DE PERE, WI (WTAQ-WLUK) — A visually interesting home in De Pere was added to the State Register of Historic Places.
The Agnes and Ruth Lenfestey Mark House, located at 1336 Ridgeway Blvd., is one of only two architect-designed Modern Movement single-family residences in the city of De Pere in the 1950s and early 1960s.
Historians say the clients were 88-year-old Mrs. Agnes Hurlbut Lenfestey and her daughter, Mrs. Ruth Lenfestey Mark, who was then sharing a home with her mother. By 1962, both women had lost their husbands, but the Hurlbut and Lenfestey families were socially prominent ones and both women were still active in social and civic circles in both De Pere and Green Bay.
John C. Tilleman, a young Green Bay architect who had opened his own practice in Green Bay, designed the house in 1963. The large site allowed for a rectilinear plan, front-gable roof main block that contained a living room, dining room, kitchen, den, three bedrooms and two bathrooms. Placed next to the house was a two-car gable-roofed garage of similar design that was connected to the house by a covered breezeway. Both the house and garage were clad in a light grey concrete brick that was manufactured by the F. Hurlbut Company of Green Bay, which was owned by family members. The design of the house, with its shallow-pitched roofs, broad transom lights in the gable ends, and exposed beam ends, reflects the influence of California houses of the 1950s that were pioneered by architects working for developer Joseph Eichler; it is the only house of this type in De Pere.
The State Register is Wisconsin’s official list of state properties determined to be significant to Wisconsin’s heritage.
