Doors to the Past

Constructed as a collaborative class project for the Applied Public History course at Marquette University, five teams of students created this ebook.  Over the course of four months, each group worked together to research their assigned house. They came to respect the individuals involved in the preservation attempts and the journey of the structures.


The houses within this ebook raise questions about historic preservation. Who were the people working on the side of preservation and what measures did they take? What challenges did these individuals and groups face? Does the value of the houses change over time and how was value determined? And, perhaps most important, why were some houses preserved while others were left only as memories and faded photographs? 


In order to answer these questions, the chapters focus on five different houses through the lens of historic preservation. Four of these, Cà d’Zan Mansion, Pabst Mansion, Kilbourntown House, and Koepsell House, remain standing--testaments to various methods of preservation. The final chapter deals with Plankinton Mansion, the one house featured that can no longer be visited except in the archives.


The chapters educate, entertain, and interest readers with images, videos, interviews, interactive features, and the individual houses’ stories. Underlying the entire project are the themes of value, purpose, community, preservation versus progress, the changes of time, and passion. It is the latter that is the most important, it is passion that keeps the Pabst Mansion an important cog within the local economy; it is passion that created and maintains the opulence of the Ringlings’ Cà d’Zan; it is passion that leads to arguments over the name of Kilbourntown House; it was passion that led Richard Perrin to make his idea of Koepsell House into outdoor museum; it is passion that fills the voice of Fr. Michael Zeps, S.J., as he speaks about the destruction of Plankinton Mansion. In the end, it is passion that saw us through to the end of this project: passion for history, for preservation, and for bringing these stories to light.