File:Carrie Pierce House, Pinckney Street and Gilman Street, Mansion Hill, Madison, WI - 52763400278.jpg

English: The Carrie Pierce House at 424 North Pinckney Street in Madison, Wisconsin, was built in 1857 in Romanesque Revival style and is often touted as an example of the German Rundbogenstil. (See the Property Record online.) Designed by August Kutzbock and Samuel Donnel, it was initially home to Francie and Alexander A. McDonnell. The house was later occupied by Roberta C. and John H. Garnhart, owner of the Garnhart Reaper Works; by the lawyer, US Congressional Representative, and Wisconsin Supreme Court Justice Orsamus Cole, who married the widowed Roberta Garnhart in 1879; by Sarah Fairchild Dean, sister of Wisconsin Governor Lucius Fairchild and herself prominent in civic circles; and by George Pierce and Carrie Pierce, who operated a boarding house in the mansion between 1906 and 1938. The house was renovated and converted into an apartment building sometime after the Pierce family owned it, enclosing many of the historic features inside the walls and behind newer elements in a very foresighted move to preserve them for future use.

The house features sandstone block walls with a side and front gable roof, extruded corner pilasters and corbels, several layers of corbeling below the roofline, Roman arched windows, four-over-four and two-over-two double-hung windows, quatrefoil windows on the side gables, a rooftop belvedere with chamfered corners, featuring a bracketed cornice with dentils and a low-pitch roof, cast iron railings and porches with ornate, intricate designs and slender iron columns, decorative window headers and pilasters trimming the windows, a front door with an arched transom flanked by arched niches and engaged columns, chimneys with dentils and blind arched panels, a three-story cast iron porch on the side facade with an iron staircase, one-story bay windows on the first floor below the front and side gables, oxeye windows on the rear gable, a one-story rear ell with a hipped roof, and stone turrets at the corners with decorative bases and caps. The interior features the historic woodwork, doors, wooden floors, Victorian fireplace surrounds, decorative crown moulding, historic light fixtures, a staircase with intact woodwork and an intact banister and balustrade that spirals up through the house’s many levels, terminating in a tall carved wood newel post with an integrated light fixture on the first floor, and a well-preserved octagonal foyer with the original marble floor, crown moulding, plaster medallion at the ceiling chandelier, niches on the chamfered corner walls, and pocket doors.

The house was listed on the National Register of Historic Places in 1972 and is a contributing structure in the Mansion Hill Historic District, listed on the National Register of Historic Places in 1997. It is presently home to the Mansion Hill Inn, which has seen the restoration of the distinctive exterior and interior elements, and provides modern guest amenities. With its Rundbogenstil design, the house is one of the most interesting older houses in Madison and demonstrates the influence of German culture on the development of the American Midwest.