Door Prize

The first “door cabins” I ever saw were built by the ingenious Hod Ludlow at his famous island resort on Lake Vermilion in northern Minnesota. The two seasonal structures were constructed in the familiar post-and-beam style—but using pine doors as both interior and exterior wall material. For years, I assumed that Ludlow had cleverly made the most of a good deal when the local lumberyard was stuck with an oversupply of doors!

Then I began to hear about and visit a variety of cabins and outbuildings that incorporated doors in their construction. The venerable getaway that John and Sally Roach bought near Webster, Wisconsin, for instance, includes a wall made of doors separating the living room, a bedroom, and what once must have been a screened porch. Nearby, a bait shack at the Ike Walton Resort also has walls made of doors. Both structures date back to the 1920s, when door walls were either popular in this part of the country or there was a local carpenter who had a thing for them.

With the help of Wanda Boldon, a real estate broker in Siren, Wisconsin, I recently discovered what may be the ultimate door cabin—in my opinion, the Taj Mahal of doordom. Built in 1929 and overlooking an excellent trout stream, the structure—actually a house—now belongs to Mike and Wendy Askay, who live there year-round. Every room—the original kitchen, two-story great room, three bedrooms, one bath, and porch—is lined with handsomely finished wooden doors. The entire structure is protectively clad in half-log siding.

Of its history, the Askays know little more than that the structure was built, supposedly in a single week, by a retired lumberman named L. B. Rich and was owned for many years after by Rich’s widow, Maddy. More data is being sought by its new owners, who are obviously—and, to my mind, understandably—smitten. “This place was love at first sight,” Mike Askay says. Door amore, I would call it.