Then and Now - 105 Wall Street, Beaver Dam

When this home was built around 1856, this tiny home was originally just over 600 square feet - about the size of a one bedroom apartment.  Since its birth, subsequent owners have managed to build-out the attic with 2 bedrooms - adding another 200 square feet of living space.  The original basement was nothing more than a root cellar used for storing food.  I wanted to use this home as this issue's project to show that not just stately homes with prominent residents are significant.

Well, let's start with this home's location, and then we'll try to figure out more about this home and why it was built.  It all started in 1852 with one of today's buzzwords - foreclosure.  Hard to believe, but many of the land owners back then were speculators who seeming had relatively poor speculation skills.   John Waldhier acquired the roughly 16 acres of land as a result of the foreclosure on James Conner.  The lake bound its western edge and Center St its eastern.  The land ran past Pearl St and  ended just north of Wall Street.   John plated this land in 1855,  which - like today's developers - allowed him to name the streets.  We should be able to learn something from that.  Chatham is a small port town north of Kent, in South East England, and Greenwich is just south of London.  I have to assume that Pearl was his mother's - or some relative's - name.   John died  in 1859 leaving the project to his wife Katharian.

If you look at the Then photo, you will see that there is a large home just west (to the right) of our subject.  If you look at the map of 1867, you'll see that both of these structures were part of a homestead, which spanned the entire block.  Indeed, our subject home was nothing more than a summer kitchen when it was first built.  The Then photo clearly shows that the door was made of a few wood planks.  Not much has changed with our home since.  The door was moved, and a porch was added.  There are some subtle changes with the roof-line.  The biggest change is that the original Waldhier home (the big house) is gone.  I found no record of its demise, but we can assume fire.  Our little house was subsequently divided off of the large lot and made into a residence.  This entire area (South Center and Madison Street) became popular for the mills and breweries of the time.  It wasn't until after 1903 that we started to see indoor plumbing and other amenities.

Some questions still remain.  There was a church on the corner of Wall and Madison St.  They land would have been donated by Waldhier.  Which church was it and what happened to it.  What happened to the main home?  Let us know what you know about this home and the area.