Ripon High School

Mr. Waters' architectural influence was seen throughout the state of Wisconsin, from Ashland on Lake Superior's southern shore to Watertown situated along the Rock River.  Much of his work outside of Oshkosh was within a short distance of home.  A May 19th, 1881 article in the Oshkosh Weekly Northwestern was an interview with the architect and a litany of his works in progress.  He's quoted as saying, "I've never known business to be so rushing in the office as it was this spring."   The demand was largely, however, from out of town.  Ripon, some twenty miles southwest of Oshkosh was a place which provided several building commissions: including residential, educational and commercial structures.  One of the buildings mentioned in the newspaper was a new school house in that city.    

The building was to be built of brick 67' x 94' with a basement and two stories high at a cost of $12,000, that was all the write up had to say about the building.  Queen Anne was the favored style at the time and the new school was very stylish with bricks of a light hue and contrasting dark bands and window accents.  It possessed an asymmetrical plan; behind the central bell tower was a transverse pavilion with a gabled roof of sorts.  At the center of the left elevation arose a chimney, which at the roof line met with a small gable, the main portion of the roof formed a hip at the corners but at the point above the small gable continued to the peak as a gable, making for a complex and interesting design feature.  Along the front of the roof was gabled dormer with a small window.  To the right of the steeple was another pavilion, at a right angle to the main building, it too had a gabled roof.  There was a porch and entrance on the front of the tower which rose high above the school, capped by a peaked roof.  The building remained in use as a high school and served grades one through eight until it was demolished 1912.