Contractor uncovers what could be one of the oldest houses in Cedar Rapids

CEDAR RAPIDS - It's possible a contractor has uncovered remnants of one of the oldest homes - a log cabin - in Cedar Rapids.

Dan Oakley and his son, Nathaniel, bought the house at 4010 Johnson Ave. NW intending to fix it up to sell or rent. Before buying the house, Oakley saw the old plaster molding that ran along the ceiling in the dining and living rooms.

But it wasn't until March, when Oakley was removing plaster board from a second-story bedroom wall, that he realized how old the home might be.

'When we pulled this board off, I just couldn't believe it,” Oakley said.

What he found was two stories of rough-hewn oak boards, some with bark still on them, with mortar between them.

Mark Stoffer Hunter, historian with The History Center of Linn County, thinks the structure may date to the late 1840s or early 1850s.

'It's incredibly rare,” he said. 'We didn't think there were any log cabins like this. This is really amazing that this thing survives at all.”

It didn't stop there.

Layers of linoleum and carpet hid old maple floors. An old steel crank pump in the basement brought water into the house from a well. Pieces of native-cut wood support posts in the basement, as if a chunk of wood had been lobbed off a tree limb.

The rectangular architecture of the house, with four small bedrooms on the second floor, is reminiscent of log cabins built in the pre-Civil War period, Stoffer Hunter said.

'It's laid out like an old stagecoach inn,” he said.

Dating the house

Before Oakley's find, the Tay House, across the street, was thought to be one of the oldest structures in the city. It's now a white house, but part of it was a log cabin built by Benjamin Tay in the 1860s.

To date the 4010 Johnson Avenue NW house, across the avenue from the Tay House, Stoffer Hunter searched historic maps and documents.

His best guess is that the house was once home to the Robert Johnson family that settled outside Cedar Rapids in 1848.

A map of Cedar Rapids from the 1850s shows land belonging to Johnson, for whom the street is named. It has a nearby creek where people could have watered horses while still a few miles outside the growing city of Cedar Rapids to the east.

Stoffer Hunter thinks it's possible the Johnson family rented out the home's second-floor bedrooms to travelers on horseback for the "very limited time period between the time the first settlers came here and ... when the railroad started to come into the county in 1859-60.”

Transformation

The home would have transformed again with the coming of the railroad and later the automobile, Stoffer Hunter said.

By 1913, the Twin Towers Cafe - with two turrets that made it a landmark - had opened east of the Johnson house as a place where travelers along the road - which would become part of the Lincoln Highway - could stop for food and gas.

It can't be a coincidence, Stoffer Hunter said, that a gas station and a place to eat and rest were built near where travelers on horseback once had stopped.

'There has to be a connection to all of these,” he said. 'Somebody decided to put a highway motel and gas station at the same site where people had historically traveled. You have to look at it from the view of people in 1913. Their grandparents had always talked about a place to stay west of Cedar Rapids during Civil War times. It's kind of like today, you still build a hotel or motel next to where traditionally there have been old ones.”

The open floor plan and plaster molding could point to the structure being converted to a 'cafe-in connection,” or an overflow space for Twin Towers Cafe customers in the 1910s, Stoffer Hunter speculated.

In the intervening years, the house continued changing. The ceiling in the basement looks like it's been adjusted, and a garage door was added to the back of the house - changes that indicate the home was accommodating more people on its lower level, Stoffer Hunter said.

'I feel fairly certain Prohibition Era things were happening there. They would have had potential activity down there, entertainment or a nightclub,” Stoffer Hunter said.

‘Interrupt the house'

When Oakely first discovered the house had been a log cabin, he halted the remodeling.

'I was having a hard time because I didn't want to interrupt the house,” he said. 'I might even want to live here.”

Oakley said it took a push from his son to get him to unattach.

The two now intend to fix up and rent the home as it continues its evolution, more than 170 years later.

'It really is something,” Oakley said.

l Comments: (319) 368-8516; makayla.tendall@thegazette.com