JJ Watt's House (former)

JJ Watt gave up a Central Michigan scholarship to walk on at Wisconsin, then won NFL Defensive Player of the Year 3 times. The Pewaukee native played 10 seasons in Houston and retired after 2022.

The land sits in Watt's native Waukesha County. Summit was settled in 1837 on the stagecoach line between Milwaukee and Madison, but the plank road and then the railroad went to Oconomowoc instead.

An 1852 tornado flattened both of Summit's early settlements, and the bypass left the town in dairy country. Frederick Pabst ran a 1,400-acre farm of prize horses and dairy cattle here from 1906.

The Village of Summit carries Oconomowoc mailing addresses, and the county roll puts this parcel at almost 36 deeded acres, taxed in 4 classes at once: residential, agricultural, undeveloped, and agricultural forest.

In January 2015 Watt called the place minimalistic, with no frills and nothing to distract him from training. Photos of its 3 kitchens went around that March, and he answered that there had been an obvious miscommunication.

Watt sold the place in 2023, soon after he retired from the NFL. The buyers hold it in a revocable family trust, and BizTimes put the price at more than double what he paid.

Oconomowoc made its name in the 1870s as Lake Country, the summer address of Chicago and Milwaukee money: Philip Armour and Montgomery Ward built lakeside retreats, and Gustav Pabst and Frederick Miller summered here.