RACINE, WI — Before the invention of cars, people used carriages, wagons, and buggies to travel. In a grand stable on Main Street, one prominent resident created a tool that aided carriages and automobiles alike.
Program Coordinator Wendy Spencer loves to include this story on her tours of the Masonic Center.
As the story goes, the owners of the stable would bring their horses and carriages back from a ride, pull into the stable, put the horses in their stalls, but the carriage was facing the wrong way to make the needed repairs and then exit the stable.
Workers had to back it out, turn it around, push it back in, but a new invention would make this task far easier.
An invention that turned with the times
To rotate the carriage more effectively, Racine industrialist Stephen Bull created a large in-ground turntable that could turn his carriage, and later his automobiles, inside the stables. His barn was located at 1130 Main Street, and is now known as Bull Manor Apartments.
Photos of the interior from a 1905 publication show a circular stage in the ground that rotated the vehicle. This turntable was powered electronically.
Turntables were included in designs by Frank Lloyd Wright as early as the 1920s and used in train yards and on stage during theater productions. Bull’s turntable elevated the stable and cemented it as a place of wealth and status.
His barn was a sight to behold on Main Street: a two-story Tudor-inspired noble building complete with hardwood flooring, tile walls, mahogany woodwork, and beamed ceilings. It was finer than most stables owned by European nobility of the time.
According to an article in Bit and Spur from the Racine Heritage Museum’s archives, “the noble building… forms a hollow square in outline, the main portion being annexed by large garage rooms on either side, which form wings of the whole. The stable has a frontage of 120 feet and an equal depth, and is built of vitrified brick with sandstone trimmings, and fluted tiled roof of an art nouveau shade of pale green… Both portions of the stable are distinctive, although practically uniform in arrangement and finish.”
Racinians wouldn’t see a car until The Spark in 1873, and automobiles wouldn’t become the main method of transportation until the early 20th century. Back then, the main methods of travel were by foot, horse, boat, or carriage. The turntable became a valuable tool that evolved with how people got around.
A Man of Well-Connected Means
Bull was born in 1822 in Scipio, New York and moved to Racine in 1845 and became a partner in his brother-in-law’s threshing business, J. I. Case Threshing Machine Company. As a leading businessman in Racine, he had a hand in multiple companies and lived in a grand house on Main Street near his stables.
Architect A.A. Guilbert built the stables from 1903 to 1904 and created a Tudor-style stable to house Bull’s horses and carriages. Shortly afterwards, Bull converted the stable into a garage to accommodate automobiles.
According to the Wisconsin Historical Society, “Stephen Bull was one of the first in line for an automobile, and in a short time, the horse stable was converted into a garage.”
Equestrian Family
Stephen Bull wasn’t the only horseman in his family. His brother-in-law, Jerome Increase Case, had the famous harness racing horse Jay-Eye-See. The gelding broke the trotting record in 1884 and the pacing record in 1892.
Jay-Eye-See became a mascot for the Case company and was featured in promotions for years.
Bull’s son, Frank Kellogg Bull, continued his father’s love of horses and used the stables for horses and automobiles after his father’s death in 1913. Frank died in 1927.
Bull’s granddaughter, Jeanette Bull Reid, also became an accomplished equestrian, showing Morgans in New York City.
The Bull family is buried in Mound Cemetery around a giant family marker in the early section of the grounds.
A New Home
In 1925, many grand homes on Main Street were being turned into apartments, and the stables soon followed. They were transformed by J. Mandor Matson, who used wood and tiling from the stables to create stair rails, paneling, wainscoting, and ceiling beams.
The turntable likely did not transform with the building and is no longer there.
The apartments served as a fashionable address for the wealthy widows of Main Street who left their grand homes to retire. The complex was named Bull Manor Apartments and has been well maintained over the last century.
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