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English: Built in 1855–56, the Old Executive Mansion is an Italianate residence originally constructed for Julius T. White, Secretary of the Wisconsin Insurance Company, and his wife Catherine. It changed hands three times before being purchased by the State of Wisconsin in 1885 to serve as the Wisconsin Executive Mansion, and it was the official residence of seventeen Wisconsin governors (see the Property Record online). In 1950 the State of Wisconsin bought the far larger Johnson-Hefty Mansion in nearby Maple Bluff to serve as a new executive mansion and vacated the Old Executive Mansion on the downtown Madison isthmus. In 1951 it was converted into a graduate student residence for the University of Wisconsin–Madison and was known as the Knapp Memorial Graduate Center, named for alumnus donor Kemper K. Knapp. In 2016 it was sold by the state back into private ownership and has undergone adaptive reuse as a boutique hotel named the Governor’s Mansion Inn. It opened in 2019 after extensive restoration of character-defining original features and a modest reconfiguration of the interior into hotel rooms with a mix of modern and antique furnishings.

The building 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 (redone in neo-Classical style by Gordon Paunack in the 1890s) 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 interior 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, and decorative cove ceilings with crown moulding.

The Old Executive Mansion was listed on the National Register of Historic Places in 1973, and it is a contributing structure in the Mansion Hill Historic District, listed on the National Register of Historic Places in 1997.