Riverbend, Historic estate in Kohler, Wisconsin, United States
Riverbend is a Tudor Revival house built in 1922–1923 for Walter J. Kohler Sr., designed by Richard Philipp of Brust & Philipp. The three-story brick building has roughly 50 rooms, with gables, dormers, hip roofs, turrets and cut-stone inserts at corners and windows. A solarium on the south facade sits behind four-centred archways, and a four-story addition of 2000–2001 extends the east end.
Walter J. Kohler Sr., then Wisconsin governor and Kohler Company president, built Riverbend in 1922–1923 at a reported cost above $1,000,000. He chose Richard Philipp of Milwaukee's Brust & Philipp, who had designed a house for his father John Michael Kohler and much of Kohler Village. The Olmsted Brothers laid out the grounds. The property joined the National Register of Historic Places in 1980; Kohler Co. bought it in 1985 and began restoring it in March 2000.
Walter and Charlotte Kohler hosted guests on a grand scale at Riverbend through the 1920s and 1930s, and their son John Michael Kohler III and his wife Julilly continued the tradition of opening the house to the public and holding large events. The interiors held imported antiques, among them Kurdistan rugs, Flemish tapestries, a Queen Anne bookcase of about 1719 and a Chippendale chest of about 1780. In the late 1940s John and Julilly lightened the rooms with pale curtains, white-painted walls and pastel bedrooms.
Riverbend is now a private membership club, so the house and grounds are not open to the general public; access is limited to members and their guests. The estate stands in Kohler, Wisconsin, and the 2000–2001 restoration added a four-story wing at the east end.
Riverbend was included in the 1967 book Great Houses of America alongside Monticello, Biltmore, The Breakers and Lyndhurst. Its great hall, 20 by 42 feet, is paved with Vermont granite slabs and centred on a fireplace of carved Madison sandstone.
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