Between 1895 and 1954, the Lake Geneva Public Library was housed in a wooden house on this site. The house had been built by Geneva attorney Asa W. Farr in the late 1850's. During the Civil War, Farr was a lieutenant in the Union Army. Unarmed, he was brutally murdered by William Quantrill's Confederate guerillas in Baxter Springs, Kansas on October 6, 1863. After his death, his widow, Elizabeth A. Farr, sold the house to George and Mary Sturges. At the urging of James Simmons, Mary D. Sturges donated the house to the city as a public library in 1894. The current Lake Geneva Public Library was designed by James Dresser, a distinguished student of the famed architect Frank Lloyd Wright. Dedicated on December 12, 1954, the library is Wright's "Prairie Style." James Dresser designed it with wide, long windows that afford a magnificent view of Geneva Lake.