Stewart Inn ★★★★

A Lumber Baron’s House, Kept Exactly as Maher Drew It

Hiram Stewart made his money in Wisconsin timber, and in 1906 he and his wife Irene commissioned George Maher to build them a house on Grant Street. Maher belonged to the same Chicago generation as Frank Lloyd Wright and helped carry the American Arts and Crafts idea into domestic architecture. What makes this one matter is that almost nothing was lost: mahogany doors and panelling, honey oak and quarter sawn oak bookcases, stained glass by Giannini and Hilgart, original chandeliers and sconces, a mosaic fireplace, and, still in the walls, the laundry chute and the house intercom. It was the first property in Wausau to enter the National Register of Historic Places.

Why It Works

Plenty of historic inns preserve a staircase and rebuild the rest. This one is studied as the most intact example of its architect’s work anywhere, which changes what a night here is: you are sleeping inside the building, not in a renovation of it. The second argument is the running of it. Five rooms and a three course breakfast cooked to order is a ratio that no hotel of eighty rooms can match, and in a city the size of Wausau it makes the inn the obvious address rather than one of several.

Why This Location

Grant Street sits in the residential grid at the edge of downtown Wausau, which means dinner, the river and the shops are a walk rather than a drive. Wausau is a small Wisconsin city with more to it than its size suggests: the Leigh Yawkey Woodson Art Museum is one of the best regional museums in the upper Midwest, and the Wisconsin River runs through the middle of town. Rib Mountain rises just to the southwest, with the Granite Peak ski area on it, which gives the inn a genuine winter season as well as a summer one.

Fast Facts

• Price: Premium

• Vibe: Arts and Crafts, scholarly, comfortable

• Rooms: Five, in the original bedrooms of the house, including the Fuller room

• Best For: Architecture travellers, skiers heading for Rib Mountain, couples who want a whole house feeling without renting one

• Our Favorite Thing About the Hotel: The Giannini and Hilgart stained glass, still in its original openings, lit from behind on a clear morning

• Dining: Three course gourmet breakfast served daily in the dining room; downtown Wausau restaurants are a short walk

• Amenities: National Register listing, original Maher interiors throughout, free parking, families accepted

• Attractions: Downtown Wausau, the Leigh Yawkey Woodson Art Museum, the Wisconsin River, Granite Peak on Rib Mountain

One Motif, Repeated Through a Whole House

Maher worked to what he called a motif rhythm theory, choosing a geometric form and a plant for each commission and repeating them from the facade down to the hardware. Here it is a tripartite arch and a tulip, and once you have been shown it you cannot stop finding it: in the glass, in the carved oak, in the plaster. That is the pleasure of staying rather than touring. A guided visit gives you an hour with the idea. A night gives you breakfast underneath it and a second look on the way back upstairs.

Five Rooms and a Three Course Breakfast

The guest rooms are the family bedrooms, which is why they differ from one another in size and outlook rather than being graded into categories. Ask what each one looks onto when you book; on a corner site the difference is real. Breakfast is three courses, cooked in the morning and served in the dining room under the original fixtures, and it is the part guests mention first. The house takes children, so a family can reasonably occupy a large part of it at once.

Before You Book

Animals are not accommodated. Check in is from three in the afternoon, check out at eleven. Parking is free on site, which in a residential street matters. With five rooms, winter weekends around the ski season and the summer festival calendar in Wausau fill early, so dates lead the decision rather than room choice.