Contact: Kara O’Keeffe
kara.okeeffe@wisconsinhistory.
608-261-9596
Fond du Lac, Wis. – The Wisconsin Historical Society has announced the listing of the Northern Casket Company in Fond du Lac, Fond du Lac County, in the National Register of Historic Places. National Register designation provides access to certain benefits, including qualification for grants and for rehabilitation income tax credits, while it does not restrict private property owners in the use of their property.
Traditionally, casket manufacturing was closely allied with wood furniture manufacturing, with furniture companies making caskets as one of their product lines. The Northern Casket Company stands apart from this model and this building is significant as the main factory and offices for the company, a casket manufacturer and important employer in Fond du Lac, which occupied this building between 1905 and 1962.
The factory at 16 N. Brooke Street reflects the evolution and expansion of the Northern Casket Company, from an early producer of wooden caskets through its growth to one of the leading concerns of its kind in the country, with a line of caskets in a wide range of materials including steel, statuary bronze, and mahogany. The building remains one of the best surviving examples of Fond du Lac’s industrial heritage, and a late nineteenth-early twentieth-century factory devoted entirely to the production of caskets. This building is a connection to the City’s industrial past, of which very few buildings remain.
The register is the official national list of historic properties in America deemed worthy of preservation and is maintained by the National Park Service in the U.S. Department of the Interior. The Wisconsin Historical Society administers the program within Wisconsin. It includes sites, buildings, structures, objects and districts that are significant in national, state or local history, architecture, archaeology, engineering or culture.
To learn more about the State and National Register programs in Wisconsin, visit www.wisconsinhistory.org.
About Wisconsin Historical Society
The Wisconsin Historical Society, founded in 1846, ranks as one of the largest, most active and most diversified state historical societies in the nation. As both a state agency and a private membership organization, its mission is to help people connect to the past by collecting, preserving and sharing stories. The Wisconsin Historical Society serves millions of people every year through a wide range of sites, programs and services. For more information, visit www.wisconsinhistory.org
