Circus World Museum

The Thompson House Hotel is a historic hotel building at 200 Ash Street in Baraboo, Wisconsin. John Thompson built the hotel in 1899 to replace an older hotel on the site, which he had owned since the early 1890s. The two-story Italianate building features door and window heads and banding in dark-colored brick as well as a bracketed cornice. The first floor housed a dining room, which was later converted to a saloon, along with the innkeeper's quarters and storage rooms; the second floor had twenty guest rooms. The hotel was part of a group of hotels near the Baraboo railroad station and Ringling Brothers Circus headquarters; these hotels served tourists, circus workers, and traveling salesmen. Thompson sold the hotel before 1915, but it operated as a hotel under several names until the 1960s; it has since been converted to apartments.The building was added to the National Register of Historic Places on December 22, 1997.

Baraboo ( BAIR-ə-boo) is a city in the Midwest and the county seat of Sauk County, Wisconsin, United States. The largest city in the county, Baraboo is the principal city of the Baraboo Micropolitan Statistical Area which comprises a portion of the Madison Combined Statistical area. Its 2020 population was 12,556. It is situated on the Baraboo River. Baraboo is home to the Circus World Museum and the former headquarters and winter home of the Ringling brothers circus. The Al. Ringling Theatre is an active landmark in the city. Baraboo is near Devil's Lake State Park, and Aldo Leopold's Shack and Farm.

The Charles and Anna Ruhland House is a historic house at 213 Lynn Street in Baraboo, Wisconsin. The house was built in 1909 for Charles Ruhland, owner of the Ruhland Brewing Company, and his wife Anna. It has an American Craftsman design, a style popularized in the early twentieth century which emphasized simplicity and harmony with nature; the architect who designed the house is unknown. The two-and-a-half story brick house features a wide front porch supported by wooden posts, exposed rafter tails at the edges of the roof, and a hip roof with gabled dormers. The interior has an open plan with large windows to let in natural light. While Charles Ruhland lost his brewery to bankruptcy in 1918, he and his family lived in the house until the late 1930s, when one of his former employees converted it to a boarding house.The house was added to the National Register of Historic Places on March 20, 2017.

The William Clark House is a historic house at 320 Walnut Street in Baraboo, Wisconsin. The house was built between 1883 and 1886 for William Clark, an engineer for the Chicago and North Western Railroad. Clark built his house in a neighborhood near the railroad where many other railroad workers lived at the time; most of the other railroad workers' homes were small houses without formal designs, making Clark's house stand out compared to its neighbors. Local carpenter J. McVea gave the house a Second Empire design featuring an entrance pavilion with ornamental woodwork and a pedimented gable, segmental arched windows, and a mansard roof with a dentillated and bracketed cornice. Clark and his wife lived in the house until 1897.The house was added to the National Register of Historic Places on April 8, 1980.

Baraboo station, otherwise known as the Baraboo Chicago & North Western Depot and Division Offices is a former railway station in Baraboo, Wisconsin, built be the Chicago and North Western Railway (C&NW). The depot served both passengers and freight traffic as well as housing the Madison Division offices of the C&NW. The Madison Division covered a 219-mile (352 km) line from Belvidere, Illinois to Medary, Wisconsin. The depot was designed by the team of Frost and Granger, who designed more than 200 depots for the C&NW. This particular depot was built in the Romanesque Revival style. Passenger service to the depot ended in 1963 with the elimination of the Rochester 400. As of 2022, the Sauk County Historical Society hopes to restore the depot into a museum and community gathering space.The building was listed on the National Register of Historic Places on April 25, 2022.

Seven Gables, also known as the Terrell Thomas House, is a historic house at 215 6th Street in Baraboo, Wisconsin. The house was built in 1860 for Terrell Thomas, a local banker and businessman. The house has a Gothic Revival design described as Downingesque, a term used for smaller Gothic houses inspired by architect Andrew Jackson Downing's design philosophy. Its design features an entrance pavilion topped by a gable roof with decorative bargeboard on its eaves, a side entrance on the west facade with a matching gable, a front-facing verandah with wooden brackets and detailing, and several dormers interrupting the main hip roof. John Durward, a Roman Catholic priest and the son of Durward's Glen founder Bernard Durward, bought the house in 1911; after his death in 1918, local district attorney and county judge Henry Jay Bohn lived in the house until 1929.The house was added to the National Register of Historic Places on January 20, 1978.

The Gust Brothers' Store is located in Baraboo, Wisconsin. It was added to the National Register of Historic Places in 2002.It is a fine example of an Italianate commercial style building, built in 1877–78 by August and William Gust for their meat market store. It is a two-story 22 by 51 feet (6.7 m × 15.5 m) grayish limestone building. It has also been known as the Baraboo Savings Bank and as the Farmers' and Merchants' Bank, two banks which it later housed.

The Walworth D. Porter Duplex Residence is located in Baraboo, Wisconsin. It was added to the National Register of Historic Places in 1996.Developer Walworth D. Porter built the duplex in 1894 as a rental property. The building has a Queen Anne style design with an irregular layout featuring reflection symmetry, clapboard and wood shingle siding, an oriel window and arched entrance porch with decorative woodwork on each unit, and a large dormer atop the front facade. The interior is generally intact and includes ornamental woodwork and fireplaces with decorative tiling in each unit. Duplex housing in Baraboo typically housed middle-class workers, especially those employed by the growing Ringling Brothers Circus; Charles Ringling, one of the Ringling Brothers, was the first tenant in the east unit. The building is a rare surviving example of side-by-side duplex housing in Baraboo.

The Sauk County Courthouse, located at 515 Oak Street in Baraboo, is the county courthouse serving Sauk County, Wisconsin. Built in 1906, the courthouse is Sauk County's fourth and its third in Baraboo. Wisconsin architecture firm Ferry & Clas designed the Neoclassical building. The courthouse is listed on the National Register of Historic Places.

The International Clown Hall of Fame and Research Center (ICHOF), located in Baraboo, Wisconsin, United States, is dedicated to the preservation and advancement of clown art and achievement. Represented by professional and amateur clown associations, it pays tribute to outstanding clown performers, operates a museum of clowning with resident clown performers, conducts special events, and maintains a national archive of clown artifacts and history.

The Al. Ringling Theatre in Baraboo, Wisconsin, United States, opened its doors in November 1915 and has been operating continuously ever since. Designed by the architectural firm Rapp and Rapp, it was built by Albert Ringling, one of the circus Ringling Brothers, for $100,000. Over the years, it has featured performances from vaudeville and silent movies to grand opera starring such notables as Lionel Barrymore and Mary Pickford. The design of the theater is based on the Orpheum Theatre, built by Rapp and Rapp in Champaign, Illinois in 1914. The decor of the auditorium is said to have derived from Ange-Jacques Gabriel's opera house of 1763-1770 in the Palace of Versailles but some believe it to be at least equally based on Victor Louis's 1780 Grand Théâtre de Bordeaux. Originally the theater had a Style 1 Wurlitzer theater pipe organ. Later a 9 rank, 3 manual Barton with a "circus wagon" style console replaced the Wurlitzer. The Al Ringling Theater was featured in an episode of PBS's History Detectives, where they investigated whether it was the country's first great movie palace.

The Charles Ringling House is a historic house at 201 8th Street in Baraboo, Wisconsin. Charles Ringling, one of the five brothers who founded the Ringling Brothers Circus, had the house built in 1900 for his family. Brothers George and Karl Isenberg of Baraboo built the Georgian Revival house. The two-story house features a long front porch supported by Ionic columns, a balustrade along the porch roof, two-story pilasters dividing the house's three bays, and a pediment atop the central bay. The property also includes a carriage house, a cottage, and a barn. Ringling and his wife Edith lived in the house until 1912, when they moved to Sarasota, Florida.The house was added to the National Register of Historic Places on March 21, 1997.