Washington House Inn

The Washington House Inn is one of the most iconic buildings here in downtown. It's structure expresses the history that it made here for the town, as well as for others who walked through its doors. The stories that are in this structure are too much to tell, but a brief description of it will give its context.

We come to the most iconic building in downtown Cedarburg; the Washington House Inn. Conrad Horneffer, who we talked about earlier in the tour. It was established as a hotel in 1846. When it was first established, it was not only used for those who were resting to travel a one-day journey to Milwaukee. The hotel was also used as a gathering place for those who wanted to hang out, discuss business ventures, catch up on life and the town gossip, and meeting places for political gatherings. Over the years that Horneffer owned and conducted business for the hotel, he would also help establish Cedarburg and give its founding roots.

As time moved on, Horneffer would have to sell the building to another partitioner. Theodore Hartwig would become Cedarburg's first practicing physician set up his practice and office and residence in the hotel in 1846, the same year the hotel was established. After thirty years went by, the hotel was eventually sold to Fred Jaucke, who would make more additions to the hotel's structure. As the nineteenth century went into the twentieth, the hotel was converted into an office building in the 1920s, but in 1984, it was later restored to its use as a hotel, and today, it is now named the Washington House Inn.

The building designs are far different from any other structure here in Cedarburg. When Fred Jaucke acquired the building, he added three-story half of the structure today as it was in 1886. Jaucke then encased that part with cream city brick, making the building a very complex array of decorative brickwork that some of the repressed buildings in Cedarburg lacked. Along with the brickwork, the vertical focus on the structure and its evident parapets made the hotel different from other structures that had a more residential nature to it than other hotels or structures in the area. When it was built, the building itself gave Cedarburg a much more professional look as well. This building and the next building over gave Cedarburg the image that it still carries today.

Zimmermann, H. Russell. The Heritage Guidebook: Landmarks And Historical Sites In Southeastern Wisconsin. Milwaukee, Wisconsin. Heritage Banks, 1976. 193.

A Walk Through Yesterday: In Cedarburg, Wisconsin. 2005.

Zimmermann, H. Russell. The Heritage Guidebook: Landmarks And Historical Sites In Southeastern Wisconsin/Highlights Of Historic Cedarburg. Milwaukee, Wisconsin. Heritage Banks, 1976.

Washington House Inn. Accessed May 6th 2022. https://www.washingtonhouseinn.com/cedarburg-wi-inn.html#inn.

Wisconsin Historical Society, Wisconsin Architecture and History Inventory, Washington House Hotel, Cedarburg, Ozaukee County, Wisconsin, 13374.