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Brasstown Cottage

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c. 1880. 1701 E. Colley Rd.

This simple, one-story cottage is a rare intact example of the working-class dwellings that were common in Beloit in the late nineteenth century. By the 1890s, the manufacturing operations of the Beloit Iron Works, the Berlin Machine Works (later named Yates-American), and the short-lived Union Brass Works made Beloit an important industrial center. Nicknamed Brasstown Cottages after the Union Brass Works, whose financial backers promoted home ownership for the working class, the houses embodied an ideal of middle-class family life. Workers could purchase a cottage on an installment plan, although most were rental houses. This cross-gabled cottage drew such details from Queen Anne design as truss- and lattice work, scalloped shingles below the windows, and scrolled brackets at the cornice of a bay window. Across the facade, simple square columns with curved knee braces support the porch’s hipped roof. The house was, however, divorced from its original physical context when it was moved to this location around 1943.

Writing Credits

Author: 
Marsha Weisiger et al.
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Citation

Marsha Weisiger et al., "Brasstown Cottage", [Beloit, Wisconsin], SAH Archipedia, eds. Gabrielle Esperdy and Karen Kingsley, Charlottesville: UVaP, 2012—, http://sah-archipedia.org/buildings/WI-01-RO5.

Print Source

Buildings of Wisconsin

Buildings of Wisconsin, Marsha Weisiger and contributors. Charlottesville: University of Virginia Press, 2017, 413-413.

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