Haskell House & Playhouse . . .
Contemporary Uses of Traditional Settings

By Ruth Means
Photographs; Jo Anne Lenz

In this country, the re-use of old buildings to meet contemporary needs has not been considered to be a viable option until recently. But changes in people's attitudes and the high cost of new housing are making the adaptive use of existing structures both common and successful. Lately, hard-headed business people have come to see that the restoration of historic structures and their productive use is less costly than the construction of new facilities. And gone are the days when the only use envisioned for a historic building was as a museum. The cost of preservation demands commercial and other adaptive use. The catchword now is, "restore the exterior, adapt the interior for modern use." Post offices are being redesigned for use as legislative offices; former single family estates are being used innovatively for office buildings, conference centers apartments, country clubs or hotels; factory buildings are being converted into apartments.

In Alton, Illinois, two city owned buildings and the 6.4 acre grounds on which they are located, are being used creatively to satisfy the need for a municipal Park and Recreation Department office and recreation center. Grants from the Heritage, Conservation, and Recreation Service have been used to repair the exterior and to adapt the interior of a 1911 mansion to the office and recreation needs and to restore a unique 1885 child's playhouse having National Register of Historic Places listing. The grassy, tree-shaded park-like grounds are used for sledding and ice-skating in the winter, a supervised children's recreation program in the summer and as a neighborhood playground the year around. In its 22 rooms, Haskell House, the former mansion, provides space for an equipped photographic darkroom, an engineering drawing room, athletic equipment storage, a sign making room, classes in weaving and ceramics, and youth and senior citizen organizations.

In 1932, the then 22 year old Haskell House, The Haskell Playhouse and the acreage now known as Haskell Park, were bequeathed to the City of Alton by Florence Hayner Haskell, last remaining member of two prominent Alton families. Dr. Abraham S. Haskell, (Florence's father-in-law) the fourth physician in a family which produced five successive generations of physicians, came to Illinois in 1844. After 20 years residence in Hillsboro, Dr. Haskell came to Alton where he continued a lucrative medical practice until his death in 1876. Upon moving to Alton in 1864, Dr. A.S. Haskell bought a tract of land which extended from Liberty to Henry Street and by 1866 was living in a fine Italian Revival style house on the northeast corner of Henry and Pleasant (now 12th) Streets.

Haskell House and Playhouse

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In 1911 Dr. William Haskell, son of Dr. Abraham Haskell, had the present Haskell House built on adjoining land which he had acquired in 1904 from the Baker estate. The original Haskell House was vacant for a few years and was finally torn down in 1914. Dr. Haskell retired after 30 years in the medical profession, and devoted much of his time to cruising the Mississippi in his steam yacht the "Ouatoga". After her husband's death in 1916, Forence Haskell lived on in the house alone until her death in 1932. For a time the American Legion had its headquarters at Haskell House. After 1944, the Alton School Board offices were housed in the building until 1975 except for a period from October 1969 until June 1971 when extensive repairs were made to a fire damaged interior. In 1977 Haskell House was denoted to be a building of "special significance" architecturally in the Middletown National Register Historic District.

Haskell House is a 1911 three-story (with rear two-story addition) buff brick mansion with a red tile hip roof and distinctive chimneys. Although its three stories thrust it well above the ground, several features attest to the house's Prairie School style of architecture. The low-pitched, sheltering roof with widely projecting eave lines, repetitive evenly spaced eave brackets directly above the third story windows, sandstone banding courses at first, second, third and attic floor levels and a full width first floor front porch strongly emphasize the horizontal design. Successive remodelings since 1932 to provide office space for the American Legion, the School Board, and its present tenants, the Alton Park and Recreation Department plus repairs after the 1969 fire, have necessarily caused alterations to the interior of the building. However, the only exterior alteration to the front facade has been the removal of a wood railing over the center entrance and its replacement in metal. An ornamental iron fence which originally bounded the front yard has been removed but a brick sidewalk still runs along limestone-curbed Henry Street and leads to the front entrance of the house.

A traditional craft in a traditional setting.

A little to the southeast of Haskell House is a one story 1885's child's playhouse which was designed by Lucas Pheiffenberger, Alton's foremost architect from 1857 to 1918. The design in which Pheiffenberger gave full vent to his fancy in the confection of decorative cartwheels, brackets and fishscales, stained glass and iron cresting, is called the Queen Anne Stick Style.

Pictures for the ages!

In the Playhouse, intersecting boards are imposed on the clapboard sheathing to suggest the inner framing, thus expressing the inner structure of the building through its exterior ornament. Haskell Playhouse is a single room (14 x 16 feet), frame clapboard, symmetrically designed structure with side projecting bay windows to the north and south. A remarkable hip-to-berm jerkinhead slate roof with front and rear flared extensions shelters the Playhouse and forms porches to the sides of the projecting front entrance and at the rear. In 1974 the Playhouse was listed in the National Register of Historic Places for its architectural significance.

To insure community support and involvement, a series of open meetings were held in 1978 and 1979 to plan for repairs to the two Haskell buildings. The Lyman Trumbull association, the Historical committee of the Alton Park Development Committee, the Junior League, the Alton-Godfrey Jaycees, and the Rotary Club sent representatives and a number of interested citizens from all over the city attended the meetings.

In 1979, the Alton Park and Recreation Departments applied for and received a grant from the Heritage, Conservation and Recreation Service which was used to replace Haskell House's tile roof, to paint the exterior wood trim, to repair the soffiting, to build ramps for the handicapped, to add missing shutters to windows and to remodel rest room facilities for handicapped persons. Ramps were added to the rear of the house so the front facade was not altered.

The Park and Recreation Department received a grant (to which the city provided matching funds) for restoration of Haskell Playhouse in 1978. Gerhardt Kramer, a St. Louis restoration architect, supervised the planning and the repair. The roof was removed, sheathing and rafters repaired or replaced, boarding paper and insulation applied and electrical work accomplished, cooper roofing was used over bay

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windows and below and including the roof curve in front and rear and slate was re-applied to the rest of the root. The iron cresting was repaired, the chimney was brought up to the correct height, glass was put back in all the windows. The front porch railing and a rear porch post were replaced, and boards beneath front porch aprons were cut to original design. Twelve quarter-cartwheels were carefully fashioned by a master pattern maker in the shop of a local industry. Finally Haskell Playhouse was repainted in its original colors which were discovered by careful paint scraping.

In the past, cities have continually renewed themselves by tearing down the outworn and replacing it with new. But increasingly people are judging historic structures to be economically worth preserving and there is a growing public awareness of the value of revitalizing neighborhoods through the use of existing structures. The exterior restoration and interior adaptive reuse of the Haskell House has provided ample and comfortable quarters for a municipal department and has assured the maintenace of important historic buildings at the hub of the Middletown area. Situated as it is in the center of one of Alton's three National Register Historic Districts, midst wide tree-lined streets, brick sidewalks, spacious yards and gracious historic homes, the Haskell House, Playhouse and Park now constitute one of Alton's most valuable properties.

Haskell House has been put to many varied uses since converting to a Park and Recreation building, including meetings for the Park and Recreation Commissions, the Park Development Committee, and coaches meetings for baseball, softball, football, and soccer. Senior Citizen groups meet weekly for pot-luckmeals, bingo and card games. The smaller rooms are used for staff personnel and classes in the arts such as ceramics, painting, weaving, and photography. Classes for personal improvement and information such as canoeing, boating lessons, and first aid are also taught. There is a complete three room darkroom facility for which all equipment was donated for black and white or color printing and developing. This is shared by an Explorer troop once a month, learning to use the equipment, classes taught in photography from young adults to senior citizens and a photography club which is sponsored and meets there once a month with over 25 members.

Dexterity recaptured.

Ruth Means has been very interested in historic preservation and is very well known throughout the St. Louis area for her painting. She is on the board of the Alton Museum of History and Art, a member of the Alton Area Historical Society, and President of the Greater Alton Art Association. Besides painting, Ruth enjoys doing research on Alton area history.

Jo Anne Lenz is a photographer who combines her community service activities with duties as wife of Alton's mayor, and mother of nine children. She has been a Girl Scout Leader for 15 years, and is a member of the Alton Clean Community System and Alton Area Park Development Committees. Besides developing pictures, Mrs. Lentz instructs classes on photography for the Park Department.

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