This story is about someone who thought outside of the box — literally. It started with a Bubbler Talk question from Milwaukee photographer Kristine Hinrichs.
"I've always wondered about the round apartment buildings on Blue Mound [Road] and about 92nd Street," Hinrichs says. "I vaguely remember reading one time that they were supposed to be a more efficient use of space as a building."
The twin dwellings are one story tall, brick buildings, built in 1954.
Blue Mound apartments
The apartments are owned by Wisconsin Lutheran College, which is an about 5-minute walk away. WLC purchased them in 2005 and 2011 and uses them for student housing.
"We call them the round houses," says Jamie Brock, WLC's director of residence life. "We house mostly seniors, and we do single apartments up here."
Each building has six one-bedroom units and a shared laundry room at the center.
"It's kind of like a piece of pie," Jamie says. "But it's almost more like a piece of pie with like a bite taken out of it because they're not triangle."
In each apartment, a kitchen with a skylight is the closest to the center of the "pie," with a living room next to it, and a small bedroom and bathroom.
These apartments are on the border of Milwaukee and Wauwatosa. But, if you live in Racine, or have spent time there, you’ve probably seen a lot of similar, round brick homes.
The man behind the round houses
They caught the attention of Colette Broadway, a former realtor in the Racine area. She worked with an agent who got a listing for one of the round houses – at 1209 Walton.
"So I actually fell in love with that house so much that I purchased it and refreshed it," Broadway says. "I would have loved to hold onto it, but I sold it."
That was where Colette’s fascination with the round houses began. She wanted to know who built them.
"So they were designed by an architect by the name of Anton Kratochvil. He was from the Racine area," Broadway says.
Anton Kratochvil was born in Manitowoc in 1886. His family was from Czechoslovakia, and they moved to Racine, where there was a large Czech population.
Anton was a man of many interests and talents.
"He was a vaudeville performer," Broadway says. "He was contortionist. And at some point, he decided to go into construction."
His business specialized in circular homes, using the slogan “it’s sound if it’s round.” He built the first one in 1939.
According to one newspaper account, Anton got the idea from an igloo-shaped ice cream stand.
Most of the single-family round houses are around 1,000 square feet. Some are more rectangular with rounded edges, others are “seashell” shaped. As for the layout, some designs show the dining room in the center, with the other rooms surrounding it – like pieces of a pie.
Gary Kratochvil is Anton's grandson. He lives in San Antonio now, but he has fond childhood memories in Racine, spending time with Grandpa Tony – that's Anton.
He says Anton was creative, opinionated, full of ideas. As for the round houses?
"Money was tough back then, you know, and so you needed the most square footage for the least amount of dollars," Gary says. "Well, if you took a rectangle house and figured the perimeter boundary of it, and you took that perimeter and made it round, you'd use the same footage of the perimeter, but you gain like 30% floor space."
In a 1951 Milwaukee Journal Sentinel article, Anton is quoted saying: "Round homes cost less and contain more room than conventional designs. It is simple arithmetic."
The article says although he had detractors, Anton Kratochvil heard from architects "all over the world" interested in the round house concept, and he leased his designs to them.
"Admirers term him the first man in history to bring down the cost of homes," the Journal Sentinel article says.
Eric Vogel is a Milwaukee architectural historian and board president of Docomomo Wisconsin. He had never heard of Anton Kratochvil before I reached out, but he’s not surprised to learn about his motivation.
"So there's tremendous innovation coming out of the [Great] Depression years," Eric says. "What everybody knows is that no one can afford to build a traditional house anymore and that there's a severe affordable housing shortage. And so there's a tremendous amount of government interest and private sector interest in creating the most affordable, most efficient, and then sometimes mobile houses that they can. I think that's where the inspiration for Kratochvil’s circular houses is coming from."
Eric says Anton wasn’t the only 20th century “renegade” architect experimenting with the circle. He points to designs from Frank Lloyd Wright, Bruce Goff and the Keck brothers.
"It is so exciting when you step out of the rectangular box, as Wright would say, when you 'break the box,' you connect with the landscape. You connect with a different way of living," Eric says. "Bruce Goff didn't actually pursue circular designs because of structural or economic efficiency. He said circles were more sociable. He thought it was a better way for human beings to gather, that it promoted better dialog, more talking, more interaction."
And for any skeptics, Gary says, Anton had a handy way of proving his theory about round homes.
"Tony would take pack of cigarettes, tear the top off, tear the bottom off, and then make it round again, and stuff more cigarettes into that pack," Gary recalls. "'Well, I didn't make the package bigger, but I changed its form and created more space.'"
Colette Broadway, the former realtor, published a book about Anton Kratochvil's round houses. She believes there are 24 in Racine and at least 10 more in other cities, including those two apartments in Milwaukee.
They’re all thanks to one man who wasn’t afraid to think outside of the box.
