Northwestern Branch, National Home for Disabled Volunteer Soldiers Historic District

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Northwestern Branch, National Home for Disabled Volunteer Soldiers Historic District
File:Perspective view looking northwest - National Home for Disabled Volunteer Soldiers, Northwestern Branch, Ward Memorial Hall, 5000 West National Avenue, Milwaukee, Milwaukee County, WI HABS WI-360-B-3.tif
Ward Memorial Hall at the Milwaukee Soldiers Home.
Location 5000 West National Avenue, Milwaukee, Wisconsin
NRHP Reference # 05000530
Significant dates
Added to NRHP June 3, 2005
Designated NHLD June 17, 2011

The Northwestern Branch, National Home for Disabled Volunteer Soldiers Historic District is located in Milwaukee, Wisconsin. The 90 acres (36 ha) historic district of the Milwaukee Soldiers Home campus, on the 400 acres (160 ha) Clement J. Zablocki VA Medical Center grounds.[1]

Contributing buildings in the district were constructed from 1867 to 1955.[2]

History

The Northwestern Branch of the National Home for Disabled Volunteer Soldiers was established in 1866, as an Old soldiers' home for American Civil War veterans in the then Northwestern region of United States.[3] The Wisconsin Soldiers’ Home Society transferred the money and property already acquired by that group to the federal effort for the National Asylum for Disabled Volunteer Soldiers, renamed the National Home for Disabled Volunteer Soldiers in 1873. The Eastern Branch was opened in 1866 at a former resort in Togus, Maine. The Central Branch was established in 1867 outside of Dayton, Ohio. The Northwestern and Central Branches had ambitious building campaigns that erected large-scale institutional structures within carefully designed landscapes.[3]

The Main Building (Old Main), designed in the Victorian Second Empire style by Milwaukee architect E. Townsend Mix, was completed in 1869. The large structure used a centralized model, housing all the services and soldiers within it. Expansion of the membership and a shift towards a decentralized model in the 1880s and 1890s resulted in the construction of a number of specialized new buildings at the Milwaukee Soldiers Home.[3] In 1879 a new hospital was built west of the Main Building. This structure was the first major step toward creating the cluster of buildings that define the historic core of the campus.[3]

The Milwaukee firm of Henry C. Koch was the architect for many buildings during this period of expansion including the hospital (1879), Ward Memorial Hall (1882), the chapel (1889), Wadsworth Library (1892), and the headquarters building (1894).[3] Ward Memorial Hall is an 1882 theater−meeting room, store, restaurant, and railroad ticket office.[3]

In 1930 the National Home for Disabled Volunteer Soldiers, the Pension Bureau, and the Veterans’ Bureau were combined under the new Veterans Administration. The Northwestern Branch became known as the Wood, Wisconsin station of the Veterans’ Administration.[3]

File:Milw VA Grounds buildings Nov2011.jpg
Milwaukee Soldiers Home buildings.

Present day

The district was added to the National Register of Historic Places in 2005,[4] and designated a National Historic Landmark in 2011. It is on the National Trust for Historic Preservation List of 11 Most Endangered Historic Places.[1]

Some of the buildings are now used for the Clement J. Zablocki VA Medical Center by the United States Department of Veterans Affairs, located just south of Miller Park and the Soldiers' Home Reef rock formation.[5]

See also

References

  1. ↑ 1.0 1.1 National Trust for Historic Preservation: National Soldiers Home Historic District, NTHP List of 11 Most Endangered Historic Places . accessed 12.1.2015.
  2. ↑ Lua error in package.lua at line 80: module 'strict' not found.
  3. ↑ 3.0 3.1 3.2 3.3 3.4 3.5 3.6 LOC−HABS: History and description of Ward Memorial Hall
  4. ↑ Lua error in package.lua at line 80: module 'strict' not found.
  5. ↑ Lua error in package.lua at line 80: module 'strict' not found.

External links

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