Creating Old World Wisconsin: The Struggle to Build an Outdoor History Museum of Ethnic Architecture

Chapter One. Visionaries

14 chap ฀ ter฀on e H Visionaries Several inspirations affected the creation of state-funded museums in the United States. The great outdoor history museums of the 1920s, 1930s, and 1940s, funded by private philanthropists, influenced state-sponsored museums. For example, the St. Mary’s City Commission , which the state of Maryland Assembly had charged to create a site at the location of the first founding of the Maryland colony, looked to Colonial Williamsburg as its prototype. Some commissioners thought their site could become the “Williamsburg of the seventeenth century.” In a similar fashion, some saw the reconstructed Fortress of Louisbourg in Nova Scotia as a “Williamsburg of the North.” Wisconsin visionaries looked to Old Sturbridge Village in Massachusetts for a paradigm. Some Wisconsinites drew on an even older tradition, open-air museums such as Skansen, the first outdoor history museum in Stockholm, Sweden. A renewed national commitment to historic preservation that emerged after World War II also influenced public officials. Wisconsin ’s visionaries embraced historic preservation as their major goal. Salvaged ethnic buildings would enhance present-day understanding of the state’s rich cultural heritage and encourage tourism and economic development.1 Most well-known outdoor museums had visionaries with money. If their pockets were not deep enough to fund the start-up costs entirely, visionaries h 15 they had more than enough to finance the vision and set it in motion. Henry Ford (automotive) at Greenfield Village, John D. Rockefeller (oil) at Williamsburg, the Wells brothers (optics) at Old Sturbridge Village, and the Lilly Foundation (pharmaceutical) for Conner Prairie had their visions of what the past was like and had the money to make that past a reality. States lacked visionaries with the financial resources to fund new sites from scratch. The lack of an entrepreneur capable of bringing forth a major historic site profoundly influenced the creation and development of a major historic site in Wisconsin. The absence of a Rockefeller fortune freed museum planners from a strong-willed founder. It also left them adrift when it came to funding. Less affluent visionaries in Wisconsin looked to their state government. As will be seen, state funding came at a price.2 From the beginning, Old World Wisconsin represented a different paradigm, one better fitted to the 1960s. It was a corporate (community) enterprise that called on many individuals to turn an idea into a site. Certain men, Richard W. E. Perrin, Hans Kuether, and Leslie H. Fishel Jr., legitimately fit the description of visionaries. Collectively, they provided the idea for a major open-air museum where threatened immigrant buildings would be rescued and restored. If they did not speak with a common voice, when woven together their visions helped form the creation narrative for the site. Similar to their biblical counterparts , they prophesied doom and called on their contemporaries to change their destructive ways (neglect and encroachment). They called on their contemporaries to find creative solutions to prevent the destruction of valuable historic resources within their state (preservation). Their paradigm, seeking government-based solutions, frequently forced them to temper their passion and their sense of urgency to accommodate slow-moving bureaucracies. The idea of an outdoor preservation museum in Wisconsin belongs to no one individual. Rather, it resulted from three preservation initiatives— one nationally generated, one state generated, and one generated by individuals—that came together in the 1960s. At the federal level, the National Park Service established the Historic American Buildings Survey (HABS) in 1933 and Congress passed the Historic Sites Act in 1935. Recognizing the impossibility of preserving all historic buildings, HABS sought to “record in a graphic manner” the exact “appearance of type structures” as a “form of insurance against loss through future destruction.” In 1949 Congress chartered the National Trust for Historic Preservation. Federal action culminated with the National Historic 16 H visionaries Preservation Act in 1966 that established preservation roles at the federal, state, and local levels.3 The State Historical Society of Wisconsin, under Edward Alexander, Clifford Lord, and Leslie H. Fishel Jr., who served as directors from 1941 to 1969, began to carve a niche in historic preservation and historic sites. Both Alexander and Lord brought ideas and experiences from the New York Historical Association and the Farmers’ Museum. The first historic house museum dated to 1850. By 1960 more than one thousand historic houses and historic villages populated the American landscape. The Society had no role in...