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Kendra Mack
Chateau Madeleine
The summer manor originally built by the Hulls on Madeline Island in Wisconsin creates comfort amid the wildness of the island setting. A large, welcoming screen porch takes advantage of the outdoor breezes in bug-blocking serenity.
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Kendra Mack
Chateau Madeleine
The 1913 Adirondack-style cottage has Lake Superior as a front yard.
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Kendra Mack
Chateau Madeleine
The cottage served as a center of island social life, first as the Hull family home until 1946, then for even longer as the Chateau Madeleine resort and after 1985 once again as a family home.
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Kendra Mack
Chateau Madeleine
Through the property’s four owners, the original furniture, including the walnut trestle table in the dining room, has remained in use.
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Kendra Mack
Chateau Madeleine
The terra cotta fireplace tiles, including a green woodland scene, were designed for the house by the Grueby Faience Company. Beth Fischlowitz collected the Roseville Ceramics vases on the mantelpiece.
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Kendra Mack
Chateau Madeleine
The Vennums built the two-story “Sea Cottage” (also called the “Burgundy”) on the site of the original pump and electrical shed. It is an ideal place to watch the sun set over the Bayfield hills.
Excerpted from Linda Mack’s Madeline Island Summer Houses: An Intimate Journey (I Was There Press, 2013; Hardcover, $39.99, ISBN 978-0-9799192-4-4). The book features 27 seasonal homes, from modestly rustic to extravagantly historic to sparsely modern.
The white slatted porch swing has creaked on the green-painted porch of Coole Park Manor since 1913, when the Hull family from Kansas City, Missouri, built the five-bedroom Adirondack-style “cottage” on a Madeline Island bluff with a sunset view.
Each summer Dr. Albert Gregory Hull, his wife, Cora Abernathy Hull, their daughter, Elizabeth, and Cora’s mother, Mrs. James Logan Abernathy, would de-camp from the Kansas heat and humidity to the island’s Lake Superior-cooled environs.
There the Hull family hosted a storied summer life of black-tie dinners, tennis tournaments, tea in the garden, and picnics to nearby islands in what Elizabeth called their “small but adequate” yacht, the Zenya, a 65-foot gas and sail-powered launch.
“What a good time we used to have on our picnics, and how good the steaks, corn and coffee tasted,” Elizabeth recalled in an interview for a 2002 article in Wisconsin Magazine of History. She documented these activities with her Kodak Autographic, creating a remarkable journal of early 20th century island life.
My husband, Warren, and I knew nothing of that history when we arrived in June 1970 at what was then an American-plan resort called Chateau Madeleine. But we felt the charm of the past when we stepped on to the porch full of wicker furniture and into the Arts-and-Crafts living room. Margaret “Mike” Vennum, who ran the place with her husband, Tom, a Minneapolis lawyer, welcomed us. We had heard that the Chateau was more like a small hotel in England than other American resorts.
And, indeed, from breakfast at the long trestle tables in the dining room to happy hour on the veranda overlooking the Lake, the daily schedule ensured that guests would get to know each other. Mike and her staff of islanders and summer imports arranged horseback riding, shuffleboard, golf at the 9-hole course across Old Fort Road and tennis on the clay court. As we finished dinner, a bell would summon us to the dock to take a sunset cruise on Tom’s boat, the Invader.
We returned mellow and ready to sleep in one of the second-floor bedrooms, despite the scuffling sounds of bats. Other years we stayed in one of the cottages the Vennums had converted from the Hull outbuildings. The laundry shed became the “Brittany,” the garage, the “Normandy.” The “Sea Cottage” replaced the original electrical shed, down on the Lake. A stone path and a hill-evator took guests down the steep hill to the water.
It was remarkable to think the Vennums opened the Chateau in 1948, when Lake Superior tourism was in its infancy. The first year it was called the Old Mission Inn, a name building on the reputation of the former resort on the site of the early Protestant mission. The next year it was dubbed Chateau Madeleine [sic], complete with an emblem celebrating the island’s history as an early French outpost.
The Vennums’ son, Tom, who grew up summering on the island and returns every year, says the idea for Chateau Madeleine evolved from “my mother’s rather Francophonic tendencies.” An energetic extrovert, she ran the place, while Tom Sr. would arrive for the weekend, bearing provisions.
“Early on, there was a lot of work to be done, so my parents would invite friends up for ‘Paint, Pound and Play’ weekends to provide labor,” Tom Jr. recalls. “Those folks ended up wanting their own places on the island,” and many bought the old Mission cottages that Vennum had purchased from Beloit College.
For 35 years, Chateau Madeleine was an island institution. The 1963 guest list included guests from Minneapolis and St. Paul but also Michigan, Massachusetts, Missouri, Ohio, Illinois, Indiana, Kansas, Pennsylvania, Texas and England. The quirky combination of delicious food, warm hospitality, outdoor activities and a spectacular setting enchanted them all.
“The spell of the island hangs over us yet, and even a few strains of ‘Michael, Row the Boat Ashore,’ will bring on the tears,” one guest wrote after leaving.
The Chateau was important to islanders, too. Many worked there, and it was the place to celebrate birthdays and anniversaries. “We hosted 50th wedding anniversaries. People stopped by to say their first child’s name is Madeline because they stayed here,” says Beth Fischlowitz, who with her husband, Alan, bought the Chateau from the Vennums in 1982. “It is a living place.”
The Fischlowitzes operated the Chateau as a bed-and-breakfast for four years, then closed the doors and reclaimed the house as a family retreat. They continued to rent the cottages as the Brittany Cottages but reverted to the property’s original name, Coole Park. They restored the house, and, in 1990, undertook the ambitious effort of rebuilding the formal garden Elizabeth Hull had designed in 1920. They revived the stone paths and croquet court and rebuilt the teahouse and pool, complete with trellises and gazing ball. Coole Park Manor was listed on the National Register of Historic Places in 2005.
In 2012, a year after Alan died, Beth sold Coole Park to Amy and Phil Goldman of Minneapolis, who, like earlier owners, enjoy sharing it with family and friends. They plan to keep the historic name as well as the original porch furniture and dining room tables and chairs that they bought with the house.
“It’s our personal home,” Amy says, “but we also feel that we’re stewards of the place.”
Linda Mack, former architecture critic for the Minneapolis Star Tribune, writes about architecture and design. She and her husband spend as much time as possible at their Madeline Island cottage.