Step Inside 6 Beautiful Homes in Wisconsin

Built in 1948, the low-slung residence stands out as a particularly beautiful example of Wright’s love for Prairie School and Usonian-style architecture, and it’s where the Adelmans’ three sons grew up—and where the youngest, Craig, still lives. But more than 60 years later, in 2011, the house was in need of some tender loving care. The original concrete floor had shifted dramatically, then had been hidden underneath a layer of shag carpeting; the roof had leaked, leaving water damage; and the home’s mechanical systems were far from energy-efficient. So Craig went in search of an architect to take on a restoration of the property. “His first call was to Santiago Calatrava in New York; they turned him down,” says Allen Washatko, cofounder of Wisconsin-based Kubala Washatko Architects, laughing. It was Washatko who Craig asked next—the firm had previously designed an award-winning addition to Wright’s First Unitarian Society Meeting House—and this time, the answer was a resounding yes.—Lindsey Mather

Hiking, canoeing, campfire sing-alongs—generations of Boy Scouts visited these 25 wooded acres on a glacial lake in Wisconsin. But one day in the 1980s Camp Delavan, named for the lake on which it sits, closed, then was divvied up and sold off. Besides a few moldering buildings and a landscape slowly being overgrown, all that was left were the memories of the boys who had spent time there.

Until 2005, that is, when Jennifer Litowitz happened upon a real estate ad. She and her husband, Alec, the founder of Magnetar Capital, had harbored a fantasy of creating a bucolic getaway for friends and family, including the couple’s four sons, Jack, Luke, Nick, and Jude, now ages 12 to 20.

Seeing the ad rekindled that dream. So they strapped baby Jude into his car seat, rounded up the other boys, and drove an hour-and-a-half north to check it out. “This is it, this is it!” Jennifer remembers thinking. “But Alec was somewhat less enthusiastic. It was in rough shape—really, really rough.”