My wife, Carole, and I opened the first Crate & Barrel store in 1962. We’ve since opened over 150 stores around the country. In addition to outfitting our stores with merchandise like wall hangings, floor coverings and tabletops to suit regional tastes, we had to equip our stores with their walls, floors and rooftops as well.
In every instance where we have built a new store we have done the design and construction management in-house. Not only did we develop relationships with designers and manufacturers for our products, we were able to work with contractors and tradespeople throughout the country on our buildings.
Since each Crate & Barrel is designed for its particular site, there are hundreds of details to be decided as we build stores that are distinctive, efficient, economical and enduring. To say there is a learning curve involved is an understatement.
Building anything is a full-fledged education in itself.
Fortunately, Carole and I have a place of inspiration near our weekend home and I would recommend it to anybody who is in the construction business or works in a building trade.
Known as Old World Wisconsin, and located in Eagle, about 30 miles west of Milwaukee in Waukesha County, it is America’s largest outdoor museum of farm and village life. With its 65 historic structures filled with 50,000 artifacts spread in ethnic villages over 570 acres, you can see how the place would be of interest for those who construct today’s buildings.
I think anybody interested in construction would be immediately struck by the countless ways our immigrant ancestors adapted to life in pioneer Wisconsin.
I mentioned earlier how Crate & Barrel avoids a cookie-cutter approach and builds its stores to account for regional tastes and environments. In the store we opened at Mayfair Mall in 2005, we used local stone for interior and exterior architectural elements, oriented the building’s details for best solar and thermal efficiency and used Wisconsin prairie plants in the landscaping, both as a foundation planting and in a roof garden. I can find these materials today from a dizzying variety of sources, whether local or from around the globe. I can get them delivered more-or-less on demand and assembled by the most efficient, safety-minded and productive workforce known to history.
Old World Wisconsin, my place of inspiration, gives us a picture of the much different reality the pioneer settlers faced. They were forced to use the materials and tools they had on hand. At the same time, both novice and skilled tradesmen were usually constrained by techniques they had brought from their homelands – for better or for worse.
The earliest settlers, fairly prosperous and from New York and New England, could build their economical saltbox houses and frame storefronts of durable virgin timber. Polish or Finnish immigrants who succeeded them on this cutover land were sometimes obliged to build with stumps a German settler would find unfit to burn. The Kruza Stovewood House, relocated to Old World Wisconsin from Shawano County, is an excellent example.
Buildings like these and the exigencies that caused them to be built in their particular manners can entertain the visitor for hours. One example shows how a 19th century building product developed in Wisconsin found its way back to the original Old World – where it is still used today.
The Grube barn, formerly of Dodge County and now at Old World Wisconsin, provides an example of a lost building form here. Its thatch roof ties the past to the present and the Old World to the New World in a most remarkable fashion.
The first Pomeranian settlers arrived here in 1839 and roofed their buildings with thatch. It was a material they were familiar with, and it was accessible before the days of mass-produced shingles.
It seems that during the latter part of the 19th century, the University of Wisconsin, already a leading research institution, began developing wheat strains for possible commercial production. One batch was rejected by these early food scientists – it produced only negligible amounts of grain, borne on minuscule heads on long, tough stalks.
But those stalks, it turned out, were perfect for thatch, and could produce a roofing material that would survive for 30 harsh Wisconsin winters.
Alas, Wisconsin builders had already replaced thatch with readily available wood shingles, but that wasn’t the case in Europe, particularly England, where thatched roofs are still commonplace. The Wisconsin product proved as suitable as or even superior to the wheat strains that had been used there for centuries.
Then, in 1990, the old Grube barn was due to be re-roofed. Since that skill had not persisted locally, thatchers were imported from England. They brought with them their tools, their skills and their experience working with Wisconsin-bred thatch. Their Old World-meets-New World roof still protects the Grube barn at Old World Wisconsin and is just one of the many fascinating details you are free to experience at this magical spot. Won’t you make a point of visiting this year?
You might want to bring your company along! Old World Wisconsin is a great teacher, inspiration and morale-booster.
Gordon Segal is the founder and chief executive officer of Crate and Barrel, a nationwide retailer of domestic goods and furnishings. For additional information about Old World Wisconsin, visit www.wisconsinhistory.org/oww.
