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Dougan Round Barn

Barns on the National Register of Historic Places in WisconsinBuildings and structures demolished in 2012Buildings and structures in Beloit, WisconsinDemolished buildings and structures in WisconsinInfrastructure completed in 1911
National Register of Historic Places in Rock County, WisconsinRound barns in Wisconsin
Dougan Round Barn
Dougan Round Barn

The Dougan Round Barn in Beloit, Wisconsin, United States, was a round barn that was built in 1911. It was listed on the National Register of Historic Places in 1979. It was demolished in 2012.The owner of the farm was Wesson J. Dougan, a Methodist pastor who gave up the ministry when he became deaf. He purchased his farm in 1906, established the Dougan Dairy, and carpenter Mark Keller finished building the round barn in 1911.The barn sat on a concrete foundation, with a diameter of sixty feet, clad in bent horizontal wooden siding. Above that was a conical gambrel roof. A 50-foot poured concrete silo stood at the center of the structure. Cattle were housed in the ground floor, with a hay mow above. The design of the barn incorporated ideas of Professor F.H. King of the University of Wisconsin, with light admitted by many windows and ventilation provided by air ducts, wooden air shafts, and two ventilators through the roof. The barn served as a dairy barn until 1968. At its peak the farm had 120 cows.: 7–9 A pioneer in scientific farming and dairy management practices, Wesson Dougan was recognized in 1926 by the University of Wisconsin's College of Agriculture and Life Sciences with an Honorary Recognition Award, for combining "so successfully, skillful husbandry with a high type of rural life that his work has been a thoroughly constructive influence in the dairy industry. In this he has achieved high ideals to an unusual degree." When he retired, his son Ronald A Dougan took over the family's three farms, the dairy, the milk delivery business, and the hybrid seed corn business; RA Dougan retired in 1976, having sold his delivery business to a corporate producer. The story of the farm is told in a four-volume series of books by writer and university professor Jacqueline Dougan Jackson, the founder's granddaughter.

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Dougan Round Barn
Walnut Street,

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N 42.508055555556 ° E -88.988888888889 °
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Walnut Street

Walnut Street
53500
Wisconsin, United States
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Dougan Round Barn
Dougan Round Barn
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Church of St. Thomas the Apostle (Beloit, Wisconsin)
Church of St. Thomas the Apostle (Beloit, Wisconsin)

Church of St. Thomas the Apostle is a historic church at 822 E. Grand Avenue in Beloit, Wisconsin, United States. It was built in 1885 and was added to the National Register of Historic Places in 1983.St. Thomas is the oldest Catholic parish in Beloit, with roots going back to 1846, when the parishioners were largely Irish immigrants worshiping in the home of Captain Thomas and Lucy Power, where City Hall now stands. In 1854 the parish built a stone church, in which they worshiped for thirty years until it burned in 1884. Reverend J.W. Ward set right to work raising funds for a new building, partly by giving a series of temperance lectures.The new church was built from 1885 to 1886 on the site of the stone church. James J. Egan of Chicago designed a simply massed rectangular building with a gable roof and a square corner tower, with fine details. The walls are cream brick, with brick buttresses and stone trim. The porches are in Stick style, an unusual choice for a church like this. The windows are tall, with arches slightly pointed, a typical Gothic detail. A circle-within-the-arch motif repeats in many windows. Many buttresses lead up to little towers with gablets on top. The big corner tower has its own corner gablets, then a belfry with a rose window, then a spire reaching 150 feet, topped with a cross.Inside, the auditorium is 118 feet long and fifty-five feet wide, with an arcade of stained glass windows. Behind the altar is another large, elaborate stained glass window. The ceiling is supported by wooden trusses. The church was built by masons Marshall and Sweet, carpenters Cummingham Brothers, and stonecutter A.S. Jackson, all from Beloit.

Beloit water tower
Beloit water tower

The Beloit water tower is a historic octagonal limestone water tower completed in 1889 in Beloit, Wisconsin.In Beloit's younger days, the city's fire protection consisted of two volunteer companies with hoses and mobile pumps that drew water from the Rock River and from private wells and cisterns. Several businesses burned just beyond reach of the hoses and finally in 1884 St. Thomas Catholic and Baptist churches went up in flames. Beyond fire protection, a source of clean drinking water would reduce the risk of diseases like diphtheria and typhoid fever. The rough-edged community debated for years whether a better water supply should be city-owned or a private enterprise.Finally in 1885 a consortium of local businessmen agreed to finance a private water works project. The financiers were: C.H. Morse, W.H. Wheeler, J.B. Peet, E.C. Allen, C.B. Salmon, and C.H. Parker. They hired Fairbanks, Morse Co. of Chicago to design the system, and J.B. Kinley designed the tower. It sits on one of the high points of town, with limestone walls 36 feet tall. The walls are octagonal, 36 feet in diameter at the base with walls eight feet thick. As the walls rise, they taper in four stages with the top stage 30 feet in diameter. Lancet-arched windows let light into the tower. Originally, a tank 20 feet deep sat atop the tower, built of 3-inch cypress and holding 100,000 gallons of water. A pumping station was built just southwest of the tower, powered by steam-operated Smith and Vale pumps. The resulting system could shoot a two-inch stream of water 130 feet high. Seven miles of water mains were laid through the city feeding 72 hydrants. For the fire protection, the city paid a tax to the consortium. The water-works also tried to entice homeowners to give up their private wells and switch to city water, offering free pipe to the curb for the first 100 patrons.In 1914 the cypress tank collapsed. The water-works replaced it with a metal tank of the same size, built by the Eclipse Wind Mill Company, right in Beloit. On top of the tank was a cupola, and a flag pole on top of that.By 1929 the water system served 25,000 customers, but the tower was outdated. A modern (for the time) steel tower was built nearby, with a 200,000 gallon tank. The metal tank was removed from the old tower, the stairs inside were removed, and demolition of the stone walls began, but the walls were well-built, and demolition was deemed too expensive. After demolition was given up, a Beloit Daily News article stated that the tower was "once regarded as the finest piece of masonry in the west". In 1983 it was listed on the National Register of Historic Places.Now, the stone water tower is a visible community landmark offering excellent photo opportunities for camera buffs. The area surrounding the tower has been developed into Water Tower Park with an ADA accessible walkway. The Water Works Pump House has been completely restored and currently houses the City of Beloit Parks and Leisure Services offices and Friends of Riverfront offices. Also, visitors are welcome to stop in during business hours. The Shingle Style pump house at the base of the bluff now acts as the Beloit Visitor Center.

City of Beloit Waterworks and Pump Station
City of Beloit Waterworks and Pump Station

The City of Beloit Waterworks and Pump Station was built in 1885 in Beloit, Wisconsin just below a hill on top of which sits the Beloit Water Tower. It was added to the National Register of Historic Places in 1990.Beloit was first settled in 1836, and the city incorporated in 1856. In those early years, fire fighters had to draw water from private wells and cisterns, which were often inadequate, resulting in lost buildings. Also, diphtheria and typhoid fever were around, transmitted through contaminated water. Both problems could be addressed by a public waterworks system. Many agreed on that, but they debated whether it should a public project owned by the city, or a private for-profit venture.About 1885, two of the city's manufacturing companies expanded: the Eclipse Wind Engine Company (later Fairbanks-Morse), and the Beloit Iron Works. With those factories and the accompanying population growth, the citizens approved a privately-owned water utility, with the city paying a tax for use of fire hydrants and the public paying a charge per faucet. The Beloit Water Company was formed, and built the pump station which is the subject of this article.In 1885 the company built the pump station and the concrete reservoir. The reservoir is 40 feet by 115 feet by three feet high, built into the hill. The station is 1.5 stories with a clipped gable roof. Walls are red brick with shallow segmental arches above most windows. The main entrance is protected by a shed-roofed porch supported by columns. A balcony originally protruded above and beside the porch, but that has been removed. The roof was originally covered with slate. Originally the interior was divided into a pump room on the west, a boiler room in the middle, and a room for coal storage on the east.The Beloit Water Company also laid over seven miles of mains and installed 72 hydrants on both sides of the Rock River. The octagonal stone water tower up the hill was added to the system in 1889. It supported a 100,000 gallon cypress tank which held the water. With that, the pumping station could periodically feed water into the tank, and gravity supplied constant water pressure from the tank to homes and businesses. When there was a fire, the pumping station fed directly into the mains and hydrants to supply the fire-fighting equipment more than twice the pressure of the water tower.In 1927 the metal water tower was built to replace the old stone and wood one. Taller than the old one, it provided water at 80 pounds per square inch as compared to 50 before. At about the same time the new pump shed was added to the complex.The NRHP nomination considers the waterworks complex significant as "the only remaining unaltered public service building in Beloit form the 19th century." It is also a symbol of the early community coming together to provide fire protection and improve the health of all citizens.