The Mushroom Factor

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!

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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Today the mushroom factor, the phenomenon that one small factor will inevitably lead to much more, struck in full force. And I wasn’t even working on my house! Well, not entirely.

Over the years, as we’ve renovated various rooms in our 1917 American Foursquare, John Bhend has popped up here and there. Better said, he’s popped up almost everywhere—under the stairs, behind the woodwork, in the attic. Wherever there’s a backside of lumber, there’s John Bhend.

His name, anyway.

Many pieces of wood in our house bear the scrawled signature of “John Bhend, Watertown, Wi.” We’ve always thought it was rather cool and assumed he built our house. We’ve heard somewhere that loads of wood are commonly labeled with the builder’s name before being shipped to the building site.

So today, I had a few minutes to spare and stopped at the Dodge/Jefferson Counties Genealogical Society. My intention was to learn a bit about John Bhend, but instead the mushroom factor kicked in. Obviously, you don’t spend just a few minutes in a genealogical society, not if you have an inkling of investigative curiosity for anything historical. Within minutes of my arrival, several helpful people brought me Plat books, old city directories and obituaries. Not only did I get information on our guy, but I now have a list of previous property owners back to the 1860’s and a fixation to learn more.

But back to John Bhend.

According to a 1930 city directory, John was indeed a general contractor and home builder. His ad details 18 years of experience in building or remodeling and guarantees good construction, blue prints and specifications to the customer’s order. His obituary, dated March 2, 1944, describes him as a “widely known contractor” who was also a member of the Watertown Builder’s Club.

Reading John Bhend’s obituary brings him to life as more than the builder of our house. He becomes a person, as well. According to the paper, he was born in Aschi, Canton of Bern, Switzerland on Sept. 28, 1881, to Mr. and Mrs. Christian Bhend. In 1906, at the age of 25, he came to the U.S. and for a time lived with his brother Christ Bhend.

On October 4, 1913, John married Saraphine Krueger (Saraphine—what a beautiful name!) Together they had two children; a daughter, Irene, and a son, Marcel, who at the time of his father’s death was serving in the Pacific in World War II. Saraphine preceded John in death in 1935.

The obituary goes on to list John as a member of the Congregational Church, Watertown Lodge No. 49, F& AM and Watertown’s Plattdeutscher Verein (Low German Club). He also was a director of the Wisconsin National Bank and active in local affairs.

So that’s John Bhend, the guy beneath our stairs and behind our woodwork. If our house is a testament to his work, he was indeed a very fine builder. Ninety-one years later, it stands sound and true.

But now I want to know more. How many other homes in our area bear his name? And which ones? What do those homes look like today? The mushroom factor has definitely kicked in.