Kewaunee's 1913 Arts and Crafts Lakeside Inn
122 Ellis St, Kewaunee, WI 54216
Age
All Ages
Cost
$$
Standard rooms typically run from $93/night per third-party booking platforms; check the official site for current pricing.
Access
Limited Access
Multi-story 1913 hotel with original staircases
Equipment
Photos OK
Est. 1913 · Arts and Crafts Architecture · Lake Michigan Hospitality · Karsten Family
A wooden hotel previously occupied the property at 122 Ellis Street in Kewaunee until a kitchen fire destroyed it in four hours in 1912. Owner William Karsten Sr. recovered insurance proceeds and commissioned a replacement hotel in the Arts and Crafts style emerging as the dominant Midwestern commercial vernacular of the period.
The new Hotel Karsten opened on February 14, 1913. The building featured 52 guest rooms, a 90-seat dining room, and a bar with a separate exterior entrance — a design feature common to early-20th-century Wisconsin hotels, allowing the bar to operate independent of the lodging functions. The Lake Michigan shoreline location placed the hotel at the center of Kewaunee's commercial district.
William Karsten Sr. died in 1940. His son William Karsten Jr. ran the hotel until his death roughly 24 years later, at which point the hotel closed. The grandson Billy Karsten — a child member of the family — also died young, three weeks after the family patriarch in 1940, and is the source of the child-figure thread in the hotel's folklore. New owners restored the property in 1991 to its 1913 appearance at a reported cost of $750,000, reconstructing the reception desk, bar, and carved staircase.
The hotel has operated under several names — Hotel Karsten, the Historic Karsten Inn, Kewaunee Inn — and is currently the Karsten Nest Hotel, reopened in 2025 under new ownership by California investor Alex Yanik with rooms now configured as a 23-room boutique inn. The Wisconsin Ghost Investigations Team conducted multiple investigations and issued a formal certification of paranormal activity in 2002.
Sources
Reports of paranormal activity at the Karsten began circulating after the 1966 restoration, per regional folklore. Three named figures dominate the published accounts. William Karsten Sr., who died in 1940, is reported in the former owner's suite spanning Rooms 210 through 215. His grandson Billy, who died at age five three weeks after the family patriarch, is associated with the sound of running footsteps on the upper floors and occasional reports of a child's voice in unoccupied rooms.
Agatha, described in regional folklore as a former housekeeper at the hotel, is the most-reported figure. Room 310 is her associated location, where guests have described her appearing as a sudden apparition. The figure is described as standing near the bed or in the doorway, and the encounter typically lasts only a few seconds before she vanishes.
Reported activity throughout the building includes mists and orbs in photography, cold and hot spots, phantom flute music, whispering, the sound of moving furniture, the sound of breaking glass, and the running footsteps of a child. The Wisconsin Ghost Investigations Team conducted multiple investigations and issued a formal certification of paranormal activity in 2002. NBC 26 Green Bay has covered investigation visits to the property, and the Karsten has been included in regional and national 'most haunted Wisconsin' lists for over two decades.
Notable Entities
Stay in the original 1913 Arts and Crafts hotel above Lake Michigan. Rooms 210-215 — the former owner's suite — are the most-reported area for activity attributed to William Karsten Sr. Room 310 is associated with reports of Agatha, the housekeeper-figure central to the hotel's folklore.
The hotel retains its original 90-seat dining room and bar entrance from the 1913 construction. The bar's separate exterior entrance is a holdover from the period when the establishment served river-traffic patrons.
Every HauntBound history is researched from documented sources. We clearly separate verified historical fact from paranormal folklore.
Kewaunee, WI
The Karsten Inn opened on Valentine's Day 1913 as Hotel Karsten, built by William Karsten Sr. on the site of an earlier wooden lodging known as the Steamboat House that burned in the early 1910s. The building featured 52 rooms, a 90-seat dining room, and a bar with its own entrance.
Mineral Point, WI
Walker House was constructed in 1836 in Mineral Point, Iowa County, Wisconsin, making it one of the oldest inns in the state. The site began as a Cornish miners' cave carved from limestone in the 1820s, expanded into a stone house in 1836, and grew to a three-story structure by the late 1850s. On November 1, 1842, William Caffee was publicly hanged in the inn's yard after a murder conviction — the event most cited in the building's paranormal history.
Kohler, WI
The American Club in Kohler, Wisconsin, was built in 1918 by Walter J. Kohler and the Kohler Company as a residence for the company's immigrant workers, complete with citizenship and English classes. Listed on the National Register of Historic Places in 1978, it was renovated and reopened in 1981 as a luxury hotel and remains a AAA Five-Diamond resort and member of Historic Hotels of America.