If, driving past, you spot the Italianate farmhouse called Melody Farm, 16680 W North Ave., in Brookfield, you just may do a double-take – as I did.

The 1860s home looks out of place amid a sea of suburban subdivisions and these days, with shrubbery and trees removed during a 2020 widening of the road, the house is more visible than ever.

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Built between 1866 and 1870, the house long pre-dates anything around it and, in fact, it’s one of just two examples of Italianate rural houses in Brookfield and the only one constructed of brick. (The other, because I know you’re asking, is the wood-frame Gerrits House, 2730 Brookfield Rd., built around 1870.)

Considering that – and the fact that as a nomination form noted that it is “nearly identical to photos of the home taken in the 1940s as it continues to exhibit its original boxy form, bay window projections, rope form window moldings, as well as unique brick window and door surrounds, all of which combine to stand as a notable, brick­ constructed, rural example of the Italianate style of architecture”– it’s not surprising that it was added to the National Register of Historic Places in 2022.

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“In addition to the house and contributing to its historic agricultural setting, the property retains its historic barn and foundation remnants of a former outbuilding.”

Of course, I had to see for myself.

The house, built by farmer George H. Daubner after his return from service in the Civil War, is a two-story structure with a hipped roof and two protruding bays with a one-and-a-half-story, gabled wing projecting to the east. In front of the gabled section is a covered porch that replaced an earlier one.

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There are oval oculus windows in both wings and the windows are all adorned with arched brick surrounds (except at the back of the house).

“Alterations to the exterior of the house are somewhat unknown as the earliest known photographs of the house date to the 1940s – a full seven decades after its construction,” the nomination form notes. “When compared to the 1940s photos, it can be confirmed that the house has changed only minimally in the last 70(-plus) years.

“Although there is no photographic evidence of what the front porch originally looked like, it is acknowledged that it was most likely not topped with a flat roof as seen today (and since at least the early 1940s), as the roof partially obscures the very top of one of the first-floor windows along the two-story block.”

Out back are the remains of what appears to have been an animal barn, with only the stone foundation walls now surviving. This was believed to have been built around 1878.

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“The structure, as it was last known to look like (from the mid-1940s through circa 2013), had a gabled, frame roof on an east-west axis, as opposed to the north/south orientations seen on the 1878 illustration,” according to the form. “The building stood, intact – with a pair of wooden doors along its fieldstone-constructed and whitewashed south elevation and two, six-over-six­ light sash windows on both its east and west ends – until it was partially deconstructed at some point between 2013 and 2015.”

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There’s also a much larger bank barn that is also estimated to have been constructed around 1878 with a field- and cut-stone foundation.

Though these buildings once served a 150-acre farm – of which 120 acres were cultivated or lived upon, leaving 30 acres in woodland – much of that property has been sold off over the years, hence the encroaching subdivisions.

However, the property is still fairly large, with some woods surviving to the north.

But it’s a long way from 1870 when the Daubner family owned one of the seven most valuable farm properties in town, assessed at $15,000. (According to the nomination four others were also valued at $15,000 and two others were estimated to be worth $20,000 and $30,000.)

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On the farm at this time were 35 sheep that produced 200 pounds of wool, 23 pigs, four horses, three milking cows that yielded 300 pounds of butter and two other heads of cattle.

From their fields, the Daubners reaped 100 bushels of corn, 160 bushels of oats, 400 bushels of Idaho potatoes and 35 tons of hay, while the orchards generated $100 in revenue and the woods a whopping $1,300 in forestry products.

Although an 1872 lightning strike damaged a barn causing a loss of $3,000 in wagons, sleighs, hay, wheat, straw and farm equipment, two-thirds of that was covered by insurance and by 1878, Daubner won numerous awards, including for his Southdown sheep, at the Northern Wisconsin State Fair in Oshkosh, suggesting he’d recovered from the loss.

But, you ask, who was George Daubner?

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George Holmes Daubner was born Feb. 16, 1840 in Sheffield, England to Joseph Daubner – who in addition to being a farmer was also a minister in the Wesleyan Church – and Rebecca Holmes.

Despite having lost two elder siblings as infants, leaving George the oldest, the Daubners and their seven children emigrated in May of 1848, settling in Brookfield, Wisconsin, with Joseph’s brother John accompanying them.

The Daubners bought 40 acres from Samuel and Emily Philbrook and began farming in an area where wheat growing was popular, as were fruit orchards.

It’s unclear how they decided to come to the young but growing rural community of Brookfield – which had been home to Native Americans who, beginning in the 1830s were being displaced by Yankees, as well as German and English immigrants – though perhaps another relative or friend was already here.

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Also unclear is how the family became deeply intertwined with the Woodcock family in Greenfield, which seems pretty close these days but was distant enough in the horse-and-carriage days. Perhaps there was an old world connection that bound them on this side of the ocean, too.

Whatever the case, George married Frances Woodcock in July 1862 and his sister Sarah married Frances’ brother Ira Woodcock the following month. A year later, 19-year-old Mary Daubner, another sister, married 17-year-old Lewis Woodcock after the death of Lewis' brother Franklin, who had been courting Mary in early 1861.

Three months after marrying, George left to fight in the Civil War, enlisting in Company A of the 28th Regiment of the Wisconsin Infantry, commanded by Capt. William E. Coates.

During his service, Daubner’s regiment was sent to Port Washington to put down a draft riot, which ended peacefully with the surrender of the protestors, though Daubner seems to have reported that he was wounded during the affray.

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In April 1863, after having apparently contracted catalepsy – a rare condition that causes seizures and the stiffening of the body – Daubner was discharged.

In 1865, Daubner’s father Joseph, who by then owned more than 200 acres of land, sold some to George, who added another 80 acres the following year, buying that land from Oliver and Clarissa Harwood.

The NRHP nomination form notes that tax rolls suggest that Daubner bought the land upon which the current house stands in 1867 and that the home was completed by the time the 1870 assessment was made.

By 1870, Frances and George had four children and a 15-year-old live-in servant.

Though it would seem that life was good for the Daubners, with all that land, a servant and the impressive agricultural output in 1870 (detailed above), appearances can be misleading.

By 1874, it seems George was having an affair with Ellen Augusta Showerman (nee Parker), the wife of Milwaukee & Mississippi Railway’s Brookfield station agent Hiram Showerman. It would be a long-running tryst that ended only after Hiram Showerman reportedly shot Daubner in the face in March 1881.

Though George survived, the whole thing became a scandal, especially as he’d become involved in local politics by this time, serving as town assessor, town supervisor and Justice of the Peace, and Showerman was also well-known figure, operating a shop and serving as postmaster and telegrapher in addition to his role as stationmaster.

When Hiram Showerman died at the age of 55 just three years later, he was not vilified by the Waukesha Freeman, which without specifying his offense wrote, “He was a man of considerable intelligence and of honest purposes, though in the past few years family troubles led him to do things that under more fortunate conditions he would not have done. In a word, he was greatly sinned against and made the mistake of taking the law into his own hands.”

Meanwhile, Daubner was arrested in 1881 for military pension fraud and in October 1882 he stood trial for allegedly faking injury to get his 1863 discharge.

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A jury found him guilty on two counts and in June 1883 Daubner was sentenced to three years hard labor in the State Penitentiary, which he served beginning July 3 of that year in Chester, Illinois.

In February 1884, Milwaukee’s influential Col. George B. Goodwin lobbied on Daubner’s behalf during an 1884 trip to Washington D.C., at which time the Journal wrote that Daubner’s “friends assert that his health is failing and that he cannot long survive a life of confinement.”

In the end, Daubner was released on Dec. 13, 1885 for good behavior.

Daubner was granted what sounds like a somewhat reluctant presidential pardon in March 1887. In a statement, Grover Cleveland said, “His offense prejudices me very much against granting him any relief, but his sentence having been served and Hon. Edward S. Bragg, himself a distinguished soldier, having given the opinion that since his sentence the convict has behaved well, the pardon is granted for the purpose of restoring him to the rights of citizenship.”

Not everyone was so forgiving.

Apparently, Daubner’s son Asa (who was born on his mother’s birthday) was, according to genealogical research, “at odds with his father and didn't look forward to him coming back home in December 1885, so in April 1885, Asa, 22, left home and also left the state of Wisconsin. He ventured with others and settled in Umatilla County, Oregon.”

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Daubner’s parents, Rebecca and Joseph, died in 1890 and 1892, respectively.

By 1891, Daubner was laying low, farming his 139 acres. A year earlier, his son – also named George Holmes Daubner (born in 1867) – graduated from Carroll College and went off to study law in Madison, earning his degree in 1893.

Holmes, as the younger Daubner was commonly known, went on to become a prominent Waukesha citizen, serving as city attorney, postmaster and public administrator. Even the elder Daubner managed to regain some standing in the community, remaining a member of Masonic and Elks Lodges.

Empty nesters, George and Frances left the farm and moved to Waukesha in 1906.

Frances Daubner died in January 1911 and George succumbed to heart disease three years later, outliving all his siblings despite being the eldest. Read whatever you will into the fact that he died on Frances' and Asa’s birthday, March 20.

However, after Frances’ passing, George had sold the house to the Rohlinger Company – owned by Michael F. Rohlinger and his son Adelrich – which was involved in investment loans and real estate, including in farmland and orchards.

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According to the Wisconsin Historical Society, a Henry Wagner bought the farm in 1914, which suggests Daubner did not sell his entire land holding to the Rohlingers.

Although Rohlinger Company owned the home until at least 1930 – and perhaps until Michael’s death in 1936 – according to the nomination form, “it remains unknown as to who resided in the house during that period of ownership.”

In 1936, self-employed accountant Roy Kissner and his wife Helen (nee Spelman), who had been married five years, bought the place and lived there with three children and a 17-year-old servant.

Kissner, in time, would also lead Standard Tool & Gage in West Allis and Milwaukee Tool & Die Co.

However, in 1943, the Kissners sold the property to Milwaukee’s Gustave and Phyllis Sokol, who are responsible for the name “Melody Farm.”

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Gustave was born in New York and moved to Chicago in 1926, where he met and, in 1930, married Chicago native and accomplished violinist Phyllis Feingold. Within a few years, they’d moved to Milwaukee. While Gustave worked in the tanning business as salesman and agent, Phyllis continued to perform as a musician.

According to the Waukesha Freeman, Phyllis was a University of Illinois graduate.

“Mrs. Sokol has a long record of symphony experience,” the paper wrote. “After studying violin, piano, voice, harmony and theory, and after conducting at the Chicago Musical College, the American Conservatory and the University of Illinois, she played with the Chicago Civic Orchestra. Besides being a member of the Women's Symphony of Chicago, she played in a studio symphony at radio station WBBM in Chicago.”

Once Sokol children began to arrive, Phyllis Sokol put music aside to focus on raising them in the family’s Whitefish Bay home. 

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However, with World War II raging, the Sokols bought the Brookfield farm because, one of their children later said, they wanted to be able to grow their own food during the war-driven rationing and shortages.

They built a pen east of the barn to raise pigs and a coop just north of that to keep chickens.

“To the west of the house was an existing pear orchard that was comprised of somewhere between 25 and 40 trees,” the nomination form recounts, based on reminiscences, as well as photographs and home movies. “Between the barn and West North Avenue was a vegetable garden consisting of com and tomatoes that was said to be Gustave's delight.

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“Although they planned to have at least two cows for milk, and built two stanchions in the barn for them, they ultimately did not purchase any cows. They did, however, have two horses and they built two, 25x25-foot stalls in the basement of the barn.”

Because of the rationing of gasoline, the younger Sokol recalled, their mother would head to town in a horse and buggy to do the shopping.

It was during the brief Sokol era that the circular driveway was added as well as the stone wall that extends west from the ruins of the old animal barn.

Although they’re now gone, a pair of stanchions that marked the entrance to the farm and bore the Melody Farm name also dated to this time.

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Phyllis asked her cousin, Wisconsin artist Aaron Bohrod, to design a logo for Melody Farm, with musical notes and a horse’s head, which was printed on stationery for the Sokols.

During their time on the farm, Phyllis joined the Waukesha Symphony Orchestra as the principal in the first violin section.

But the Sokol era came to an end with the listing of the then-6.5-acre farm for sale in December 1948 for $28,500 and a move back to Whitefish Bay.

However, the property may not have sold immediately, as real estate ads listing it as available ran regularly until at least mid-May of 1952, albeit with a gap between November 1949 and June 1951.

Perhaps this is when Dr. Richard P. Jahn arrived on the scene.

Jahn, who was born in 1914, earned his degree in medicine at UW-Madison's School of Medicine in 1939.

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Marrying Wisconsin native Olivia Bryck in Farley, Iowa that same year, the couple moved to Milwaukee and Jahn began his residency at Milwaukee County General Hospital.

Over time, Jahn would become medical director of the Wisconsin Anti-Tuberculosis Association, a teacher at Marquette University Medical School, a consultant on pulmonary diseases at the Veterans Hospital and Chief of Staff at Milwaukee’s Deaconess Hospital, according to the nomination report.

They lived in the home with their children until Olivia’s passing in 1991 and Richard’s in 1997.

Brookfield dentist Dr. Thomas Tang bought the place in 2000 and has owned it ever since, living in it for a time. Nowadays, it is casually available for some event rentals – notably weddings, especially during the barn wedding fad – and as an Airbnb.

Tang’s assistant Patricia Torres showed me the house recently, which other than an updated kitchen seems, as the NRHP report suggests, is likely very similar to how it would’ve looked at least in the Sokol days.

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There's seating in one of the bays and, when I visited, a Christmas tree in the other.

There's a den, dining room and living room on the first floor and some bedrooms upstairs, including one that's down a few stairs in the gabled section.

Since there are no early photographs, it’s hard to say exactly what dates to earlier than the 1940s.

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However, the wide hardwood floors sure look like contenders, as do the heavy mouldings around door and window frames, the sturdy newel post at the foot of the lovely central staircase and the like.

Ceiling beams in the wood-panelled living room are clearly hand-hewn, as are the joists you can see in the basement, where there's also an old walk-in cooler still in place.

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Out in the barn, there are still what appears to be remnants of hay scattered in places, despite not having been home to animals in decades.

On the lower level you can see joists made of tree trunks that still have their bark. One can only imagine when those trees sprouted as saplings.

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Upstairs, a patch in the ceiling shows where a vent was once perched up on the roof.

“I think for the most part he tried keeping it pretty original, except obviously upkeep with paint,” Torres explains. “I know he had those floors sanded and all that, but for the most part, all that in there is still pretty original.”

But, says Torres, the events aren’t a regular business at Melody Farm, which has great spaces, but doesn’t offer things like tablecloths and DJs as do more “official” events businesses.

“It’s not so much an event venue anymore,” she says. “It used to be at one time. Especially when barn weddings were really popular. Sometimes he'll open it up for Airbnb where people will stay but that's kind of a hit miss.

“It is more for his family events and stuff like that. Then, any of us that work with him could all use it for our events as well.”

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So, there have been showers and kids’ birthday parties, etc., but mostly it is a historic refuge –  and a pretty quiet one, too, despite the widened road out front and the encroachment of suburbia – for Dr. Tang and his family and friends.

“His office is down the block,” Torres says. “And he just loves the inside (of the house) and he loves the land.”