The Seth Peterson Cottage is a one-story cottage in Mirror Lake State Park near Reedsburg in the U.S. state of Wisconsin. Designed by Frank Lloyd Wright with Thomas Casey as the supervising architect, the house was built for computer operator Seth Peterson of Black Earth, Wisconsin, and was one of Wright's last designs. The exterior of the building has ashlar foundations and large glass windows. The cottage has a bedroom and a living–dining room, which encircles a utility core composed of a kitchen and bathroom. The roof above the bedroom is flat, while the rest of the cottage has a sloped roof. The house is on the National Register of Historic Places.
Work on the cottage began in 1959, but Peterson died by suicide before it was completed. The house was acquired in 1961 by the Pritchard family, who completed construction. In 1966, the Wisconsin Department of Natural Resources (DNR) bought the cottage as part of an expansion of Mirror Lake State Park. The house fell into disrepair until Audrey Laatsch, a local resident, formed the Seth Peterson Cottage Conservancy in 1989 to renovate the building. Following a $300,000 repair project, the house was opened to the public for rentals in 1992.
Description The Seth Peterson Cottage is located at E9982 Fern Dell Road in Reedsburg, Wisconsin, near Wisconsin Dells. Designed by Frank Lloyd Wright in the Usonian style, the Peterson Cottage is a one-story building with one bedroom. It sits on a hill about above Mirror Lake, within Mirror Lake State Park in Sauk County. The only access is by a long driveway.
The Peterson Cottage is one of 41 extant Wright designs in Wisconsin and was one of the last buildings that Wright designed before his death in 1959. It is also the final building designed by him with a rectangular floor plan; his few subsequent designs have circular or triangular floor plans. Taliesin Associated Architects, the successor firm to Wright's practice, later copied the general design of the Peterson Cottage in the construction of the Don and Virginia Lovness House. Like Wright's other Usonian houses, the cottage lacks either a basement or an attic and is laid out in a series of interconnected, free-flowing spaces. Unlike these other houses, however, it also does not include a carport.
, the cottage's bedroom can accommodate up to two people overnight, while the living–dining room has a sofa bed for an additional two guests. Furthermore, the space can host up to 40 guests for events. Throughout the year, tours of the cottage are hosted on the second Sunday of every month for a fee, with free tours available during Wisconsin State Park Open Houses.
Exterior The exterior of the building has ashlar foundations and is set into the western slope of the hill. The horizontally laid sandstone used in the house and is sourced from a local quarry. The facade is made of masonry and glass, like many of Wright's other buildings, though about one-third of it was originally made of plate glass particularly along the southern, western, and eastern elevations. The northern elevation is made of stone. A strip of windows also spans across the southwest corner. The windows are adorned with wooden cutouts that cast shadows across the interior throughout the day.
The bedroom was originally covered by a flat roof, while the other spaces were covered by a roof that slopes outward. Like many of Wright's other buildings, the roof has protruding eaves, and there is a central chimney. During the house's renovation in the early 1990s, the slope of the roof was modified to prevent water accumulation, and the original insulation was increased to .
Interior The cottage measures roughly across. Sources disagree on whether it has or of interior space. The Peterson Cottage was the smallest house that Wright designed in Wisconsin and one of his smallest overall, surpassed only by the cottages he designed for the Stevens family in Yemassee, South Carolina. Wright's son-in-law William Wesley Peters said the building had "more architecture per square foot" than any of his other designs. According to architect John Eifler, who had helped restore several of Wright's buildings, the Peterson Cottage is the only existing example of a Wright-designed cottage centered around a fireplace. The living–dining room and bedroom surround the house's masonry utility core, arranged roughly in a "G" shape. Due to the small dimensions of the house, the rooms are not wheelchair-accessible.
The floors and exterior patio are both made of flagstone, and there is a radiant heating system beneath the floor slab. Pennies from 1959 are embedded in the floor. The front door leads directly into the main living space, which has a high ceiling—contrasting with Wright's other houses, which typically had high spaces accessed by foyers with low ceilings. The living–dining room has a dining area with chairs and tables, as well as a living area with additional furniture. Two glass double doors open from the dining room, overlooking Mirror Lake. The living room's ceiling reaches a height of on one wall.
A short corridor with closets connects the living room to the bedroom, which covers . The bedroom has a lower ceiling than the living room and is furnished with a queen bed and a folding door. At the core of the cottage is a kitchen and bathroom which bisect the southern half of the interior. The kitchen has a small sink, refrigerator, cooking range, and oven but no countertop. A ladder provides access to a loft above. The kitchen's ceiling has a skylight, with the living room ceiling sloping down to meet the kitchen ceiling. The bathroom next to the kitchen has a toilet, sink, and shower. The doors to the bedroom and bathroom are the only interior doors in the house.
History
Development and use as residence The house was built for Seth Peterson, a computer operator from Black Earth, Wisconsin, who was an admirer of Frank Lloyd Wright and had unsuccessfully tried to become an apprentice at Wright's Taliesin Fellowship. Peterson frequently traveled to Wright's Taliesin studio, located about south of the future site of Peterson Cottage,) as well as houses Wright designed in Chicago. In August 1958, Peterson bought a cottage on Mirror Lake near Lake Delton, Wisconsin, but it burned down the following month. At some point afterward, Peterson decided to hire Wright to reconstruct the house, though sources do not indicate when this occurred. After initially receiving no response from the architect, Peterson sent Wright a $1,000 check as part of a retainer agreement. Wright, who was low on funds, shortly cashed the check, thus committing to the house's design. Initially, Wright anticipated that the house would cost $15,000 to build.
Neither Wright or Peterson lived to see the completion of the building. Construction commenced in early 1959, shortly before Wright's death; he had signed the drawings in October 1958, six months before he died. Peterson and his family borrowed $12,000 that July to finance the building's construction. Mackey Adams of the Adams Brothers Construction Company served as the house's general contractor, and Peterson himself constructed parts of the house to save money. Thomas Casey was the supervising architect; Wright himself reportedly never visited the site during construction. Construction stopped after Peterson ran out of money, and he hanged himself in 1960 at the age of 23. At the time, Peterson was despondent; he was in debt, and his bride had reportedly left him. After Peterson's suicide, the house was taken over by receivers. According to the Wisconsin State Journal, one account suggested that the house's plumber quit, taking his materials with him, upon hearing of Peterson's death.
Lilian T. Pritchard, a socialite from Milwaukee, bought the house in late 1961. The next year, she hired Taliesin Associated Architects to renovate it. The Pritchard family completed the project and invited guests to the house in September 1962. The final cost of the cottage has been variously cited as $24,000, $26,000, $35,000, or $38,000. Due to a lack of records, the true cost of the house is unknown. Lilian's son Owen was the home's first actual occupant. Owen raised several Afghan Hounds while living at the house and (S.430) added a high fence to keep the dogs from running away. A forced-air heating system was also installed in the house during this period. The Pritchards hired Tom Casey to draw up plans for an expansion of the cottage, which were never carried out. After Owen died, Lilian considered either expanding the house or selling it.
DNR acquisition and deterioration
In September 1966, the Wisconsin Department of Natural Resources (DNR) acquired the cottage for $38,400, incorporating it into the adjacent Mirror Lake State Park. Sources disagree on why the DNR bought the land. A Baraboo News Republic article from 1982 stated that the DNR wanted to convert the house into a visitor shelter, while another article from the same newspaper, published in 1990, asserted that the DNR wanted to demolish the cottage and restore the landscape to its natural condition. At the time of the DNR's purchase, the house was not considered historically significant. However, local residents and preservationists spoke out against the cottage's demolition. The DNR preserved the house after learning that Wright had designed it, and the building was used as a cross-country skiing lodge. The cottage was ultimately abandoned, as it was too far removed from the rest of the park, and the DNR's staff could not adequately oversee it. In particular, the Peterson Cottage was separated from the rest of the park by six plots of private land, which the DNR was unable to acquire, and it was about away from Fern Dell Road.
The Peterson Cottage started to deteriorate due to vandalism and a lack of upkeep. An Associated Press article directly attributed the vandalism to the building's use as a skiing lodge. As a preventative measure, the DNR boarded up the cottage's windows and installed a fence to discourage trespassing. Despite these efforts, people broke in anyway, hosting parties and setting fires. Some fans of Wright's work sold pieces of the building's decorations. Moreover, rodents chewed through the wooden boards covering the windows, and melting snow created a hole in the roof. The house was also a target of two attempted arson attacks. By the 1980s, vandals had broken a glass pane supporting the structure, prompting the DNR to install temporary supports to prevent the roof from collapsing. The DNR reported that while the house's masonry frame had not deteriorated much, there were severe leaks. The house was added to the National Register of Historic Places (NRHP) in 1981, and the same year it was added to Wisconsin's Register of Historic Places. It was Wright's 15th design in Wisconsin to be listed on the NRHP and one of about 617 NRHP listings in the state. The Peterson Cottage was also the only Wright-designed building that the Wisconsin government owned.
The cottage remained abandoned throughout the 1980s because it could not be used for recreational use, and there was not enough space in the house for an office or a superintendent's residence. Jerald Trumm, Mirror Lake State Park's superintendent at the time, proposed converting the cottage into a shelter or a nature center. However, he did not have the money to accomplish either—restoring the house would have cost $23,000, one-quarter of the park's annual budget. The DNR was also unable to lease or sell the building to a private citizen, and relocating it was deemed infeasible. According to Trumm, even if the house were to be restored, protecting its large glass windows against vandals would prove to be difficult. Additionally, the house's annual heating costs alone would be over $5,000. The department had hoped to identify a group to take over the cabin but had not received any clear commitments.
Restoration efforts