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Thomas Robinson Bours House

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1921, Russell Barr Williamson. 2430 E. Newberry Blvd.
  • (Photograph by Jeffrey E. Klee)
  • (Photograph by Jeffrey E. Klee)
  • (Photograph by Jeffrey E. Klee)
  • (HABS)
  • (HABS)
  • (HABS)
  • (Photograph by Paul J. Jakubovich, courtesy of the Wisconsin Historical Society)

Williamson had worked in the office of Frank Lloyd Wright, and this house is one of Milwaukee’s most outstanding Prairie School examples. It borrows substantially from Wright’s Bogk House (MI161), the construction of which Williamson oversaw, and thus unsurprisingly is often mistaken for one of Wright’s works. Built for physician Thomas Robinson Bours, the two-story, rectangular brick house has such Prairie Style hallmarks as a low-pitched hipped roof, widely overhanging eaves, and abstract art-glass ribbon windows on the second story. The cast-concrete tiles cladding the second story rank among the most interesting examples of decorative work in the city. A one-story sunroom is on the Stowell Avenue side, and a rare original Prairie Style iron fence encloses the backyard. The Bours House is a late example of Prairie Style, which peaked between 1900 and 1915. Strongly associated with the Midwest, the style was mostly used in expensive residential projects.

Writing Credits

Author: 
Marsha Weisiger et al.
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Data

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Citation

Marsha Weisiger et al., "Thomas Robinson Bours House", [Milwaukee, Wisconsin], SAH Archipedia, eds. Gabrielle Esperdy and Karen Kingsley, Charlottesville: UVaP, 2012—, http://sah-archipedia.org/buildings/WI-01-MI173.

Print Source

Buildings of Wisconsin

Buildings of Wisconsin, Marsha Weisiger and contributors. Charlottesville: University of Virginia Press, 2017, 150-150.

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