The John N. and Mary L. (Rankin) Irwin House is a historic building located in

Keokuk, Iowa Keokuk is a city in and a county seat of Lee County, Iowa, United States, along with Fort Madison. It is Iowa's southernmost city. The population was 9,900 at the time of the 2020 census. The city is named after the Sauk chief Keokuk, who is ...

, United States. It was individually 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 ...

in 1999. In 2002 it was included as a

contributing property In the law regulating historic districts in the United States, a contributing property or contributing resource is any building, object, or structure which adds to the historical integrity or architectural qualities that make the historic distri ...

in The Park Place-Grand Avenue Residential District. While this NRHP nomination does include the Irwin house as a contributing property, it misidentifies the Richard N. Hoerner House as having been previously listed and not the Irwin house.

History

The house was originally built by James F. Daugherty who bought the property from Judge Charles Mason in 1856. Its historical significance is its association with

John N. Irwin John Nichol Irwin (December 25, 1844 – December 22, 1905) was an American businessman, politician and diplomat. Among the positions he held were Mayor of Keokuk, Iowa, Governor of Idaho Territory, Governor of Arizona Territory, and U.S. M ...

. with He was a lawyer and local businessman who served two terms in the

Iowa House of Representatives The Iowa House of Representatives is the lower house of the Iowa General Assembly, the upper house being the Iowa Senate. There are 100 seats in the Iowa House of Representatives, representing 100 single-member districts across the state, formed ...

, five terms as mayor of Keokuk, territorial governor of the

Idaho Territory The Territory of Idaho was an organized incorporated territory of the United States that existed from March 3, 1863, until July 3, 1890, when the final extent of the territory was admitted to the Union as Idaho. History 1860s The territory w ...

, and the

Arizona Territory The Territory of Arizona (also known as Arizona Territory) was a territory of the United States that existed from February 24, 1863, until February 14, 1912, when the remaining extent of the territory was admitted to the Union as the state of ...

. He also served as the U.S. minister to Portugal. Irwin bought the house and raised his family here with his wife Mary after his time in Idaho. He lived here until he died in 1905.

Architecture

This is the oldest house in The Park Place-Grand Avenue Residential District. It reflects a combination of architectural styles, namely

Greek Revival The Greek Revival was an architectural movement which began in the middle of the 18th century but which particularly flourished in the late 18th and early 19th centuries, predominantly in northern Europe and the United States and Canada, but ...

Italianate The Italianate style was a distinct 19th-century phase in the history of Classical architecture. Like Palladianism and Neoclassicism, the Italianate style drew its inspiration from the models and architectural vocabulary of 16th-century Italian R ...

, and Neoclassical. It is not known what the house looked like when it was originally built, but it is thought the Greek Revival elements on the lower part of the house may be an indicator of its style. The 2½-story structure is composed of brick with a

limestone Limestone ( calcium carbonate ) is a type of carbonate sedimentary rock which is the main source of the material lime. It is composed mostly of the minerals calcite and aragonite, which are different crystal forms of . Limestone forms whe ...

foundation and a

hip roof A hip roof, hip-roof or hipped roof, is a type of roof where all sides slope downwards to the walls, usually with a fairly gentle slope (although a tented roof by definition is a hipped roof with steeply pitched slopes rising to a peak). Thus, ...

with 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 ...

. A large

dormer A dormer is a roofed structure, often containing a window, that projects vertically beyond the plane of a pitched roof. A dormer window (also called ''dormer'') is a form of roof window. Dormers are commonly used to increase the usable space ...

with a

Palladian window Palladian architecture is a European architectural style derived from the work of the Venetian architect Andrea Palladio (1508–1580). What is today recognised as Palladian architecture evolved from his concepts of symmetry, perspective and ...

is located in the center of the main facade. The front porch is not original and is thought to date to the turn of the 20th-century. Other changes were made during Irwin's ownership. A

ballroom A ballroom or ballhall is a large room inside a building, the primary purpose of which is holding large formal parties called balls. Traditionally, most balls were held in private residences; many mansions and palaces, especially historic man ...

was located at the top of the house, but on warm summer evenings the parties were moved to the backyard, which was all brick at the time. It has subsequently been landscaped. The house is located at the crest of a bluff that overlooks the

Mississippi River The Mississippi River is the second-longest river and chief river of the second-largest drainage system in North America, second only to the Hudson Bay drainage system. From its traditional source of Lake Itasca in northern Minnesota, it f ...

and Lock and Dam No. 19.

References

{{DEFAULTSORT:Irwin, John N. and Mary L. (Rankin), House Houses completed in 1856 Houses in Keokuk, Iowa Houses on the National Register of Historic Places in Iowa National Register of Historic Places in Lee County, Iowa Individually listed contributing properties to historic districts on the National Register in Iowa