Emery Alvin Odell founded the Monroe Evening Times in 1898 and served as its publisher and editor until his death in 1953. Through his tireless promotion of Monroe’s sizable cheese industry, Monroe became known as America’s “Swiss Cheese Capital.” About 1928, Odell built this French Norman house, a style that evoked a premodern age of supposed rural peace. The style derived from medieval house barns, whose cylindrical towers functioned as grain silos. In addition to the characteristic entrance tower, the house features a well-detailed mixture of Lannon stone, a limestone quarried in eastern Wisconsin, brick masonry with slate details, and decorative chimney pots. Unusual curvilinear wing walls anchor the house to the ground but also give it a strong sense of motion.