The Goodnow House is a historic two-story stone house located at 2301 Claflin Road in

Manhattan, Kansas Manhattan is a city and county seat of Riley County, Kansas, United States, although the city extends into Pottawatomie County. It is located in northeastern Kansas at the junction of the Kansas River and Big Blue River. As of the 2020 cen ...

United States The United States of America (U.S.A. or USA), commonly known as the United States (U.S. or US) or America, is a country primarily located in North America. It consists of 50 states, a federal district, five major unincorporated territorie ...

. It was built in 1857 in the ''Plains Vernacular'' style. From 1861

Isaac Goodnow Isaac Tichenor Goodnow (January 17, 1814 – March 20, 1894) was an abolitionist and co-founder of Kansas State University and Manhattan, Kansas. Goodnow was also elected as a Republican to the Kansas House of Representatives and as Superint ...

and his wife, Ellen lived in the house. Goodnow was an

abolitionist Abolitionism, or the abolitionist movement, is the movement to end slavery. In Western Europe and the Americas, abolitionism was a historic movement that sought to end the Atlantic slave trade and liberate the enslaved people. The British ...

and co-founder of both

Kansas State University Kansas State University (KSU, Kansas State, or K-State) is a public land-grant research university with its main campus in Manhattan, Kansas, United States. It was opened as the state's land-grant college in 1863 and was the first public instit ...

and

Manhattan Manhattan (), known regionally as the City, is the most densely populated and geographically smallest of the five boroughs of New York City. The borough is also coextensive with New York County, one of the original counties of the U.S. state ...

Description

The Goodnow House is a stone structure with gable roofs over a two-story main block and a one-story wing. The rough limestone walls are accented by smooth

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 ...

s at the corners. Several additions were made over the years. There is a cellar under the 1857 section.

History

Goodnow and his wife Ellen had no children. Hattie Parkerson, a niece whom they had adopted, inherited the house after Ellen died in 1900. After Hattie's death in 1940, the house was passed to a friend, Mary Payne, who later donated it and many of the Goodnow's belongings to the

Kansas Historical Society The Kansas Historical Society is the official state historical society of Kansas. Headquartered in Topeka, it operates as "the trustee of the state" for the purpose of maintaining the state's history and operates the Kansas Museum of History, Kan ...

, a state agency which operates it today as the Goodnow House State Historic Site. On February 24, 1971, the Goodnow House was added to 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 ...

. The house "tells the story of free-staters".

References

External links

Goodnow House
at the Kansas State Historical Society *

External links

Goodnow House State Historic Site website
Houses on the National Register of Historic Places in Kansas Museums in Riley County, Kansas Houses completed in 1857 Kansas state historic sites Historic house museums in Kansas Historic American Buildings Survey in Kansas Houses in Riley County, Kansas National Register of Historic Places in Riley County, Kansas 1857 establishments in Kansas Territory Manhattan, Kansas {{Kansas-NRHP-stub