The Samuel Van Sant House is an historic building located in

Le Claire, Iowa LeClaire is a city in Scott County, Iowa, United States. The population was 4,710 in 2020, a 65.4% increase from 2,847 in 2000, making it one of the fastest-growing communities in the Quad Cities. LeClaire is considered a suburb and part of the ...

, United States. The house was built in 1860 and 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 1979. The property is part of the Houses of Mississippi River Men Thematic Resource, which covers the homes of men from LeClaire who worked on 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 ...

as riverboat captains, pilots, builders and owners. It is also 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 Cody Road Historic District.

Samuel Van Sant

Samuel was the son of J.W. Van Sant who was the head of the Le Claire Marine Railway boatyards. Along with John Smith, also of Le Claire, he developed the raftboat named the ''J.W. Van Sant'' after his father. It pushed the lumber rafts down the river from the forests in the north to the mills further south. Their invention revolutionized the transportation of logs and lumber down the Mississippi River. with They also developed the bowboat, which was a small sternwheeler set crosswise at the front of the raft to provide additional control over direction of movement. Van Sant moved to

Minnesota Minnesota () is a state in the upper midwestern region of the United States. It is the 12th largest U.S. state in area and the 22nd most populous, with over 5.75 million residents. Minnesota is home to western prairies, now given over to ...

in the 1880s where he was elected to the

Minnesota House of Representatives The Minnesota House of Representatives is the lower house of the Legislature of the U.S. state of Minnesota. There are 134 members, twice as many as the Minnesota Senate. Floor sessions are held in the north wing of the State Capitol in Saint Pa ...

and served as Speaker of the House. He later became the state's governor.

Architecture

The Samuel Van Sant House is a 1½-story frame house whose exterior is composed of narrow

clapboards Clapboard (), also called bevel siding, lap siding, and weatherboard, with regional variation in the definition of these terms, is wooden siding of a building in the form of horizontal boards, often overlapping. ''Clapboard'' in modern America ...

. It follows an L-shape plan. The house features a wide front

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 ...

and the main roofline that parallel the street. There is also a large triangular wall

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 ...

that is centered on the front of the long arm of the "L". The house's windows have flat enframements with shallow triangular

pediment Pediments are gables, usually of a triangular shape. Pediments are placed above the horizontal structure of the lintel, or entablature, if supported by columns. Pediments can contain an overdoor and are usually topped by hood moulds. A pedimen ...

s. A plain, wooden

porch A porch (from Old French ''porche'', from Latin ''porticus'' "colonnade", from ''porta'' "passage") is a room or gallery located in front of an entrance of a building. A porch is placed in front of the facade of a building it commands, and form ...

is located in the angle of the "L" and is a later addition.

References

{{DEFAULTSORT:Van Sant, Samuel, House Houses completed in 1860 Houses in Le Claire, Iowa Houses on the National Register of Historic Places in Iowa National Register of Historic Places in Scott County, Iowa Individually listed contributing properties to historic districts on the National Register in Iowa