The year 2021 marks the one hundred fiftieth anniversary of the construction of Villa Louis, the Dousman family estate in Prairie du Chien, today one of the Wisconsin Historic Society’s twelve historic sites. The rich interiors of the home, fully restored in the 1990s and early 2000s, get an in-depth look in this image essay from the site’s former curator.
February 6, 1990, turned out to be a good day for sleuthing. We had spent a pleasurable afternoon looking through items at the home of one of the heirs of Hercules L. Dousman, whose Prairie du Chien estate, Villa Louis, I worked for as curator. Already we had made several great finds, including the Tiffany Persian flatware and the cellarette, an intricate liquor cabinet that had once graced the Dousmans’ formal dining room. The day was winding down when R. Donald Donahue, the appraiser working with Briggs and Morgan, the law firm handling Mary Young Janes’s estate, mentioned another possible item of interest in the St. Paul residence—a trunk located in Janes’s bedroom. Donahue led Villa Louis site director Michael Douglass and me up the curving stairs to the bedroom.
At the foot of the bed stood a large steamer trunk. Mr. Donahue lifted its lid, and we peered into it with curiosity. What we found was astonishing: photograph upon photograph of rooms of the Villa Louis residence, Dousman family members and guests inside the home, and family and guests participating in a variety of activities on the veranda and lawns of the estate—all, as it turned out, from the 1880s to the 1920s. The find was beyond anything we had imagined: in all my years working for Villa Louis I never expected to find the living history of the estate at my fingertips. Michael and I were thrilled. With this unexpected find, a new wealth of possibilities for correctly interpreting and furnishing Villa Louis opened to the Wisconsin Historical Society.
In 1949, the four living grandchildren of Hercules L. Dousman—Violet, Virginia, Louis, and Judith—offered Villa Louis, the family’s estate in Prairie du Chien, to the Wisconsin Historical Society. It took a decision by the Wisconsin Supreme Court and an act of the Wisconsin Legislature for the gift
