Not long after the Midcentury Modern house at 8125 Milwaukee Ave. was built in 1960, one local newspaper noted that the home had “two faces,” one fronting Wauwatosa’s Milwaukee Avenue and the other presenting to the south, toward the Menomonee River Parkway below.

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After a number of changes over the years, the house – which is about to hit the market on March 29 – has gone all-in on the parkway view.

A 1996 addition put a garage out front where there had been a carport, but spend any time at all in this light-filled house and you’ll realize that the “front” – that is the part with the address and facing the street – isn’t the focal point.

The 2,500-square-foot home with four bedrooms and three full bathrooms on a .3-acre lot is listed for $725,000. You can find all the details and dozens of photos at Realtor Sarah Breuer-Rappold's listing.

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After visiting, I’d say some of the highlights are a skylit entry foyer, the parquet floors throughout, the numerous built-ins, the almost Frank Lloyd Wright-style fireplace in an inglenook, the exposed beam ceiling on the lower level and the copious windows that flood the place with light.

“It's a warm house,” affirms owner and empty nester Carl Johnson, who after 21 years here is decamping for (even) warmer climes. “We really have a lot of nice solar gain.”

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If the home seems from the street to be shoe-horned in – it does not feel that way at all on the parkway side – that’s because it kind of was.

It was built by Samuel and Dorothy (Woolrich) Gates, who owned the colonial next door to the west and when they, like Johnson, became empty nesters and wanted to downsize, they didn’t want to surrender their parkway view.

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So, they sold the huge old house but carved out part of the property on which to build a new home, which they had designed by well-known local married architects Willis and Lillian Leenhouts.

“The thing which appealed to us most was the view, of course,” Dorothy Gates told the Journal in 1961, noting that the panorama was especially rewarding in early spring and autumn. 

“From high on the hill we can see at least a mile away in several directions and we have an excellent view of the Menomonee River and the parkway.”

They’d lived in the house next door for 13 years, so it was a view they’d come to know well.

“Although we liked the house very much it just outgrew us,” Dorothy said. “We wanted to move into a place where there wasn’t as much upkeep needed.”

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Samuel Gates was born in Syracuse, New York in 1899 and graduated from Syracuse University with a mechanical engineering degree in 1910. He served in World War I and in 1919 became a consulting engineer specializing in power plant design and construction, a career he maintained until 1965.

For 15 of those years, later in his career, he was a partner in Gates, Weiss and Kramer architecture and engineering firm.

Gates was also active in civic life, as president of Family Service of Milwaukee in the 1930s, president of the City Club of Milwaukee, director of the local chapter of the American Society of Mechanical Engineers and serving in a number of other organizations.

He ran for mayor of Wauwatosa in 1960 but lost.

Dorothy Adell Woolrich, born in Milwaukee in 1903 to Mineral Point natives John F. Woolrich and Jennie Riedel, graduated from West Division High School.

She was assistant civil defense director for Wauwatosa during World War II and was also active in civic life, volunteering with Tosa Police Department and the Girl Scouts as well as being a member of the Wauwatosa Pioneers Club and an officer in the Wauwatosa Women’s Club.

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The couple had three children, including one – Gertrude – who after attending her father’s alma mater in Syracuse became a professional musician, playing harpsichord, organ, piano and recorder with the Milwaukee Symphony Orchestra, Milwaukee Chamber Orchestra, the Skylight Theater and the Medieval Recorder Consort, of which she was a founding member.

When those kids were grown, Samuel and Dorothy Gates kept 52 feet of their 150-foot-wide lot that is 250 feet deep (though a chunk of that was hillside).

While they didn’t dislike the style of their previous home – in fact they kept their traditional furniture – the Gates were looking for something that required a bit less work.

Thus they turned to the Leenhouts, who specialized in sleek, stylish single-family homes in the Milwaukee area and were known for their modernist flair. 

The couple was also very active. A UWM archive contains records to more than 500 projects – built and unbuilt – created between 1936 and 1990.

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Willis Leenhouts was born in 1902 to architect Cornelius Leenhouts (of Leenhouts & Guthrie, he also worked with Louis Sullivan and Edward Townsend Mix) and Adriana “Jennie” Ouweneel.

He was working as an architect in the office of Harry Bogner when he met newly hired draftswoman Lillian Scott – born in 1911 – in 1936. She had just graduated from the University of Michigan School of Architecture after attending Milwaukee’s Layton School of Art, from 1929 to 1932, where she discovered the work of Frank Lloyd Wright.

Scott became Wisconsin's first licensed female architect in 1942, and during World War II she and Leenhouts did defense-related work. Willis went into the army and when he finished his service, the two worked at Fairchild Aircraft in Hagerstown, Maryland.

The couple married in 1943 and officially became architectural partners two years later in Milwaukee, where the postwar housing shortage was a boon to local builders and architects. 

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In addition to many homes, the Leenhouts also designed new, remodeled and expanded churches, libraries and apartments, too.

In 1973, Lillian was among the founders of the Milwaukee chapter of the Society of Women Engineers in 1973. Two years later, the Leenhouts became the first-ever married couple to earn an American Institute of Architects (A.I.A.) together.

In 1989, UWM’s School of Architecture and Urban Planning – which Lillian helped found and which now awards a scholarship in the Leenhouts' name – gave Lillian an honorary doctorate.

She died the following year and in 1992, Willis passed away, but their modernist work continues to dot the Milwaukee-area landscape.

Samuel and Dorothy Gates likely didn't have to look hard to find Willis and Lillian Leenhouts.

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“We were very satisfied with colonial design but when we were looking for a new home we saw several which were something like this one,” Dorothy told the Journal. “Mr. Gates was impressed with them. And this type lends itself to the easy maintenance which we sought.”

The new home, she added, would have fewer ledges, “which collect dust,” and no wood molding that required cleaning.

And it was, of course, smaller. At 25 feet deep and just over 40 feet wide, it had only a tad more than 1,000 square feet on each level.

“We were fooled,” she quipped to a reporter. “We thought that by doing this we’d have less snow to shovel during the winter. So, what happened? Last winter, our first in the house, we had hardly any snow at all.”

The Leenhouts designed a thoroughly modern home that was more than simply easy to clean.

Inspired by Frank Lloyd Wright’s Prairie Style homes with their horizontal lines and built-ins, the Gates house was firmly rooted in the Midcentury Modern architecture of its time. The exterior was all brick, glass and cedar.

The Milwaukee Avenue side had a long driveway that led to a circular area in front of a brick workshop and garden storage area that Mr. Gates liked to call the “doghouse.”

This structure’s wall formed a carport that was attached to the house by a roof.

Even before the garage and house addition altered this side of the house nearly 40 years later, the Leenhouts’ design really did favor the Menomonee River Parkway side – a wise choice, of course.

On that side, the main floor and lower level – which can’t be seen from the north side of the house – are full of windows that take advantage not only of the southern exposure, but also of the view out over the green space that flanks the road – obscured by trees – below.

Stepping inside, one feels the classic Wright-ian compression and release, although here it’s something of a graded experience. The entry foyer is bright, thanks to a skylight.

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Then, stepping into the house, one finds oneself in a somewhat intimate space, with two inviting options. To the left is the staircase to the lower level, which is flooded with sunshine from its southern windows. Just beyond the stairs is the glow of the open-plan main floor living area.

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On the main floor, the fireplace is a key feature and with its adjacent built-in bookshelves and magazine rack, forms an inviting inglenook. Here, the cabinets include storage for firewood and kindling.

In the dining area of the open living space there is a floor-to-ceiling built-in china cabinet with sliding glass doors.

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A large kitchen has been modernized but maintains the original footprint.

The master bedroom and an office are at the north side of the house.

The living room was paneled in Philippine mahogany and the windows originally had silk draperies sent by their daughter who was living at the time in the Philippines. Without original photos it’s hard to know exactly how much of the living room, and which parts, were paneled.

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On the lower level, Gates had his office, from which he did his consulting work, with a desk nearby for Dorothy, who assisted him. A door led right out onto the patio.

There was also a guest bedroom and bath and a pair of utility rooms down there.

Sam Gates extimated that they brought in 40 to 50 tons of Lannon stone to create terraces on the steep hill behind the house.

Not long after the couple moved into their new home, Sam – in an effort to cut the lengthy wait for a tee time – launched a crusade to enlarge the nearby Hansen Golf Course and convert it from nine to 18 holes, also submitting a proposed layout to the County, which already owned the land required.

Although the idea was initially rejected, Milwaukee County Parks later considered the proposal again and plans were ultimately made to expand the course in 1970.

Sadly, Dorothy died four years later, suffering a heart attack about six weeks after moving into a Brookfield nursing home. The following year, in 1975, Sam moved from Tosa to Whitefish Bay, where he died in 1980.

“Then there were the Knauths, the Elsners and me,” explains Johnson. “I've been here 21 years, so I've lived here longer than any other home in my life.”

Not only that, Johnson’s likely been the occupant of this Leenhouts-designed house longer than anyone else.

A Boston native and, like Gates, an engineer, Johnson lived in a number of other cities before landing in the Milwaukee area, his ex-wife’s hometown.

“My former wife's sisters picked it out for us because we were living in Michigan and couldn't make it over every time," he recalls. "And they said, ‘oh, you’ve got to see this one.’ 

"So I came, and we made an offer. Then I came during the home inspection and I remember walking down there and seeing this crumbing Lannon stone wall.

“But I was intrigued. I wanted something unique. There were so many sort of cookie-cutter type homes, and ... every season is special (here), in the winter with the snow, and in summer you can't even see the street. We can see the river during the winter at certain times. It's just a great view, and I just love the solar heating aspect of it.”

The Leenhouts were known for their designs that encouraged natural heat gain and this house is a perfect example.

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When the Johnson kids were small they had plenty of space to play at the bottom of the property and when they needed more room, there was the entire parkway just through a gate. Hoyt Park is also a short walk.

Johnson also loves that the house is just a brief stroll from Tosa Village, too.

Johnson says he’s changed almost nothing since moving in, other than to update the kitchen and, outside, to replace the patio hot tub with a firepit and repair and reconfigure some of the stone walls.

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He’s an intrepid gardener, too, so even in March the terraces look great and one can only imagine how beautiful they are in June or July.

But that doesn’t mean there weren’t changes before he got there.

In 1993, a bedroom was added to the lower level of the south side and a panoramic deck – accessible from the kitchen – was added on the roof of that addition.

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“When they built this in ‘93, they had the staircase coming right along the side,” Johnson recalls of another alteration he made. “So it was quite a long staircase to go down there, so I had to change it. I said, ‘I’ve got to get a shorter staircase,’ and opened up (space) for more landscaping instead of a big structure.”

Three years later another addition went up, this time facing Milwaukee Avenue. It included the garage and more interior space on both floors of the house. 

Thus, the house is quite a bit larger than it was when the Gates moved out, with copious closet space and a large room that the Johnson's used for a time as a billiards room and during the pandemic as a home gym.

One feature on the north side of the house that Samuel and Dorothy Gates would’ve surely known is gone, or rather, heavily altered.

In July 2016, a storm damaged a nearly 200-year-old white oak tree, ripping off a number of large limbs.

“I had to have the tree removed after a storm revealed that it was rotting and could fall at any time,” Johnson told a local newspaper at the time. “I wanted to memorialize it so I came up with the idea of a sculpture.”

Johnson hired Hartland-based master sculptor Bryan Berenson, who had studied wood and metal sculpture in Austria, to carve a nearly 5-foot-tall wooden barn owl, which was installed upon the hulking 6-foot stump of the old white oak.

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Alas, the wood of the fallen tree couldn’t be used for the sculpture because it was too rotted.

While Johnson has already shipped some of his things to his future home in New Mexico and is working on packing the rest, the 400-pound-owl is not making the trip.

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“I guess it’s an elective (for the home's next buyer),” he says. “If someone doesn't want it, I'll move it away. Plan B would be Wehr Nature Center or something like that. I would go to them and say, ‘if I was to bring you this 400-pound, five-foot tall owl, would you receive it?’ They have to have a place for it.

“But I think it belongs with the house. So hopefully nobody will ask for that.”