FOND DU LAC, WI (WTAQ-WLUK) – What’s old is new again in Fond du Lac. A labor of love for one local businessman is complete.
A hundred and sixty-five years after an Italianate style building opened as a doctor’s office in Fond du Lac, during the Civil War, it’s now the home of Sam Meyer’s State Farm Insurance office.
“I’ve driven by this building for decades and it’s always caught my interest, kind of something that could be restored and brought back to life a little bit,” said Meyer.
With a passion for historic restoration, he purchased the building in 2022.
In December of 2023 the building was moved a mile down the road to its current location on Fond du Lac’s Main Street.
According to Meyer, “The day we moved it, I thought maybe it would take a couple of hours to move it, it took all darn day. So, the company that moved it for us they just did a real nice job, slow process but not a brick cracked off and fell on the ground.”
In its 165 year history the building was converted from a doctor’s office to carriage house, for a funeral home, before being by a church for storage.
So, over the course of fourteen months, after the building was moved, crews worked to restore it, both inside and out.
“We covered up the garage door openings and put the original door and windows, etc.,” said Meyer. He added “There’s the original metal work on the front of the building and we put a lot of TLC into this.”
And to give himself and his staff more space, Meyer built a carriage house on the back of the original building. He said, “I maybe thought that a country doctor would have needed place to put his horse and his buggy so we went with a carriage house approach.”
Even parts of the carriage house include a nod to the building’s beginnings. “The two carriage doors that you see on the carriage house actually came from the Paine Arts Center in Oshkosh. At one point I understand they demolished their carriage house. There were four carriage doors, I own three of the four, two used in this project. So again these are from the late 1800’s also,” added Meyer.
And it all follows his inspiration to reuse, recycle and restore.
