John L. Nichols House
| John L. Nichols House | |||
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| National Register of Historic Places | |||
 Front view of the house |
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| location | Bloomington , Monroe County , Indiana | ||
| Coordinates | 39 ° 10 ′ 28 ″ N , 86 ° 32 ′ 3 ″ W | ||
| Built | 1900 | ||
| architect | John L. Nichols | ||
| Architectural style | Victorian architecture | ||
| NRHP number | 84001207 | ||
| The NRHP added | September 27, 1984 | ||
The John L. Nichols House is a historic former residential building in Bloomington , Indiana in the United States . It was built in a late form of the Victorian style in 1900. The former home of the leading architect in Bloomington is no longer used for this purpose, but houses a law firm , but is still a designated historic site.
history
Born in Bloomington in 1859, John L. Nichols was the first architect to serve in Bloomington and remained the only architect in town for much of his life. As a leading member of the social community in his hometown, he was entrusted with the design and planning of many new buildings in the late 19th and early 20th centuries; In 1908 alone, he and his architectural office produced more than 600 design drafts. Many of the prominent buildings on Courthouse Square in the center of the city are his work. However, he was not limited to large-scale commercial buildings, but also designed residential buildings. His work also includes the Batman-Waldron House, built in 1895, which a local conservation survey described as the “most eccentric mansion” in town. He also accepted orders for smaller houses; In 1902 he published a collection of designs for houses in book form, which mostly combined elements of classical architecture, Queen Anne style , neo-Romanesque and stick style to create a characteristic and popular style that local historians refer to as "Free Classic" has been.
One of the buildings that Nichols cited as a guiding example of his architectural ideals was the house he designed for himself and his wife on College Avenue north of downtown. After it was built in 1900, he used this house extensively in his book as an object to illustrate his understanding of architecture.
Nichols moved out two years after the house was completed, but kept it in his ownership until he sold it in 1905 to the Indianapolis Southern Railroad , which was then building a railroad near his property. With the exception of twelve years in which a local railway employee lived in the house, the railway company used it little. In 1940 the company, which had since been swallowed up by the Illinois Central Railroad , sold the building. From then on the ownership of the house changed several times. In the second half of the 20th century the building began to go into disrepair, but in the 1980s a new owner began to renovate the house and restore it to its original condition.
architecture
Typical of its architect, the Nichols House has a mixture of different architectural styles. Some design elements refer to ancient Greek temples , such as the use of Corinthian columns to support the roof of the entrance porch.
The house itself has an unusual floor plan . The west side is straight, the east side has a side wing. The ends facing north and south are not straight, but pentagonal in shape. The building with a basement is one-story and has five rooms. The wooden stand construction is clad with horizontal wooden planks. The shingle roof of cedar wood was later replaced by a fiberglass roof replaced. Both the original roof and the later replacement are gable roofs , with the exception of the roofs of the entrance porch and the side wing at the rear.
Inside, oak and walnut paneling cover most of the walls, while the floorboards are made of cherry wood. Among the original interior fittings are the open fireplace, which still has the originally built hearth. The interior of the house receives daylight through several large windows, a disproportionate number of which are in the pentagon-shaped ends of the building. Although some of these windows are rotary-wing windows and other Aufschiebfenster , they put all of many small diamond-shaped panes together, and they follow a pattern that Nichols has used in many of his designs.
Related buildings
Right behind Nichols' house is his studio , a self-contained two-story building built in a similar style to his home. However, it is designed significantly more simply and has an open floor plan with a simple and unpretentious construction. In the past the atelier was neglected in the same way as the house, but this annex was left out when the house was renovated.
A similar home is on Rogers Street in Prospect Hill , near four of the architect's other works. It didn't belong to Nichols, but it's basically a replica of his own home; both houses are clad with horizontal boards and have pentagonal ends.
Monument protection
On September 27, 1984, the John L. Nichols was added to the National Register of Historic Places because it has a unique historical architectural style on the one hand and it is directly connected to Nichols on the other. Like several other designs by the architect, the house also has the status of a "Bloomington Historic Designation," and the City of Bloomington Interim Report , published in 2004 , names it the most important part of the locally listed Illinois Central Railroad and North College Historic District .
Today the house is used by a local law firm.
Web links
supporting documents
- ↑ a b c d e f g h i Dean Dodge: JL Nichols House and Studio ( English , PDF) In: National Register of Historic Places Inventory / Nomination . National Park Service. March 1, 1984. Retrieved June 30, 2011.
- ↑ a b c d e f g h i Indiana Historic Sites and Structures Inventory. City of Bloomington Interim Report . Bloomington: City of Bloomington, April 2004.
- ↑ Entry in the National Register Information System . National Park Service , accessed May 18, 2016