The City of De Pere, Wisconsin

Otto and Hilda Gretzinger House

 

History:

 

The Otto and Hilda Gretzinger house is located at the north end of a National Register-listed residential neighborhood situated on both sides of N. Broadway in De Pere. Otto Gretzinger was the manager of the Central Lumber Company in De Pere when he married Hilda Dedrick, a local school teacher, early in 1915. Soon thereafter the Gretzingers purchased a large lot on Broadway, which at that time had a street car line that ran directly in front of their home site, and by early 1916 their new house was ready for occupancy.

The Gretzingers' rectilinear plan house is an excellent, quite large, side-gabled example of the Bungalow style and its design was heavily influenced by the Craftsman Style also popular at the time. The house sits on a large lot and its first story is clad in clapboards and its gable ends are clad in wood shingles, this combination is one frequently found on Craftsman Style and Bungalow style houses built in this period. These house's very wide overhanging eaves, supported by extended beams, shelter the exterior walls. Of special note is the large front porch that covers the main entrance to the house. This porch includes a raised terrace that spans the full width of the house and the ends of this terrace are both curved, a very unusual feature for a house designed in this style. In addition, the house contains a fine, highly intact and characteristic Bungalow style interior that is notable for its fine built-ins and for the high quality of the materials used.