The Edward Edinger House is a historic building located in the West End of

Davenport, Iowa Davenport is a city in and the county seat of Scott County, Iowa, United States. Located along the Mississippi River on the eastern border of the state, it is the largest of the Quad Cities, a metropolitan area with a population of 384,324 and a ...

, United States. It has been listed on the

National Register of Historic Places The National Register of Historic Places (NRHP) is the United States federal government's official list of districts, sites, buildings, structures and objects deemed worthy of preservation for their historical significance or "great artistic v ...

since 1984.

History

This late Victorian home was designed by

Edward Hammatt Edward Hammatt (September 8, 1856 – August 24, 1907) was an architect in the United States. He designed several notable buildings that are listed on the National Register of Historic Places. Biography Edward Seymour Hammatt was born in ...

who had designed several buildings for the

Episcopal Diocese of Iowa The Episcopal Diocese of Iowa is the diocese of the Episcopal Church in the United States of America which covers all of Iowa. It is in Province VI. Its offices are in Des Moines, and it has two cathedrals: the Cathedral Church of St. Paul in ...

. In Davenport these buildings include a classroom-dormitory building at St. Katherine's Hall, Sheldon Hall, and Kemper Hall, which is still on the property of

Davenport Central High School Central High School, or Davenport Central High School is a public four-year comprehensive high school located in Davenport, Iowa. The school building opened in 1907 as "Davenport High School," and is now one of three public high schools part of ...

in the College Square Historic District. Edward Edinger, who had this house built, was a

stonemason Stonemasonry or stonecraft is the creation of buildings, structures, and sculpture using stone as the primary material. It is one of the oldest activities and professions in human history. Many of the long-lasting, ancient shelters, temples, mo ...

. with

Architecture

The Edinger House is a 2½-story structure that follows an irregular plan in a generalized medieval style. It features a corner tower with a

conical roof A conical roof or cone roof is a cone-shaped roof that is circular at its base and terminates in a point. Distribution Conical roofs are frequently found on top of towers in medieval town fortifications and castles, where they may either sit ...

in one the angles in the front of the house. The dominant feature of this structure is its

masonry Masonry is the building of structures from individual units, which are often laid in and bound together by mortar; the term ''masonry'' can also refer to the units themselves. The common materials of masonry construction are bricks, building ...

. The walls are composed of

ashlar Ashlar () is finely dressed (cut, worked) stone, either an individual stone that has been worked until squared, or a structure built from such stones. Ashlar is the finest stone masonry unit, generally rectangular cuboid, mentioned by Vitruv ...

brownstone Brownstone is a brown Triassic–Jurassic sandstone that was historically a popular building material. The term is also used in the United States and Canada to refer to a townhouse clad in this or any other aesthetically similar material. Type ...

, laid in a random pattern. A lighter colored stone was used for the belt coursing. The second floor is framed with

rubble stone Rubble stone is rough, uneven building stone not laid in regular courses. It may fill the core of a wall which is faced with unit masonry such as brick or ashlar. Analogously, some medieval cathedral walls are outer shells of ashlar with an inn ...

, and it is also found on the

gable A gable is the generally triangular portion of a wall between the edges of intersecting roof pitches. The shape of the gable and how it is detailed depends on the structural system used, which reflects climate, material availability, and aesth ...

ends. Edinger's stone business may have contributed to the idiosyncratic nature of the house's design.

References

{{DEFAULTSORT:Edinger, Edward, House Houses completed in 1890 Victorian architecture in Iowa Houses on the National Register of Historic Places in Iowa Houses in Davenport, Iowa National Register of Historic Places in Davenport, Iowa