Moffit stone homes featured on I.C. preservation tour

IOWA CITY - Houses on the Parade of Historic Homes in Iowa City exude a storybook charm.

“You really expect Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs to come filing out,” Jeff Schabilion says of the stone “Moffitt” houses featured on this year's Friends of Historic Preservation tour.

Schabilion, 68, a retired University of Iowa botany professor, has become a self-taught expert on homes built by Howard Moffitt during the 1920s to 1940s.

Eight of the stone Moffitt houses along Ginter, Pickard and Friendly Streets, as well as Plum Grove, the last home of Iowa's first territorial governor, Robert Lucas, will be open for Sunday's tour.

Schabilion, who will address the topic Saturday as a prelude to the walk, has learned firsthand about the Moffitt homes' peculiarities by living in one.

“It's been a joy, but it's a double-edged sword,” he says of his 1938-built Rundell Street home, which is not on the tour because the road's narrow width isn't conducive to parking.

Schabilion points to crooked window frames, multiple levels to walk from one room to another and all types of salvaged materials used in construction.

Those aren't necessarily negatives, as each home is unique, but upkeep requires a certain amount of dedication, he says.

“They're uniquely charming and uniquely exasperating,” Schabilion says.

Massive stone chimneys are hallmarks of Moffitt construction and swayback roofs were intentionally built to mimic English cottage-style homes.

“We have yet to discover why he did this,” Schabilion says of the design, which he believes Moffitt borrowed from magazines or other sources.

Moffitt, who built more than 100 homes in the Iowa City area, was not a contractor, he says, but an entrepreneur who hired out-of-work craftsmen for $1 per day to build the homes, which he then rented.

Because some building supplies were scarce during the Depression era, Moffitt often used salvaged wood, stones and other recycled materials.

Sisters Sally Moore, 67, and Nancy Carl, 69, both retired from the UI, say they found bark on the underside of hardwood flooring during work on their home at 1217 Pickard St., which will be open for the tour.

A rail track - possibly from a dismantled trolley system - was used as a support beam for their 1939 home.

Angles and peaks in the roofline give character to an upstairs bedroom, where a tiny door opens to a closet.

The attic, which won't be open for the tour, used a series of cut-to-fit recycled doors for flooring, Moore says.

Walnut shavings were poured into walls as an early form of insulation.

The sisters have done extensive interior work in the 13 years they've lived in the limestone home.

“There really nothing in this house that is straight,” Moore says of the stairs, windows and walls. “You have to have a contractor with a good sense of humor.”

Still, whimsical features such as secret rooms, tiny attached garages that many homeowners have converted into family rooms and round windows in odd places such as closets, make the homes uniquely attractive.

“Moffitt houses are fun,” Schabilion says. “They are little fantasies that feed other peoples' fantasies.”