The Selma Schricker House is a historic building located in a residential neighborhood 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. At one time the house served as the official residence of Davenport's Catholic bishop. It is 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 Riverview Terrace Historic District. The district was added to the National Register of Historic Places in 1984.

History

This house was built for Selma Schricker in 1902. She was the daughter of Lorenzo Schricker, a lumber baron, and his third wife Johanna. The Schricker's had lived nearby in the Marquette Heights neighborhood. Selma had been educated in the local public schools and graduated from St. Katherine's, a private preparatory school for girls in Davenport. She had this house built after her mother's death in 1898. Selma never married and died in the house in September 1931 at the age of 50. She is buried with her mother, sister and half-brother in a mausoleum in Oakdale Memorial Gardens. The Diocese of Davenport purchased the house as the official residence of its bishop in 1933. It was the home of Bishops Henry Rohlman,

Ralph Hayes Ralph Leo Hayes S.T.D. (September 21, 1884 – July 5, 1970) was an American prelate of the Roman Catholic Church. He served as the fourth bishop of the Diocese of Helena in Montana from 1933 to 1935, and as the fifth bishop of the Diocese of Da ...

, Gerald O'Keefe and William Franklin. The diocese sold the house in 1996. Mark and Judy Westrom bought the house in November 2000 and did extensive restoration work for which they received recognition from local preservationists. The house suffered a roof fire on November 6, 2010.

Architecture

The Selma Schricker House was designed by the prominent Davenport architectural firm of

Clausen & Burrows Frederick George "Fritz" (Friedrich Georg) Clausen (1848–1940) was a Danish-born architect who came to the United States in 1869 and founded an architectural practice in Davenport, Iowa. The firm that he founded, presently named Studio 483 Arch ...

. The two-story house is one of the finest examples of the Georgian Revival style in the city. The rectangular main block is capped 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 ...

and a hipped roof. It features a symmetrical three-bay front, a large

portico A portico is a porch leading to the entrance of a building, or extended as a colonnade, with a roof structure over a walkway, supported by columns or enclosed by walls. This idea was widely used in ancient Greece and has influenced many cult ...

on the main façade, a

sun porch A sunroom, also frequently called a solarium (and sometimes a "Florida room", "garden conservatory", "garden room", "patio room", "sun parlor", "sun porch", "three season room" or "winter garden"), is a room that permits abundant daylight and v ...

on the east side, a porte-cochère on the west side, and a gabled wing off the back of the house. The exterior is composed of yellow-tan Roman brick with

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 of the main block, also in brick. It is built on a stone foundation. The house is situated on a slightly raised terrace, across the street from Riverview Terrace Park. The front of the house is dominated by a large semi-circular, Federal inspired, portico. It features fluted columns following the

Ionic order The Ionic order is one of the three canonic orders of classical architecture, the other two being the Doric and the Corinthian. There are two lesser orders: the Tuscan (a plainer Doric), and the rich variant of Corinthian called the composite or ...

. The main entrance into the house is framed with sidelights and a

transom Transom may refer to: * Transom (architecture), a bar of wood or stone across the top of a door or window, or the window above such a bar * Transom (nautical), that part of the stern of a vessel where the two sides of its hull meet * Operation Tran ...

with

Adamesque The Adam style (or Adamesque and "Style of the Brothers Adam") is an 18th-century neoclassical style of interior design and architecture, as practised by Scottish architect William Adam and his sons, of whom Robert (1728–1792) and James (173 ...

tracery. There is

art glass Art glass is a subset of glass art, this latter covering the whole range of art made from glass. Art glass normally refers only to pieces made since the mid-19th century, and typically to those purely made as sculpture or decorative art, with ...

on the double-door entrance onto the upper level of the portico. Above the portico is a large central

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 ...

. It is flanked by two smaller dormers with round-arch windows. The other dormers on the house have similar windows. The porte-cochere features columns that follow the Doric order and a denticular cornice. There are also two tall, symmetrically placed, interior chimneys with

corbel In architecture, a corbel is a structural piece of stone, wood or metal jutting from a wall to carry a superincumbent weight, a type of bracket. A corbel is a solid piece of material in the wall, whereas a console is a piece applied to the s ...

led caps.

References

{{DEFAULTSORT:Schricker, Selma, House Historic district contributing properties in Iowa Houses completed in 1902 Georgian Revival architecture in Iowa Houses in Davenport, Iowa Houses on the National Register of Historic Places in Iowa National Register of Historic Places in Davenport, Iowa