Wade House Historic Site Visitor Center and Wesley Jung Carriage Museum

The Wade House historic site, owned and operated by the Wisconsin Historical Society opened a new $12 million Visitor Center and Wesley W. Jung Carriage Museum. The Visitor Center has a multi-tiered orientation to the historic site and a museum store, café and ticketing. The 38,000-square-foot museum complex has transformed the visitor experience; offering a new portal to the site where visitors can board a horse-drawn wagon and travel seemingly back in time through the woods and over the Mullet River to the core of the historic site.

GRAEF provided structural and site/civil engineering, environmental impact statement, landscape architecture, wetland delineation, floodplain enactment and wetland permitting for the year-round facility, associated parking and visitor pathways. The site work included a main entrance on State Highway 23. The EIS required extensive investigation of the natural resource impacts and integrated low-impact design principles at this environmentally sensitive site.

The carriage museum houses over 100 horse- and hand-drawn vehicles. Humidity and environmental controls, as well as individually controlled display cases are used preserve this unique collection.

The project employed environmentally conscious building standards and practices and is LEED Certified by the U.S. Green Building Council.