Urban and Josephine Schlueter House

In Milwaukee after about 1907, a more generalized and cheaper form of romantic Old World cottage architecture remained popular with the middle class into the 1920s. Inspired by rustic German cottages, as idealized in storybook illustrations, greeting cards, and postcards, this house epitomized the 1920s quest for domestic charm. The house is a picturesque Hansel and Gretel cottage. Narrow brick walls frame the stone-trimmed, round-arched entrance. Wall accents include stone pieces topped by bulbous balusters supporting a distinctive tile hood. A polygonal bay with false half-timbering wraps the north corner. This house’s steeply pitched, red-tile roof conceals a full second story, punctuated by twin stuccoed dormers. Its builder-designer Walter Truettner, dubbed “the Bungalow Man,” designed unusual bungalows and one-of-a-kind cottages. Though Truettner did some design work on his own houses, he also employed architect Ray C. Dieterich in the early 1920s.