a wine cellar, state-of-the art technology and
interior design by Zimmerman Design Group (no relation to Russell Zimmermann,
whose firm is called Zimmermann Design Consultants). The 7,500-square-foot home
has 360 feet of lake frontage on four acres. Assessed value: nearly $2.9
million.
Another listing on Pine Lake with an assessed value of $2.15 million is on
the market for $3.5 million. This is an 1893 summer cottage with a panoramic
view of the lake and 900 feet of frontage (about half on the main lake and half
on the bay behind the home). The 6,000-square-foot home is an enchanting
reminder of the Victorian era.
But it would be hard to find a home that better personified the ideal of Lake
Country living than the Queen Anne Victorian summer cottage called Islandale.
The home doesn’t just hug the water, it is surrounded by it, on a six-acre
island in Lac La Belle. Jutting out from the shore and connected by a narrow
causeway, the island has panoramic views of tranquil Oconomowoc, with its church
steeples, rooftops and trees. Islandale shares the island with only three other
homes, and it’s surrounded on three sides by 900 feet of unobstructed lake
frontage.
The 1882 home had fallen into disrepair by the mid-1990s when owner Don Moore
first saw it. Unoccupied for 50 years, it “looked worse than dowdy,” he recalls.
But as he calculated all of the time, money and effort it would take to
restore the historic home, he saw many elements worth saving: the detailed
etching in the woodwork of the spiral three-story staircase, the original
hardwood floors made of black walnut and set in a striped pattern, the six
fireplaces with carved wood and marble and the door hinges with small brass
church steeples on the top and bottom.
Moore’s wife, Connie, knew right away that this was the house for them.
“Let’s do it,” she said. It took two years to put in all new electric, plumbing
and insulation and to strip the wood and light fixtures of the white paint that
coated them. Don Moore credits the dedication of the Milwaukee-area craftsmen
who helped do the meticulous work. “This restoration could not have been done in
Florida,” he says of his home state. “They just don’t have the craftsmen we have
here.”
To keep up their morale, Connie Moore made a scrapbook of the renovation
process, including a snapshot of a newly constructed home built in 19th century
cottage style, which looked like a pale echo of this real period home after its
restoration was completed.
Now the home, originally designed by architect Cass Chapman for Chicago
businessman Walter Peck, is an irreplaceable mixture of historic charm and
modern convenience. It’s also on the National Register of Historic Landmarks.
The Moores’ grandkids play among the sloped ceilings of the third floor and swim
in the lake all summer long. From the wraparound porch and strategically placed
windows, the family has views of the lake from sunrise to sunset.
The assessed value of Islandale is $1.8 million, with more than half of that
in land value. But Moore predicts it could sell for much more. For the retired
investment adviser, it’s an island of residential splendor, a masterpiece that
feels just like home.
Julie Sensat Waldren is a regular Milwaukee Magazine contributor.
Photographed by David Bader.
