Stucco repair costs in Madison

Some of Madison's stucco walls are more than a century old, and several of them came from one local firm. Claude and Starck was working out its own version of the Prairie style in University Heights in the early 1900s. Arlington Place, just a block long, has the largest concentration of the firm's houses in Madison. One of them, built for soils professor Andrew Whitson, has stucco siding, grouped first-floor windows and a wooden beltcourse between the floors. The state's historic inventory calls it the earliest of several similar houses the firm designed in town. Nearby, the firm's house for sociologist Edward A. Ross pairs stucco walls with bands of wood trim that wrap the whole house.

Most of the metro is far younger. About a third of all homes in the Madison metro were built in 2000 or later, per the Census Bureau, and the median home dates to 1987.

The old walls have protection. University Heights became the city's third local historic district in 1985, and the city lists stucco among the district's historic materials, along with brick, stone, wood clapboard and wood shingle.