File:Historical Marker, Former Wisconsin Executive Mansion (Julius T. White House), Gilman Street, Mansion Hill, Madison, WI.jpg

English: Built in 1856, this Italianate-style house was constructed for Julius T. White, Secretary of the Wisconsin Insurance Company, and his wife, Catherine White. In 1857, the Whites sold the house to Emily Delaplaine, and her husband, George P. Delaplaine, secretary to Wisconsin Governors Leonard J. Farwell and Nelson Dewey, as well as being co-owner of one of the largest development firms in Madison. In 1867, the house was sold to Joseph G. Thorp, a state senator and millionaire lumber baron, and his wife, Amelia Thorp. In 1883, the house was purchased by then-Governor Jeremiah McLain Rusk, whom later served as the U.S. Secretary of Agriculture. The house was sold two years later to the State of Wisconsin, and served as the Wisconsin Executive Mansion, the official residence of the Governor of Wisconsin, between 1885 and 1950. In 1950, the State of Wisconsin bought the Johnson-Hefty Mansion in Maple Bluff to serve as a new executive mansion, and vacated the old mansion on the Downtown Madison isthmus. In 1951, the house was repurposed as graduate student housing for the University of Wisconsin - Madison, and was known as Knapp House, named for Kemper K. Knapp. In 2016, the house finally was sold by the state back into private ownership. The house features a sandstone block exterior with a low-pitch hipped roof, bracketed eaves with paired brackets at the corners, pilasters at the corners, arched window openings with decorative trim, four-over-four and one-over-one double-hung windows, a front porch with fluted ionic columns and pilasters, stone piers, and decorative balustrades, a one-story bay window on the front facade, a rear ell with a hipped roof, a one-story bay window on the side facade with chamfered corners, and wooden side and rear porches. The inteiror of the house features wood floors, a staircase with a decorative banister, balustrade, and newell post, a niche in the star hall, arched openings between rooms on the first floor with decorative trim surrounds, decorative Victorian fireplace surrounds, decorative cove ceilings with crown moulding, historic bathrooms, and a mix of modern and antique furnishings. The house was listed on the National Register of Historic Places in 1973, and is a contributing structure in the Mansion Hill Historic District, listed on the National Register of Historic Places in 1997. Today, the old mansion serves as a boutique hotel, known as the Governor’s Mansion Inn. The hotel opened in 2019, after a rehabilitation of the house that restored character-defining original features while reconfiguring the interior into hotel rooms.