Between 1975 and 2000 Jack Holzhueter became well known around Wisconsin for his hundreds of appearances on Wisconsin Public Radio and Wisconsin Public Television concerning Wisconsin history and Frank Lloyd Wright. He worked at the Wisconsin Historical Society as a research specialist and editor from 1964 until 2000, serving as an editor of the Wisconsin Magazine of History as well as a researcher and editor for the definitive six-volume history of the state. He currently is a member of the Wisconsin Historical Society’s governing body.
Avocationally, Jack was organist and choir director at St. Norbert Church in Roxbury (rural Sauk City) for thirty-seven years, and served as managing producer of the Song of Norway Festival at Mount Horeb for nine years. For about five years he was a pianist for the Free Congregation of Sauk County in Sauk City—the oldest Free Thought congregation in either Europe or the Americas.
In retirement he oversaw the restoration and expansion of his 1899 stone farmhouse in the Town of Roxbury, an undertaking which created the fiscal necessity for his working as a consulting researcher, writer and editor ever since. Among his retirement consultancies have been a role in the historic structure report of the Wisconsin capitol building; an essay (with George Talbot) in Zane Williams’s acclaimed re-photography book Double Take; and research, editorial, and writing tasks for the Center for Railroad Photography & Art of Madison, particularly for its Railroaders exhibition with the Chicago History Museum and the accompanying catalog detailing the stories of forty-nine railroad workers, including the grandfather of a celebrity actor and a murderer who married into a Jewish family with a clothing store on Maxwell Street. To discuss consultancies with Jack, call (608) 767-2280.
