One of our prized possessions...

Check out this link -- this is our Cottage -- Green Bay Press Gazette did a story on the Cottage:

Click the start button on the video to start (that is not me in the video -- we are not part of the original family that owned it for 70 years):

http://www.greenbaypressgazette.com/article/20081112/GPG0803/311120008


Someday we will retire to this Cottage -- all 450 sq ft of it (it does have a loft that adds a few more sq ft).

Here is the story from the paper:

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Max Schober was a weekend warrior of a different breed.

An architect and a craftsman, Schober built a cottage on the east shore of Green Bay with a playful look, like something out of a Brothers Grimm fairy-tale illustration.

"He constructed it mostly by hand on weekends, and it is a small stone place with hand-carved wooden shutters (with bird and animal figures), details around the doors and windows and a copper roof," said Nancy Miller, a neighbor.

"The place was a day cottage for my grandparents, Max and Addie," said grandson Tom Schober. "My grandmother had a gazebo that is still there. She'd sit and watch Max work."
Stone was hauled from the nearby shore, and much of the cedar framing likely was from the vicinity.

"Although my grandfather founded companies that built many buildings in Green Bay with well-defined architectural styles, it's hard to peg the style of his cottage," Schober said. "I'd call it Green Bay rustic."

Schober remembers his father, Leonard Schober, telling of being enlisted while in high school to help with heavy work. The stones and lumber look formidable.

Rocks were hauled with a travois, a device with long poles lashed together and pulled by horse — or in his case, human. The facing on the cottage is split stone. That translates as more hard labor — breaking the stone to build exterior walls and chimneys.

"It was all masoned in that way," Schober said. "Max did all of that. He also built all of the woodwork and all of the metal hinges and things that are on the house.

"He did all the carvings of the animals and did basically everything that you see here. It was all done in the early '20s, and it's still in place."

The family is proud of the lore associated with the cottage.

"What I like about the architecture of the place is its originality," Schober said. "It doesn't really have a particular style. I think Max modeled it on some things that he probably had seen from Germany.

It's a whimsical place."

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