The Corydon Brown House is a house in

Dakota City, Iowa Dakota City is a city in and the county seat of Humboldt County, Iowa, United States. The population was 759 at the time of the 2020 census. Dakota City shares its western border with the much larger city of Humboldt. It is the least populous co ...

, United States. It was listed on the National Register of Historic Places on November 14, 1978. Corydon Brown, the former owner of the house, was a miller, and the house was a social hub for many years.

Early Days of the House

Corydon Brown, a member of a well-to-do family in

Syracuse, New York Syracuse ( ) is a City (New York), city in and the county seat of Onondaga County, New York, Onondaga County, New York, United States. It is the fifth-most populous city in the state of New York following New York City, Buffalo, New York, Buffa ...

, decided to move to

in the 1860s. Brown's wife did not want to leave the comforts of the city for the hard prairie living that was guaranteed in Iowa. Brown, without his wife, took a train to Dubuque, Iowa, a stagecoach to Fort Dodge, Iowa, and followed a Native American horse trail north to Dakota City. When Brown reached Dakota City, he found men living in log cabins and caves near the Des Moines River. Brown purchased over of prairie, and began to build a home using area clay for bricks and limestone. Brown's wife said she would move to Iowa only when she could move into a house of comparable quality, and after eleven years, she followed her husband to the prairie.

The Browns move on

Corydon and his wife lived in the house for eleven years until following one of their five children to Des Moines, Iowa. As tradition dictated, the eldest son took over the property. However, he did not want to live on a farm, so the property was passed to the second-eldest son. The property was sold to another family, and was later converted to apartments. A buyer purchased the farmland and apartments, but did not use the house. The formerly stately home was used as a dumping ground by neighbors.

Donation

The grounds were donated to the Humboldt County Historical Association. It was renovated, and many other historical buildings have been moved to the site, now named the Humboldt County Mill Farm Historical Museum.

Architecture

The Corydon Brown House is vernacular form of Italianate residential architecture. The two-story brick structure measures . The bricks for the house were manufactured on site. The house features a bracketed

cornice In architecture, a cornice (from the Italian ''cornice'' meaning "ledge") is generally any horizontal decorative moulding that crowns a building or furniture element—for example, the cornice over a door or window, around the top edge of a ...

on the front and side elevations, and brick

quoin Quoins ( or ) are masonry blocks at the corner of a wall. Some are structural, providing strength for a wall made with inferior stone or rubble, while others merely add aesthetic detail to a corner. According to one 19th century encyclopedia, t ...

ing on the corners, and two porches with flat roofs and narrow wooden posts.

References

External links