Iowa All Over: Mason City home salutes Prairie School-style

MASON CITY - Frank Lloyd Wright left his mark in Mason City, the county seat of Cerro Gordo County, two hours northwest of Cedar Rapids. That's where he designed the Stockman House at 530 First St. NE in 1908. Today, it sits next to the Robert E. McCoy Architectural Interpretive Center.

Both the house and interpretive center are owned by the River City Society for Historic Preservation.

Inside the interpretive center, a video explains how Wright was introduced to Mason City and came to build the Stockman House.

Growth in Mason City resulted in the creation of the City National Bank and the Park Inn downtown. Wright, from Oak Park, Ill., was chosen to design the commercial buildings by James E.E. Markley and by James E. Blythe, who were law partners. Both served on the board of directors at the bank.

Markley had two daughters who attended the Hillside Home School in Spring Green, Wis., which was run by two of Frank Lloyd Wright's aunts, according to the Stockman House on its website.

During planning of the new bank and hotel projects, Wright regularly came to the Markleys' home, the video explains.

Dr. George Stockman was one of Markley's neighbors. Stockman met with Wright to talk about building a home for him and his wife, Eleanor, in Mason City.

The Stockman House was modeled after Wright's Fireproof House for $5,000. A story about the house was published in the April 1907 issue of Ladies' Home Journal, according the Stockman House's website.

The house is designed in the Prairie School-design, developed by a group of Chicago architects that included Wright and inspired by the Arts and Crafts movement.

'These designers rejected the European styles of design and wished to create a truly American style of architecture,” the narrator says in the video.

The typical Prairie School house features hipped roofs (meaning sloped all sides), broad, overhanging eves, ribbon windows, Roman brick or Stucco clay and siding with dark horizontal bands. Prairie School-style houses also feature large porch supports.

Each design element is meant to repeat the horizontal lines of the Midwestern prairie.

'Frank Lloyd Wright in his design has four different areas,” said Avis Jensen, a docent at the architectural interpretive center. 'Symmetry is one area. You can see our house is very symmetrical because of its geometric form.”

The house is symmetrical because of its geometric form, Jensen explained.

The Stockman House is near a collection of Prairie School Homes designed by Wright's associates. Most of the homes are near or in Rock Glen-Rock Crest National Historic District.

The primary architect for this collection of houses was Walter Burley Griffin, who worked in Wright's Chicago office before starting his own practice with his wife.

The Stockman House was placed on the National Register of Historic Places in 1991.

If you go

What: Stockman House

Where: 530 First St. NE, Mason City

When: $10 for adults. Tours available by appointment November through May.

Call (641) 423-1923 or go to stockmanhouse.org.