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The Old Executive Mansion

The Old Executive Mansion is of statewide historical importance because it served as the governor’s residence for seventeen chiefs of state from 1883 to 1950. It is of local architectural importance because of its exceptionally handsome Victorian design and its use of indigenous sandstone materials.

There is some discrepancy between secondary sources which date the construction of this house as 1854, and City of Madison tax rolls which indicate that major construction on this site probably took place ca. 1856. It can only be assumed, therefore, that the house was built ca. 1854-1856. The original owner was Julius T. White, a prominent businessman and later a Union general, causing the house originally to be known as the “White House.” White was an avid art collector and presided over the social and artistic life of the community until he left Madison in 1857, selling the house to George p. Delaplaine, private secretary to the first and second governors of Wisconsin. White and Delaplaine established a reputation for the house for lavish parties and entertainment, a reputation which future owners carried into the 20^th century.

A major chapter in the life of this house, more important for social than political history, began when multimillionaire lumber baron J.G. Thorp purchased it in 1868 to move his social-climbing wife to Madison from Eau Claire, where her considerable social talents were withering. Mrs. Thorp ruled Madison’s social community from this house until 1883, a reign whose crowning achievement was the marriage of the Thorp daughter, Sara, then 20-years-old, to world-famous violinist Ole Bull, then 60-years-old. Ole Bull made his American home at this house thereafter, and made various landscaping and site changes to the property to suit his Norwegian taste.

In 1883 Gov. Jeremiah “Uncle Jerry” Rusk bought the house for $15,000 from the Thorps, and continued its reputation for lavish social activity. In 1885, Gov. Rusk sold the house to the State of Wisconsin for a sum “not to exceed $20,000.” Rusk left the governorship in 1889 and went to Washington to serve as Secretary of Agriculture under President Benjamin Harrison. In 1905 the name of Gates County was changed to Rusk county in his honor. In 1898 or 1899, Gov. Edward Scofield added a rambling porch to the house, which has since been removed.

To establish the importance of the later history of this house would merely require the listing of all Wisconsin governors who lived there and their accomplishments. In 1950 the house was sold to the University of Wisconsin and since then it has served, with one exception, as the residence hall for the Knapp Scholarship students. The exception came in 1966 when Gov. Warren P. Knowles and his wife resided in this house for a short time while the present executive mansion was being remodeled.

Jeffrey Dean, State Preservation Planner. State Historical Society of Wisconsin. 1972.