The Mushroom Factor

One of the cool things about being a self-employed communications guru is getting out to see fun places and meeting interesting people. Today, cold and snowy as it was, was such a fun day.

I had a meeting with new clients and appropriately enough—them being entrepreuners for banking equipment—we met at The Coffee Vault Cafe, a great shop in an old bank building in the village of Dousman, WI. Needless to say, the venue was fitting, as well as tasty, warm and inviting.

Afterward, I had a lovely chat with cafe owner Roxanne Vincent and she shared the history of the building. It’s fascinating!

According to Roxanne, the building was built in 1908. Originally the floor was the same level of the upper story, as seen in this photo. This allowed for a full basement, which back then was a barbershop. In 1955, they lowered the floor to that of the sidewalk level and the barbershop had to move down the street.

Roxanne says the building came with many intriguing stories. For example, in 1975, the bank needed a larger building so it moved across the street. The good people of Dousman, being a community-minded bunch, gathered together and helped carry all the bank furnishings, including boxes and boxes of money, to its new location.

The building then became home to a series of businesses, including a taxidermist, a horse supply shop and an antique shop. Legend has it the antique dealer died in the store and he’s haunted the building ever since. Perhaps that’s why the building stood empty from 1983 until 2005, when Roxanne and her husband bought it.

Oh, the stories that come with an old building, eh?

Roxanne has become the curator of many village historical treasures. When she opened her shop, she said many people generously contributed bank artifacts, which she now tastefully displays on the walls.

People contributed photography as well. In the lower center photo, you can see the outside steps that led to the original floor level and a window to the barbershop below.

The story I liked the best was about a bank president (perhaps one of the men shown above). According to Roxanne, he was afraid of being robbed and whenever a mysterious stranger came to town he made the bank employees hide in the vault—the vault with a peephole in the door.

Roxanne and her husband have done a wonderful job preserving the historical features of the building while providing a fabulous venue for today’s coffee connoisseurs. It’s only one block north of the Glacial Drumlin Bike Trail so be sure to stop in if you’re driving or pedaling through the area.

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When we purchased our property more than 20 years ago, we had no idea of the architectural gem we were acquiring. Call it unobserved naivety on our part, but we lived here several months before noticing bricks and timber-framing beneath the white siding covering one of our barns.

Because May is Historic Preservation Month, it’s important to pay tribute to this barn and its noteworthy architectural style known as fachwerk.

Fachwerk, or framework, is the German name for timber-frame architecture found throughout Europe, particularly in areas where timber was in short supply. Builders used hewed-lumber for the skeletal framework and then filled in the remainder of the wall with burned or dried brick.

According to William Tischler, in his article Fachwerk Construction in the German Settlements of Wisconsin¹, fachwerk was popular among German Lutherans who emigrated during the 1800′s from Germany’s northern areas of Brandenburg and Pomerania and then settled in Dodge, Jefferson, Washington and Osaukee Counties of Wisconsin. They built houses, threshing barns, stables, woodsheds, granaries and even churches in the fachwerk style of construction.

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Got a place that matters to you? Want to show others?

May is Preservation Month and the National Trust for Historic Preservation has an interesting theme for this year’s campaign—This Place Matters. According to their site, the campaign “is designed to help people share the place that matter to them, wherever these places happen to be. By simply printing a sign and taking a picture, you can tell the story about a place that matters to you.”

To date, 60 people or organizations have posted pictures of places that matter and brief explanations of why. Others have gone even further and posted YouTube videos. From public buildings, to homes, to bridges, this is an interesting collection of what people are doing to preserve places that matter to our heritage and our history.

So, do you have a place that matters to you? Post it on This Place Matters!

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Now that we have a child living in Washington D.C., we enjoy regular visits to what is probably our nation’s most fascinating city. We’ve hit the monuments, the museums and, oh, the restaurants! Thankfully, D.C. is a walking town and we’re able to work off what usually is some majorly excessive, good eating. (Note-to-self: function rather than fashionable form is a necessity in the clothing and shoe department.)

So, while we’re doing all this walking, my favorite thing to see is the architecture. As a lover of old houses, I find the rowhouse especially intriguing, partly because of its historical representation and partly because its not a common style here in the Midwest.

When I accompanied my daughter on her housing hunt a few years ago, I had the opportunity to see the interiors of several rowhouses. Like most old houses, they had architectural elements you just don’t find in newly built homes and apartments—parquet floors, beautiful woodwork and bow-front windows. And like many old houses, these particular buildings needed lots of work and money!

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