Platteville, WI. – The Wisconsin Historical Society announces the listing of the German Evangelical Lutheran Church of Peace in Platteville, Grant County, on the National Register of Historic Places.
German settlement in Platteville began in the 1820s as Germans traveled from Wisconsin’s earliest settlements in Prairie du Chien and Green Bay to take part in the discovery and development of the region’s lead mines. German Lutheran services were first established in Platteville in 1855 when a pair of German Lutheran pastors traveled through the village and noted its distinct lack of services for the community’s German Lutheran residents. The German Evangelical Lutheran Church of Peace was constructed in 1856 using funds, land, and labor donated by members of the congregation.
The building displays modest Gothic Revival detailing that includes a steeply-pitched roof; pointed-arch windows and belfry openings; heavy, curved wood mullions in the front tower window; and steeply-pitched gablets around the base of the spire. The German Evangelical Lutheran Church of Peace is Platteville’s oldest extant church building and is still in use as such today (the building is now owned by Platteville’s Free Methodist congregation). Although the building has undergone a number of interior remodeling efforts through the nineteenth and twentieth centuries, as well as the construction of a side wing in 1940 to accommodate an ever-growing congregation, these alterations have not diminished the building’s architectural distinction.
The National Register is the official list of historic properties in America deemed worthy of preservation and is maintained by the National Park Service in the U.S. Department of the Interior. The Wisconsin Historical Society administers the program within Wisconsin. It includes sites, buildings, structures, objects and districts that are significant in national, state or local history, architecture, archaeology, engineering or culture.
Additional information for this house is available at https://www.wisconsinhistory.
About the Wisconsin Historical Society
The Wisconsin Historical Society, founded in 1846, ranks as one of the largest, most active and most diversified state historical societies in the nation. As both a state agency and a private membership organization, its mission is to help people connect to the past by collecting, preserving and sharing stories. The Wisconsin Historical Society serves millions of people every year through a wide range of sites, programs and services. For more information, visit www.wisconsinhistory.org
