Abbot Row is significant as an excellent preserved example of a Queen Anne Style row house block in Milwaukee. Among the other row house blocks that remain in Milwaukee, only a few can compare with Abbot Row in the excellence of design. Two of the finest exhibit elements of the Richardsonian Romanesque style.

Blocks such as these represented a departure from traditional row house design of the

preceding decades of the nineteenth century where each unit was identifiable as a discrete entity in a row of identical units.

In contrast, blocks such as Abbot Row present the unified appearance of a single structure without accentuating on the exterior divisions between the units. The fact that all of the blocks of this type were built for a single owner as multiple rental units, rather than for sale as individual dwellings may have contributed to the acceptance of this building type.

Abbot Row was built in 1889 by Wisconsin Central Rail Road Company Vice President, Edwin Hale Abbot. He built it on the land he bought in 1884 that had served as Bielfeld's Beer Garden from the late 1850's until 1883. Reportedly he bought the old establishment that was adjacent to his own home on Knapp Street in order to silence the nightly revelry.

In developing the row, Abbot commissioned prominent Milwaukee architect Howland Russel with whose work he was familiar. Five years earlier, Russel and Abbot had both served as officers of the Associated Charities, a service organization whose membership included many of Milwaukee's elite.

Howland Russel's architectural career in Milwaukee that spanned the period from 1880-1916 included primarily residential commissions.

Russel is perhaps better known for his later commissions such as the Edward Diedrichs House at 1241 North Franklin Place, remodeled by Russel in 1895 in the NeoClassical style, and the Hawley-Bloodgood residences (1896) in the Chateauesque style at 1249 Franklin Place and 1139 Knapp Street, all of which are in the immediate vicinity of Abbot

Row.

Abbot Row was originally built as rental townhouses. Throughout its history, the row's occupants have been a cross section of prosperous businessmen and professionals. In 1924 the row was sold by Abbot's widow to the Abbot Row Corporation as cooperative housing. This is significant because Abbot Row was probably the first cooperative in Milwaukee and one of the first in Wisconsin after the passage of the state cooperative housing law in 1921.