Carrie Pierce House

The Carrie Pierce House is an elegant house built about 1857 in Madison, Wisconsin for Alexander McDonnell, one of the builders of the third Wisconsin state capitol. In 1972 the house was listed on the National Register of Historic Places

History
Alexander McDonnell was a building contractor in early Madison. In 1857, less than ten years after Wisconsin became a state, McDonnell's firm began work building the east wing of the third state capitol. That same year McDonnell bought a wooded lot on a hill a quarter mile northwest of the capitol and hired the firm of August Kutzbock and Samuel Donnel (who had also designed the capitol) to design for him, "the best house money could buy."

Kutzbock and Donnel designed the house with the exterior much as it looks today. It stands two stories, clad in Prairie du Chien sandstone. The east-facing façade has an unusual profile for a residence - symmetric around the front door, with a bay on each side rising to a low-pitched gable taller than the center section. Each outer bay has a stone bay window on the first floor with a balcony above in front of large windows. Many of the windows have round-arched frames within larger arches. At the top of the second story are ranks of fine dentils. Above the center flat bay is a cupola. The whole composition suggests some kind of Christian institution more than a residence.

The third capitol building, built at the same time, was clad in the same Prairie du Chien sandstone, and the exterior stonework on this house resembles that of the third capitol. Some of the decoration inside the house is said to resemble Kutzbock and Donnell's designs for that capitol, so perhaps this house preserves some glimpses of the capitol that was destroyed in the fire of 1904.

Some architecture analysts have classified the house's style as Romanesque Revival. Others have judged it Rundbogenstil, which means "round arch-style" and is a German variation of Romanesque Revival. Some elements are Gothic Revival style, like the pointed arches in some window panes and the quatrefoil windows high in the side gables. The cupola is Italianate.

The house was completed in 1858. After Alexander and Francie McDonnell, the house was occupied by J. H. and Rebecca Garnhart, who owned the Garnhart Reaper Works. After J. H. Garnhart died, Wisconsin Supreme Court Justice Orsamus Cole married his widow and lived in the house. Sarah Fairchild Dean Conover also lived there. From 1906 to 1938, Carrie and George Pierce, a power company executive, lived there and ran a high-class boarding house in the mansion. In 1985 the Alexander Company remodeled the house into a luxury hotel, and in 2008 Trek Bicycle and Hospitality bought the hotel and further renovated the inside.

In 1971, the house was designated a landmark by the Madison Landmarks Commission. In 1972 it was added to the National Register of Historic Places, because it is "one of the very best" and the most unique architecturally of the remaining historic houses built in Madison in the decade after statehood. It is also associated with the designers and builder of the third state capitol. One reviewer suggests that the house "may well be the finest domestic example of the German Romanesque revival remaining in the United States."