Urban Spelunking is brought to you by Nicolet Law.
For the first time since 2018, the Wauwatosa Historical Society is hosting its once-annual Tour of Homes, which will open seven Tosa gems in the Olde Hillcrest neighborhood to the public on Saturday, Sept. 21 from 10 a.m. until 4 p.m.
The event will be the 35th installment of this event, which is back now under the direction of new-ish WHS Director Amanda Saso.
Also open that day will be the Historical Society’s own Kneeland-Walker House, 7406 Hillcrest Dr., which hosts a special exhibit about the neighborhood.
The featured homes this year are:
- 1940 Wauwatosa Ave.
- 7420 Hillcrest Dr.
- 1938 N. 70th St.
- 7502 Oakhill Ave.
- 1852 N. 71st St.
- 2145 N. 74th St.
- 7024 Hillcrest Dr.
Of course, all of the homes are interesting in their own right, but the one that caught my eye first was the 1922 Arts & Crafts gem at 1940 Wauwatosa Ave., designed by Brust & Philipp for Allis-Chalmers exec Allen E. Hall and his wife Ruth.
The home was also featured on previous Tosa Tour of Homes events, but its return is definitely welcomed.
When the house was built, it sat mostly amid farmland, but it was not entirely alone.
In fact, it was directly adjacent to a farmhouse that’s still there and which was already constructed when an 1876 map of the area was drawn.
Across the street and slightly north north was the First Baptist Church, which was later moved to the Wauwatosa Cemetery, where it serves as a chapel.
South of that was the Lowell Damon house, which also still stands, and further south two other houses. One of them, the home of the First Congregational Church’s Rev. Luther Clapp was moved in 1976 to 12323 Watertown Plank Rd., where it can still be seen today.
The Hall house was built on land that was surveyed in 1872 by John M. Wheeler and became James S. Stickney & Stickney & Baumbach’s Subdivision, according to extensive research undertaken by Wauwatosa Historical Society’s Carol Bannen, drawing on previous notes by Mike Smith, Bruce Lynch and Peggy Oberbeck, which provided much of the historical home information here.
The subdivision was one of many that began to pop up toward the end of the 19th century as transportation links fanned out from Milwaukee, spurring suburban growth in the area. By 1897, there had been so much growth that the Village of Wauwatosa became the City of Wauwatosa.
While the land under the Hall house had a few owners in the intervening years, none had built on it until the Halls.
Allan Everett Hall was born in Parker, Pennsylvania, in 1873 to Joseph Everett Hall, M.D., and Frances Irene Jenks, and studied mechanical engineering at Pennsylvania State College before moving on to earn his Ph.B at Yale in 1895.
He then joined his uncle William H. Jenks in the machinery and foundry business while also studying law from 1895 until 1900. Though he was admitted to the bar, he never practiced law.
Hall moved to Seattle and began working at Allis-Chalmers there, and from 1906 until 1909 he worked as a draftsman, engineer and salesman at Puget Sound Machinery Depot in Seattle, before moving to Milwaukee in 1910 to work as an assistant manager.
In 1917, he married Ruth Westlake Adams in 1917 in Minneapolis and the couple had three children, though the first died very young.
Hall continued at Allis-Chalmers in a number of roles until his death from rheumatic heart disease in January 1944, leaving behind his wife and a daughter, 23, and son, 18.
According to the 1920 census, the Halls were living in a rented house in Wauwatosa around the time they engaged Brust & Philipp to design their home.
They chose their architects wisely.
The firm was founded in 1906 by Peter Brust, Richard Philipp and Julius Heimerl. In addition to designing many homes, Brust & Philipp drew department stores for Schuster’s; numerous buildings for Kohler Company; the colonnaded Marshall & Illsley Bank, now razed, on Water Street, just north of Wisconsin Avenue; the South Side Library on 10th and Madison; the St. Joseph Chapel on Layton Boulevard; and other gems.
By the time, the Halls hired the firm, it was on its way to becoming the largest in the state.
In 1927, the two main partners went their separate ways. Eleven years later, Brust would bring his sons into the business, at which point it became Brust & Brust and that firm would go on to design other notable Tosa buildings, including Christ King and St. Bernard’s.
When in 1973 Gary Zimmerman became president, the firm was renamed Brust-Zimmerman and now survives as Zimmerman Architectural Studios, with offices in the Menomonee Valley.
As was common for Philipp, the house was designed with nods toward English cottages and this one has a nice entry porch, oversized brackets and more.
“Another delightful medieval element is the functional leader box and gutters which were made decorative by clever metal craftsmanship and design,” Bannen points out.
The exterior is finished in stucco.
Interestingly, Bannen adds, the house had a farm cistern out back, which has since been filled in.
“The back yard may have been used also as a farm dump, because pieces of china can still be found while gardening,” she explains.
There had also been a cistern in the basement that was used to provide water to the kitchen sink and the second floor bathroom. It’s still there, but it’s been sealed off and a trap door that gave access to clean the cistern was removed.
However, workers did have to punch a hole into a basement wall to access the cistern and through that opening one can get a glimpse into the enormous dark space that serves as an impromptu echo chamber for anyone standing in the adjacent room.
The extant garage was added in 1925, and the grounds were landscaped in the style of an English garden, a fact that was recently discovered when the current homeowners, while doing garden work, uncovered flagstones and brick edging.
Inside, there are hardwood floors, built-ins and other woodwork, a tiled fireplace and other beautiful details. The dining room, which has a built-in bench, also has doors that open onto a covered patio out back.
The Halls lived in the house with their two children and, for a time, Ruth’s father Frank Adams. After Allen Hall's death in 1944 Ruth remained in the home until her passing 12 years later.
In 1957, the Underwood Memorial Baptist congregation purchased the home for use as a parsonage for its newly constructed church a few doors south and remodeled the kitchen.
The congregation was the same one that had built the old church across the street and which is now the cemetery chapel.
It later constructed and occupied the beautiful little 1888 cream city brick church on 75th and Hillcrest that is now home to a Latvian congregation, and it’s interesting that all three of the church’s buildings survive.
Rev. Albert Pittman, his wife Julia and their three children lived in the house until they moved to Kalamazoo, Michigan, in 1965. Rev. Dale Robison followed with his wife Karen and their two daughters, remaining until 1970.
In 1971, the church sold the home to architect Dale M. Wiars and his wife Carolyn, who lived there with their four children. For a time, Wiars was a Tosa alderman.
The Wiars sold to the Omastiaks in 1982 but they only remained there a few years, selling in 1985 to the current owners, Pierre and Frieda Payne, who had lived in Paris and Boston before arriving here.
The Paynes have raised a family in the home and remained even after the children were grown and had moved out.
A number of changes have been made inside over the years, including removing the old wood stove, another kitchen remodel and the removal of the butler’s pantry. The old sleeping porch was also converted into a master bath, and central air was added a few years ago.
At the top of the stairs, a servant’s room has been opened up into a space overlooking the main staircase, giving that area a much more open and airy feel.
“We came here in 1985, and it was for a job,” recalls Frieda Payne. “We had been living in France, working for a French company that Allen-Bradley bought.
“The (Realtor) called before we came and asked me some questions about the kind of thing we were looking for, and I said, I want a house that's solid. I want sidewalks. I am not interested in a lot of new build. I don't want a housing development.”
The Paynes came out to see some places the broker selected based on the family’s stated needs.
“We came for two weeks and we stayed at the Hyatt, I think, and looked at houses. She drove us around, and she did take us out to Pewaukee and we didn't say a word. We sat in the car and she said, ‘OK, I just have to make sure.’ I said, ‘well, you made sure.’
“She showed us parts of Wauwatosa and the East Side, and we didn't like the East Side, because things were too close together, and a lot of the houses really needed a lot. We looked in the Highlands and I said to my husband, ‘why would we pay more for this neighborhood? Just because of this neighborhood, you're paying at least $20-$30,000 because it's here'.”
Then they saw the former Hall house.
“We liked the house, it was built well, we liked the features, we liked the flow. We thought, ‘oh my god, how are we going to pay for that’,” Payne recalls. “And it was really big, and we had no furniture. We were still living on milk crates and homemade stuff. It was fine for apartments.
“But okay, well, you grow into it, right? So we went back to Boston and we came to an agreement. I had our son, and 20 days later we got in the cars, and we drove back out here. Good fun. And then (Pierre) was gone two weeks later for three weeks, because he traveled 75 percent of the time for the first at least 15 years that we were here.”
Nearly 40 years later, Pierre is retired after running his own business for a time and he has converted their son’s former bedroom into a studio where he paints.
You can get a peek inside this storybook gem, too, thanks to the return of the Wauwatosa Tour of Homes.
It’s the fifth time it will be open to the public.
“I think it's nice for Tosa,” says Payne. “I think it's a good idea. People want to see what your house is like. They want to know.”
Fans of these tours and of local history can rejoice not just because the tour is back this year but because Saso – who became director of the historical society in April 2023 after serving as interim director for about six months – says the Tour of Homes will be back.
“Yes, we are making it an annual event,” she says. “We already have some idea of location for next year!”
Tickets for the Tour of Homes are $40 per person, $35 for Wauwatosa Historical Society members.
The tour is a fundraiser for the society and money raised will help preserve historical records and collections, underwrite local history education programs and maintain the WHS’ properties, including the Kneeland-Walker House and the Little Red Store in the Village.
More information and tickets available at wauwatosahistoricalsociety.org/event/tour-of-homes.
Born in Brooklyn, N.Y., where he lived until he was 17, Bobby received his BA-Mass Communications from UWM in 1989 and has lived in Walker's Point, Bay View, Enderis Park, South Milwaukee and on the East Side.
He has published three non-fiction books in Italy – including one about an event in Milwaukee history, which was published in the U.S. in autumn 2010. Four more books, all about Milwaukee, have been published by The History Press.
With his most recent band, The Yell Leaders, Bobby released four LPs and had a songs featured in episodes of TV's "Party of Five" and "Dawson's Creek," and films in Japan, South America and the U.S. The Yell Leaders were named the best unsigned band in their region by VH-1 as part of its Rock Across America 1998 Tour. Most recently, the band contributed tracks to a UK vinyl/CD tribute to the Redskins and collaborated on a track with Italian novelist Enrico Remmert.
He's produced three installments of the "OMCD" series of local music compilations for OnMilwaukee.com and in 2007 produced a CD of Italian music and poetry.
In 2005, he was awarded the City of Asti's (Italy) Journalism Prize for his work focusing on that area. He has also won awards from the Milwaukee Press Club.
He has be heard on 88Nine Radio Milwaukee talking about his "Urban Spelunking" series of stories, in that station's most popular podcast.
