For me, it's the Nymphus B. Holway House located at 1419 Cass ST, La Crosse, WI.




Built in 1892 by Holway, a local lumber baron, the house was built back at a time when zoning laws, property taxes and other restrictions on homes were not yet in place. You couldn't build something like this today in La Crosse, WI (my home town) without spending at least 10 million dollars. While not a large mansion, the home does reflect the wealth and prominence of Holway, as well as the significance of the lumber industry to Mississippi River towns like La Crosse in the late 1800’s. Completed in about two years, there were two building permits recorded for the home, each for $10,000. The limestone used to make the façade was taken from La Crosse landmark Granddad Bluff.






It sports over 9000 sq. ft. of living area over the three floors, including over 21 rooms, 8 fireplaces and 29 stained glass windows. The interior woodwork is mostly quarter-sawn oak and Birdseye maple. Butternut, ash and sycamore are also represented. The architects were two men named Gustav Stoltze and Hugo Schick. Stoltze was a native German who came to La Crosse in 1885 after working in Minneapolis. Hugo Schick was a native of Austria who graduated from the Polytechnical School and Academy of Art of Vienna.






For nearly a half century this small-but-commanding 3 story limestone mansion was owned by the Roman Catholic Diocese of La Crosse and used as the bishop’s home and later as a seminary. Since 1976, when the house was sold and became once again a private residence, this La Crosse landmark has been carefully restored and protected. Estimated property taxes for this edifice total over $18,000 per year. The house is currently for sale at a price of 1.7 million dollars.

I guess not everybody has widescreen monitors like me... sorry about that.

John Grisham has a huge compound estate here, but there are no pictures online. It has a wall around the entire farm and he is very security conscious. I would be scared to take any pictures.

We also have a few antebellum homes that survived the war.

That house is amazing. I live in a neighborhood with several huge homes, most dating from about 100 years ago. There aren't really pictures online because they aren't notable, particularly, but they are enormous and beautiful. They are clustered around the oldest part of our city, and were built for the wealthy who were anxious to move to "the country" and get out of the inner city. The first suburbanites, I guess.

$1.7M?
Get it while you can.
It would cost 5-10 times that around here.

Where's that?

NYC mero area.
I'm at the bottom of northern NJ
or the top of Mid-Jersey
depending on how you look at it.

Oh, I thought you were really from "tomorrow." Yeah, I'll bet a $1.7M home with almost $20,000 in property taxes a year seems like a pittance to you.

A pittance? hardly.
I make 6 times the salary of my father's best year
and we don't live any where near as well as my folks with 3 kids did.

Some night when I feel like typing I'll "publish" my rant on Real Estate: costs being caused
by the two-breadwinner family being the norm, housing costs rising to meet income,
greed is not always good, and our benevolent government screwing up whatever they can.

Getting back to the topic,
It is a lovely house.
I believe I saw a number of very impressive mansions on HGTV.
that were right on the outskirts of a downtown area, and it was in Mn.
Maybe this house was one of them.
All I know is I wanted to move there immediately.
Damn cash flow problem!

Geez, Tommy, I should have been clearer there. I meant it must seem like a pittance compared to the costs of property in the NY/NJ area. I wasn't trying to quantify or make any remarks about your income.

No, no, no. Don't think I was bothered; and income comments are just an example of the times.
My lifestyle was chosen, I have no regrets. I just get a little pissed that the need for 3 cars, a TV in every room, etc etc, has forced mothers to become workers and resulted in Real Estate prices rising to meet a certain percentage of TWO people's incomes when the norm used to be that same percentage of one person's.
I understood your original meaning. My 'pittance reply comment' was just to clarify that not everyone who lives NEAR NYC lives LIKE NYC.
Sometimes I think the rest of the country thinks we're all Trumps, just like some folks here think of your area and people as nothing more than something to fly over.
Best, my friend.

Boy, I got on a rant there.
I meant to say
Darin, I know you're not being insulting toward me.
All I perceive is good will.
So, though I sometimes am unclear in my rants and drivel,
all I return is good will too.

I love that house. That is truly a steal at $1.7 million.

Here's some pics of the Holway House in the Wisconsin winter months...

This home would be nice, but it's out of my price range:

This is from the album art to Leonard Cohen's Songs From A Room. I first saw it in my early 20s and it has had a major impact on the way I think I should live my life. Basically, all I want is a stripped down life where you know what's important. I'm not quite as spartan as this image, but really all I want is my sweetie, a small but comfortable apartment, lots of books, music and food, and decent employment to sustain it all. My life's still more cluttered than I'd want, but overall I'm happy with how I'm doing.

We've got the Bill Gates compound:




Assessed value in 1997: $53 million.

It's on an island in the Puget Sound too, isn't it? With armed private security guards in speed boats circling it at all times.

The town where I live was built as a company town. Most of the older houses were built according to two or three standardized patterns. We just don't have any historic houses here. One reason I like having business in the city now and then is the chance to see more variety of neighborhoods.

I should just post a photo of my house.

I can't afford it.

Not on an island, nor is it on Puget Sound. It's in the Medina suburb of Bellevue, on Lake Washington. I'm not sure what level of security there is. I don't know how wild the King County Sherriff's department would be about armed guards in boats, but maybe they're there.

Having swam in the channel between there and Mercer Island (for one of my triathlons), I can report that I saw no sharks.