Lemuel Milk Carriage House

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Lemuel Milk Carriage House
Lemuel Milk Carriage House.JPG
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Location 165 N. Indiana Ave., Kankakee, Illinois
Coordinates 41°7′16″N87°51′41″W / 41.12111°N 87.86139°W / 41.12111; -87.86139 Coordinates: 41°7′16″N87°51′41″W / 41.12111°N 87.86139°W / 41.12111; -87.86139
Area less than one acre
Built c. 1865 (1865)
Architectural style Italianate
NRHP reference # 79000849 [1]
Added to NRHP June 4, 1979

The Lemuel Milk Carriage House or Stone Barn is a historic building in Kankakee, Illinois, United States. It is the last remnant of the estate of Lemuel Milk, who once owned over 25,000 acres (10,000 ha) of land.

Kankakee, Illinois City in the United States

Kankakee is a city in and the county seat of Kankakee County, Illinois, United States. The city's name is probably derived from the Miami-Illinois word teeyaahkiki, meaning: "Open country/exposed land/land in open/land exposed to view", in reference to the area's prior status as a marsh. As of the 2010 census, the city's population was 27,537. Kankakee is a principal city of the Kankakee-Bourbonnais-Bradley Metropolitan Statistical Area.

United States Federal republic in North America

The United States of America (USA), commonly known as the United States or America, is a country composed of 50 states, a federal district, five major self-governing territories, and various possessions. At 3.8 million square miles, the United States is the world's third or fourth largest country by total area and is slightly smaller than the entire continent of Europe's 3.9 million square miles. With a population of over 327 million people, the U.S. is the third most populous country. The capital is Washington, D.C., and the largest city by population is New York City. Forty-eight states and the capital's federal district are contiguous in North America between Canada and Mexico. The State of Alaska is in the northwest corner of North America, bordered by Canada to the east and across the Bering Strait from Russia to the west. The State of Hawaii is an archipelago in the mid-Pacific Ocean. The U.S. territories are scattered about the Pacific Ocean and the Caribbean Sea, stretching across nine official time zones. The extremely diverse geography, climate, and wildlife of the United States make it one of the world's 17 megadiverse countries.

Lemuel Milk was an early settler to Eastern Illinois and, at one point, the largest landholder in the state. Born in New York, Milk came to Illinois after purchasing a large tract of land in Iroquois County. Milk came to own over 25,000 acres (10,000 ha) of land in Illinois, Indiana, and North Dakota. He also found success with a general store in Chebanse, Illinois and an ice harvesting company in Kankakee, Illinois. Milk is the namesake of Milks Grove Township, Iroquois County, Illinois.

Contents

History

Lemuel Milk moved to Kankakee, Illinois from New York around 1855. An early settler to the area, Milk was among the first to drain the Kankakee region for farming. By purchasing cheap, swampy land for draining, Milk was able to amass a large estate exceeding 25,000 acres (10,000 ha). This made him one of the largest landowners in Illinois. Milk opened a department store in Chebanse in 1868, which he ran until 1883. In 1876, he founded the Waldron Ice Company, harvesting ice from the nearby Kankakee River. Milk was a trustee on the board of the Illinois Eastern Hospital for the Insane. Milk's most ambitious undertaking was the draining of Beaver Lake in Newton County, Indiana. [2]

Chebanse, Illinois Village in Illinois, United States

Chebanse is a village in Iroquois and Kankakee counties in the U.S. state of Illinois. The population was 1,062 at the 2010 census. The Kankakee County portion of Chebanse is included in the Kankakee-Bradley, Illinois Metropolitan Statistical Area.

Kankakee River tributary of the Illinois River

The Kankakee River is a tributary of the Illinois River, approximately 133 miles (214 km) long, in northwestern Indiana and northeastern Illinois in the United States. At one time, the river drained one of the largest wetlands in North America and furnished a significant portage between the Great Lakes and the Mississippi River. Significantly altered from its original channel, it flows through a primarily rural farming region of reclaimed cropland, south of Lake Michigan.

Kankakee State Hospital Hospital in Illinois, United States

Samuel H. Shapiro Developmental Center, formerly named the Kankakee State Hospital, is a developmental center in Kankakee, Illinois, on the banks of the Kankakee River.

The carriage house, built at some point between 1861 and 1868, is the only remaining structure from Milk's large estate. Milk lived in a seventeen-room mansion at the corner of Oak and Indiana Avenues, which has since been demolished. Aside from sheltering his carriage, Milk also used the building to house livestock. The carriage house is now the third-oldest building remaining in Kankakee after the First Baptist Church and the Asbury United Methodist Church Sanctuary. [2]

The building was used as a barn until the early 1920s, when it was used as a painting garage. It later became a warehouse for Fred Swannell Sr.'s hardware store. The building was converted to a bakery and restaurant in 1973. The restaurant quickly went out of business and the building became a meeting place for civic groups. [2] On June 4, 1979, the carriage house was recognized by the National Park Service with a listing on the National Register of Historic Places. [1]

National Park Service United States federal agency

The National Park Service (NPS) is an agency of the United States federal government that manages all national parks, many national monuments, and other conservation and historical properties with various title designations. It was created on August 25, 1916, by Congress through the National Park Service Organic Act and is an agency of the United States Department of the Interior. The NPS is charged with a dual role of preserving the ecological and historical integrity of the places entrusted to its management, while also making them available and accessible for public use and enjoyment.

National Register of Historic Places federal list of historic sites in the United States

The National Register of Historic Places (NRHP) is the United States federal government's official list of districts, sites, buildings, structures, and objects deemed worthy of preservation for their historical significance. A property listed in the National Register, or located within a National Register Historic District, may qualify for tax incentives derived from the total value of expenses incurred preserving the property.

Architecture

The carriage house is built with locally quarried limestone. The roof features a cupola with a weather vane, placed at the crossing of the two gables. The building is largely undecorated except for a wide bracketed cornice. The interior retains its rough cut roof trusses. The floor was changed to concrete in the 1920s. [2]

In architecture, a cupola is a relatively small, most often dome-like, tall structure on top of a building. Often used to provide a lookout or to admit light and air, it usually crowns a larger roof or dome.

Cornice horizontal decorative molding that crowns a building or furniture

A cornice is generally any horizontal decorative molding that crowns a building or furniture element – the cornice over a door or window, for instance, or the cornice around the top edge of a pedestal or along the top of an interior wall. A simple cornice may be formed just with a crown.

Truss structure that consists of two-force members only

A truss is an assembly of beams or other elements that creates a rigid structure. In engineering, a truss is a structure that "consists of two-force members only, where the members are organized so that the assemblage as a whole behaves as a single object". A "two-force member" is a structural component where force is applied to only two points. Although this rigorous definition allows the members to have any shape connected in any stable configuration, trusses typically comprise five or more triangular units constructed with straight members whose ends are connected at joints referred to as nodes.

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