Block & Stack

The "Block & Stack" construction technique was used from the1850s to about 1885 by three masons, John Peter Felix, Peter Kindschi and Casper Steuber, from the Swiss settlement at Honey Creek, west of Sauk Prairie. This techique is only found in the Roxbury, Sauk City and Prairie du Sac area. The stone quarried near Roxbury and on the hills bordering the Sauk Prairie is a type of limestone known as dolomite. It can be sawn or worked with chisels to produce a variety of surface textures. The stone splits naturally into layers 6" to 10" thick. Cut into rectangular blocks it can be fitted together to form an outer surface called "ashlar." Behind this veneered surface is the load-bearing wall of smaller stones and lime mortar.

In Madison, Wisconsin ashlar was used to construct elegant buildings sauch as Bascom Hall on the UW campus. The joints between the stones were often highlighted with a strip of raised mortar, giving a fancy decorative texture to the wall. After the Civil War, decoration came more into fashion and textured stone, elaborate woodwork, and fancy shingling were used on houses to express the economic success of the inhabitants. In rural areas buildings were made of unfinished stone as it came from the quarry. The mason might use raised strips of motar, laid over the rough surface, to imitate the square blocks of an ashlar wall. Sometimes finished rectangular blocks (quions) were used to form the edges and corners of these rubble buildings.

The next logical step was a technique that required less labor than ashlar and produced a very strong wall with a pleasing alternation of large cut blocks and smaller stacks of unfinished stone (hence, "block & stack.") Strips of white mortar, laid along each joint, stood out boldly against the yellow stone and concealed the trick used to produce the ashlar-like effect: each large cut block was held in place by the stacks of stone above, below and on each side of it, which projected into the wall. Thus, unlike ashlar the block and stack surface was not a veneer. It was integral with the load bearing wall.

Three masons who made the Block & Stack masonry

Casper Steuber's cousin, Henry Steuber arrived in Sauk County in 1841, from Waldeck, Germany, with his sons: John, Christian, Phillip and Fred. Cousin Casper joined them in 1853.

Peter Kindschi was born in 1833 in Davos, Graubuenden, Switzerland. With his two brothers and two sisters he was brought to Sauk County in 1846 by their father, Johann. In 1882, Peter's son John Peter married Emma, daughter of Christian Steuber.

John Peter Felix ("mason Felix") was born in Haldenstien, Graubuenden, Switzerland in 1883 and came to Honey Creek in 1856. In 1860 he married Catherine Kindschi, sister of Peter Kindschi. In 1988 the initials "JPF" and the date "1863" were found on a block and stack house, now destroyed, 1 1/2 miles south east of Witwen, Wisconsin.