Concrete Block Houses 1: The First Wave, 1900-1930
By Michael Bridgeman
The July 11, 1905, edition of the Wisconsin State Journal included this short item: “W.F. Feebock [sic] is building a 7-room cottage of concrete blocks construction in University Heights. It will represent an outlay of about $3,500.” Two years later William and Delia Febock moved into their new bungalow at 1727 Van Hise Ave. [a]
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The William and Delia Febock House
The Febock house was among the first wave of concrete block houses in Madison, not entirely surprising given that William Febock was a cement and masonry contractor. The first-floor exterior has walls of rockface concrete block, as do the pedestals and closed railings on the porch. The dormers on the half story above are clad in shingles. The concrete block may have been a new material, but the Febock house, like others built in the early 1900s continued familiar forms and styles. The Febocks opted for a bungalow while contemporaries built in the American Foursquare, Queen Anne and Colonial styles.
The ancient Romans mastered concrete, but in 1900 Harmon S. Palmer patented the first commercially successful machine for making concrete blocks. He started making hollow block machines two years later and the field was quickly filled with imitators and competitors. [b] The concrete block industry “grew phenomenally in the first two decades of the twentieth century,” according to Pamela H. Simpson in her book Cheap, Quick, and Easy: Imitative Architectural Materials, 1870-1930. [c] Concrete blocks were soon used for garages, barns, churches, factories, commercial buildings, houses, and much more. In my next two posts I’ll focus on residential buildings the Madison area, starting with the first wave of construction from 1900 to 1930.
Making concrete blocks [1]
Concrete blocks had a lot of pluses. They could be made by a single person—or a small factory—appealing to the American spirit of self-reliance. “For the benefit of those who have had no experience in handling concrete, we can assure them that experience is really unnecessary,” assured the 1915 Concrete Machinery catalog. [d] The ingredients were easily obtained. All it took was aggregate (sand, gravel, crushed stones, etc.), Portland cement (as the binding material), and water. The machines were affordable. The 1915 catalog offered block-making machines for as little as $12.50. And the results were an acceptable, durable and inexpensive substitute for stone or brick.
“... it is now possible to build a house at a cost much lower than a brick structure and far superior from an architectural standpoint. A house built of these blocks has all the appearance of a granite building. ... The material is formed into blocks of any desired size, ornamented or unornamented and hollowed within.” [e]
The John McKenna house at 514 S. Baldwin St. (1905) is an early concrete block house in the American Foursquare style. With its simple rectangular massing, the Foursquare was easy to build and adapted comfortably to less formal American lifestyles at the turn of the twentieth century. The McKenna house [f] has rockface block on the first story while the second story is clad in smooth blocks—except for the belt course below the windows and rockface corners that reach the eaves. Unlike many concrete houses in Madison, it remains unpainted, which makes its unabashed imitation of stone more convincing.
Block faces offered in Concrete Machinery, 1915. [2]
One advantage of concrete block machinery was the ease of switching out molding plates to produce faces that mimicked cobblestone (top row/center), tooled edges (second row/left and center), broken ashlar (third and fourth rows/left and center), or bricks (fourth row right). Making ornamental effects was simple, too. “Elite observers argued that sophisticated taste...was based on absolutes of beauty and truth,” Simpson writes. [g] They thought imitative materials were tasteless, vulgar, dishonest, or worse. Most Americans had more pragmatic sensibilities and readily accepted machine-made materials of all kinds including concrete block.
Perhaps the best of Madison’s early concrete block houses is the Mary Sonntag house at 2902 Oakridge Ave. (1907), [h] an American Foursquare with generous eaves that features block in two colors. The foundation blocks simulate pink granite while the upper blocks are akin to light gray granite. The colors are integral to the blocks and none of them have been painted. The detail photo shows how the face of each pink block is paneled or “cut back” around the edges, as one might see on a traditional stone foundation, while the gray block has a uniformly smooth surface except at corners, where they are molded like the pink blocks. Visible to the left in the detail photo is a later garage built of chamfered ashlar blocks.
The grandest of the first wave of block dwellings was built for William and Agnes Dudley [i] at 1909 Regent St. (1908). It’s a late Queen Anne house with Georgian influences, including Palladian windows in the side gables on the third floor. While the foundation is quarried brownstone, possibly from Bayfield County, the first two floors are faced entirely in rockface concrete block. The detail photo shows how a variety of block types and sizes were combined to create rich wall textures. The largest concrete blocks at the corners evoke quoins. Most of the blocks mimic broken ashlar (see catalog page above) to create the impression of “stones” of various sizes that have been carefully laid. The abundance of square blocks enhances the illusion.
A pitch for concrete block [3]
It is unlikely that the Sonntag or Dudley houses were built by lone block makers. National trade organizations appeared as early as 1905 as production became more industrialized. In 1908, the Wisconsin State Journal noted that Ole Togstad and his son Harold “have again started operation at their concrete block factory,” making it “an up-to-date establishment in every respect.” [i] By 1910, Simpson writes, most concrete block was made by construction companies or building supply businesses. In 1911, five concrete block manufacturers were listed in the Madison city directory. One promoted the pluses of concrete block houses in a 1919 newspaper ad.
Concrete block was not universally loved. Architects and others “rejected the way builders had used it in the early years of the industry and especially its appearance in rockface” which was the most popular and ubiquitous treatment, according to Simpson. [j] Some houses broke the mold. The Walter and Laura Terwilliger house at 1723 Chadbourne Ave. (1926) is made entirely of smooth concrete blocks that are tightly laid; the mortar joints are nearly invisible. It’s a well-proportioned Colonial Revival house with a symmetrical façade focused on the pedimented entry. The white paint, shutters, brick sills, and brick-filled arches over the first-floor windows are appropriate touches.
Walter and Laura Terwilliger house
2913 Harvey St.
The concrete block house at 2913 Harvey St. (1930) illustrates the continued popularity of the bungalow form. The Febock bungalow, the house at the beginning of this post, was built 25 years earlier and uses only rockface blocks. This bungalow is made of smooth-faced blocks in ocher tones, indicating changes in taste and manufacturing. It has Craftsman-style touches including the porch pedestals faced with irregular stones and quarried ashlar, the three-post porch supports, and the gables clad in wood shingles. This is late for the Craftsman style, but still quite satisfactory.
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Concrete block continued to be a popular material for house construction after 1930. But new manufacturing processes had been developed and architectural styles were changing. Houses built after 1930 will be the subject of my next post. In the meantime, I encourage you to seek out concrete block buildings of any kind. Though concrete blocks are the principal material of the houses in this post, keep in mind that concrete block may be relegated to foundations or porches. The Marquette and Schenk-Atwood neighborhoods developed during the first wave of concrete block house construction and where you’ll find a duplex at 1320-1322 Spaight St. (1907), a Foursquare at 2317 Sommers Ave. (1909), and a duplex 613-615 S. Baldwin St. (1910). Good light reveals details and effects in rockface concrete that may not be visible in photographs, so the sunnier the day, the better..
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Notes
[a] The street was named Sterling Avenue until 1910.
[b] For a capsule history of concrete block see https://concretecaptain.com/when-did-concrete-blocks-start-being-used/
[c] Pamela H. Simpson, Cheap, Quick and Easy: Imitative Architectural Materials 1870-1930 (Knoxville, Tenn.: University of Tennessee Press, 1999), p.11. Simpson’s book has a good summary of the first phase of concrete block manufacturing and building. It is available at two UW-Madison locations: the Kohler Art Library and the Wisconsin Historical Society Library.
[d] Concrete machinery: Triumph, Wizard and Knox block machines. (Sears, Roebuck & Co.,1915), p.2. Internet Archive https://archive.org/details/ConcreteMachineryTriumphWizardAndKnoxBlockMachines
[e] Wisconsin State Journal, “Blocks of Concrete. Dwellings Made of Them Said to Greatly Resemble Granite,” Oct. 19, 1903. p.3
[f] This seems to have been a speculative project of the McKenna Investment Company, formed in 1905 by John F. McKenna and his son John C. McKenna. City directories show no John McKenna resident in the house when built and in 1909 it was occupied by multiple tenants. By 1921 it was a single-family house and remains so today. John C. McKenna later had a hand in developing Shorewood Hills, Sunset Village and other local subdivisions.
[g] Simpson, Cheap, Quick and Easy. p.159-164.
[h] The 1907 date is from the Architecture & History Index at the Wisconsin Historical Society. An item in the March 10, 1909, Wisconsin State Journal notes that “Mrs. M. Sunday [sic] has taken possession of her new completed home at 1101 Oakridge Avenue,” at which time she lived here with two adult children. The house numbering system was later changed.
[i] Wisconsin State Journal, “Madison News Notes,” March 18, 1908. p.6. The 1909 city directory lists the Togstad business and residence at 1040 Spaight St.
[j] Simpson, Cheap, Quick and Easy. p.24-25
[k] The Terwilligers lived in the house with William’s widowed mother, Lucy Terwilliger, who had come to Madison in 1848 at the age of 2. William sold investment securities and was an avid golfer.
Image Credits
[1] Concrete machinery: Triumph, Wizard and Knox block machines. (Sears, Roebuck & Co.,1915), 17. Internet Archive https://archive.org/details/ConcreteMachineryTriumphWizardAndKnoxBlockMachines
[2] Concrete machinery. p.9.
[3] Wisconsin State Journal. July 27, 1919.
All photographs by Michael Bridgeman.