A vintage tourist cabin finds new life—and love—in the Wisconsin woods
The Chicago Home and Garden had a neat article about this vintage tourist cabin. Here is what Gina Bazar has to say about this cool little cabin:
Talk about a labor of love. The resurrection from near-collapse of this modest one-room cottage is a perfect example of such a labor. The last remnant of a 1920s Beardstown, Illinois, “cabin court” composed of multiple tiny frame houses just like it, it is a relic of an era when middle Americans vacationed by giddily road-trippin’ with their new automobiles.
Tereasa Surratt, a creative director and partner at Ogilvy & Mather, whose grandmother lived next door to the broken-down, abandoned cabin, was hell-bent on saving it. “History has value,” says Surratt, who researched the property for years, with the goal of restoring the cabin to its original state. Over its lifetime, the 11-by-11-foot house had served as everything from a pit stop for weary travelers to an illicit gathering place to a hunt club’s cabin to the office of a trucking company. The owner of that company sold it to her in 2006 for $500. Read the complete article here.
Photo Credit: Aimee Herring
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Wow, that has been beautifully restored and what a beautiful location as well. Thanks for sharing the story and the pictures with us.
The place has been beautifully restored, it’s a little jewel.
I feel very uncomfortable about this whole thing though. It is most definitely NOT a house, it is a guest room, on a privately owned resort (not open to the public) which is probably the owners’ second or third home.
It is not about living simply, is it?
There’s a similar structure in the permanent collection of the Henry Ford Museum, in Dearborn, Michigan. Both that structure and this are straight out of the move “It Happened One Night”–easy to imagine Clark Gable and Claudette Colbert nervously settling in for a night. I tried to find a pic of the HF version–but no luck with that.
But there’s this ‘old style’ tiny house there also:
http://media-cdn.tripadvisor.com/media/photo-s/01/43/7e/70/one-room-cabin-a-family.jpg
It is really nice & beautiful cabins. It could be nice alternate of expensive accommodation
This is wonderful, just the kind of place I spent a lot of time in my childhood. Beautiful restoration! And yes, history DOES have value.