The William A. and Ida C. Johnson House is a historic residence located in

Oskaloosa, Iowa Oskaloosa is a city in, and the county seat of, Mahaska County, Iowa, United States. In the late nineteenth and early twentieth century, Oskaloosa was a national center of bituminous coal mining. The population was 11,558 in the 2020 U.S. Cens ...

, United States. The Johnsons, who were farmers, moved to town so that their children could attend

Quaker Quakers are people who belong to a historically Protestant Christian set of Christian denomination, denominations known formally as the Religious Society of Friends. Members of these movements ("theFriends") are generally united by a belie ...

schools there. This was typical of many Quaker families of that era. Other family members also boarded with them so they too could attend the schools. William Johnson also served on the William Penn College Board of Trustees and served as its president from 1915 through 1922. It was during his tenure that the Main Building was destroyed by fire and the college moved to its present location. This Queen Anne style house is a 2½-story, frame, single-family dwelling. It features a wrap-around full-width porch with a

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 ...

-end entryway and a bay window on the main facade. The house is capped with a complex roof of intersecting steeply-pitched gables. It is the Johnsons' association with the school in the context of the

testimony in Oskaloosa that makes this house historic. It was 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 1996.

References

Houses completed in 1910 Oskaloosa, Iowa Houses in Mahaska County, Iowa National Register of Historic Places in Mahaska County, Iowa Houses on the National Register of Historic Places in Iowa Queen Anne architecture in Iowa {{MahaskaCountyIA-NRHP-stub