Crane and Barkhausen

• American

Crane and Barkhausen were fashionable residential architects who designed some of Milwaukee's most imposing houses for their primarily upper income, German-American clients. Both Charles D Crane (1850-1928) and Carl Barkhausen (1860-1934) had worked for architect Edward Townsend Mix prior to establishing their own firm in 1888. Before the firm dissolved in 1902, they designed many expensive brick and stone residences for the city's industrial and mercantile elite. They favored heavy-handed, but. imaginative, versions of the Renaissance and Classical Revival styles for their domestic work, perhaps reflecting the formal architectural training that Carl Barkhausen had received in Berlin in the 1870's and early 1880's. - NRHP