Drawing on the expertise of more than twenty distinguished contributors and the Historic Preservation Office of the Wisconsin Historical Society, this indispensable guide, illustrated with 300 photographs and 32 maps, surveys all of the state's major architectural styles, including exemplary works by locally important designers and nationally noted architects and a wide rage of building types, periods, and influences. Native American effigy mounds and the turtle-shaped Oneida Nation Elementary School express the rich heritage of Wisconsin's indigenous peoples. German farmhouses and mansions, Scandinavian barns, and ethnic churches and fraternal halls testify to the waves of immigration that shaped the state in the nineteenth century. Industrial buildings, company towns and planned communities, parks and historic districts, and modernist skyscrapers exemplify the progressive spirit that held sway throughout the twentieth century.

"Visionaries, researchers, curators, and volunteers launched a massive preservation initiative to salvage fast-disappearing immigrant and migrant architecture. Dozens of historic buildings in the 1970s were transported from various locations throughout the state to the Kettle Moraine State Forest. These buildings created a backdrop against which twenty-first-century interpreters demonstrate nineteenth- and early twentieth-century agricultural techniques and artisanal craftsmanship." --Back cover.

These twenty homes, built between 1854 and 1939, represent the varied architecture in Wisconsin. They offer an intimate tour of residential treasures-- built for captains of industry, a beer baron, Broadway stars, and more-- that have endured the test of time.

The story of the decades-long struggle to build a civic center in Madison, Wisconsin.

Between A.D. 700 and 1100 Native Americans built more effigy mounds in Wisconsin than anywhere else in North America, with an estimated 1,300 mounds—including the world’s largest known bird effigy—at the center of effigy-building culture in and around Madison, Wisconsin. These huge earthworks, sculpted in the shape of birds, mammals, and other figures, have aroused curiosity for generations and together comprise a vast effigy mound ceremonial landscape. Farming and industrialization destroyed most of these mounds, leaving the mysteries of who built them and why they were made. The remaining mounds are protected today and many can be visited. explores the cultural, historical, and ceremonial meanings of the mounds in an informative, abundantly illustrated book and guide. Finalist, Social Science, Midwest Book Awards

Step back to the day when a visit to the gas station meant service with a smile, a wash of the windshield, and the cheerful question, "Fill 'er up?" Since their unremarkable beginnings as cheap shacks and curbside pumps at the dawn of the automobile age, gas stations have taken many forms and worn many guises: castles, cottages and teepees, Art Deco and Streamline Moderne, clad with wood, stucco, or gleaming porcelain in seemingly infinite variety. The companion volume to the Wisconsin Public Television documentary of the same name, Fill 'er Up: The Glory Days of Wisconsin Gas Stations visits 60 Wisconsin gas stations that are still standing today and chronicles the history of these humble yet ubiquitous buildings. The book tells the larger story of the gas station's place in automobile culture and its evolution in tandem with American history, as well as the stories of the individuals influenced by the gas stations in their lives. Fill 'er Up provides a glimpse into the glory days of gas stations, when full service and free oil changes were the rule and the local station was a gathering place for neighbors. More importantly, Fill 'er Up links the past and the present, showing why gas stations should be preserved and envisioning what place these historic structures can have in the 21st century and beyond.