Platteville, WI
N 42° 44.097 W 090° 28.754
15T E 706349 N 4734463
Platteville was founded in the early 1800s in Wisconsin's lead mining region. Today the town home to the University of Wisconsin - Platteville.
Waymark Code: WM5JC0
Location: Wisconsin, United States
Date Posted: 01/12/2009
Views: 3
PLATTEVILLE, 31.5 m. (918 alt., 4,047 pop.), a city of hilly streets, old false-front buildings, and irregular layout, is the present metropolis of the mining country. Around it are many marginal mines. The WISCONSIN INSTITUTE OF TECHNOLOGY, 20 N. Elm St., established in 1907, provides three- and four-year training courses for practical mining engineers and foremen, and, in late years, for highway construction engineers. The Platteville State Teachers College, 722 W. Pine St., is the State's first normal school. The House of Major John H. Rountree (not open), one block south on 3rd St. from its intersection with Pine St., is a red-brick, two-story Georgian building of L-shaped design. Interesting features are the Greek pediment, the gingerbread type of decoration in the cornices, a two-story, wooden porch, and long windows which reach almost to the floor. A bronze tablet states that this was the home of Rountree, one of the founders of Platteville in 1827. The building is now an apartment house.
---Wisconsin, A Guide to the Badger State, 1941
Today the town has kept many of its historic buildings that were present in 1941. The Wisconsin Institute of Technology merged with the University of Wisconsin to become UW-Platteville and moved to the west side of town. The Rountree House still stands where it did in 1941.