This house was built in 1894 which is the year that Rhinelander was incorporated as a city. The historical society was actually formed in 1991 and they had two main goals when it was formed, one was to buy this house and bring it back so that people could see what a house would have looked like at the turn of the 20th century, and the second goal was to become a depository for Rhinelander related items. This is an all volunteer Charitable Non-Profit Organization, so we operate solely on Memberships and Donations. We receive no money from the State, County or City.
There were stories about how early residents were passing away and their children and grandchildren didn't know what to do with their things, so they brought in a dumpster and just emptied the house and quite frankly there were people losing sleep over the fact that there was a lot of things of historical value that were being lost.
So happy to say that things went very well, the Historical Society volunteers spent pretty much all of 1992 refurbishing the house bringing it back to what you see today. The woodwork and floors are all original, the wallpaper and carpet were replaced to look period correct. They took great pains trying to replicate what this would've look like in 1894 or shortly thereafter. The main stairway came in and went straight upstairs; this curved fancy stairway was added later. There were some other additions that were added about 1920, indoor plumbing was added so they didn't have that in the early years, the front wraparound porch. I'll speak to how people can find out that sort of information a little bit later.
This house was built for Edith Van Slate, who was a widow and wanted to run it as a boarding house. It was fairly common back then for widows to have boarding houses as a way to support themselves.
Note the photos that show the condition of the house before and after the refurbishment. The building was in pretty bad shape and in need of major repair, the back porch was about to fall off. It had been a vacant for quite some time probably getting ready to be torn down. So once they completed the restoration of the building they then put the word out in the community that they were looking for Rhinelander related items to put into the house to make it a museum. And the community just responded unbelievably well, everything that you see in this building has been donated. The response was phenomenal.
Front Hallway Highlights
Listed below are a few of the items in this room that you may be interested in learning more about.