The house that Fisk built: Midcentury modern home designed by Iowa City architect

When Sue Rhomberg moved into her house in Iowa City's Manville Heights neighborhood in 2013, she didn't know very much about its unique back story.

But the more she discovered about the midcentury modern home designed by Iowa City architect Henry L. Fisk, the more she fell in love.

'The more I lived here and discovered all these cool little things about the house, the more I wanted to know about Henry,' she said.

Fisk, who worked in Iowa City from 1934 until his death in 1962, was Iowa City's only registered architect for many years. His niche was midcentury modern houses, many concentrated in the Manville and River Heights neighborhoods.

He also designed houses in the style of a French-Norman country manor, an English Tudor cottage and several American Colonial-style homes, along with civic and business designs. He worked on the Iowa City Airport terminal, City Hall, the downtown fire station and the Robert A. Lee Recreation Center, along with his partner Roland Wehner.

He built the house Rhomberg now occupies in 1947 and lived there with his family for decades. Rhomberg bought the house from Fisk's grandchildren.

With plenty of long, straight lines and minimalistic design, it is classically midcentury modern.

'His houses always have really nice windows, lots of light, lots of storage, and always have at least one surprise,' Rhomberg said.

Those surprises include things like under-cabinet box lights, small shelves protruding from walls and — her favorite — a large window well designed to hold plants in a picture window in the main room. A screened-in porch opens off the living room.

'All the stuff he wanted to try out on prospective clients, he put in this house,' she said.

Fisk's home studio was in the basement, which she now rents out as a long-term Air B&B, often to visiting scholars at the University of Iowa.

Staying true to the home's history has meant slowly collecting an assortment of period-appropriate furniture and accessories.

'I was never that into midcentury modern until I moved here,' she said.

But now she has embraced the style with abandon, filling the house with of low couches, 1940s and '50s dishes in the kitchen and decorating with bold, solid colors. She found a framed wallpaper swatch from the original house and used it to choose paint colors that might have been part of the original interior decorating.

In the end, she can only imagine what the house might have looked like 70 years ago.

'What I would love to know is how it looked when they first moved in here,' she said.

Along with keeping Fisk's house true to it's origins, Rhomberg has made it her goal to document Fisk's legacy.

She met Wehner, Fisk's one-time apprentice and later business partner, who still lives in Iowa City, and he gave her information on other houses Fisk designed. She started knocking on doors and leaving notes at houses designed by either of them, and often the homeowners would invite her in. She has documented more than 20 Fisk houses at henryfisk.com.

'My goal was just to bring more recognition to Henry,' she said. 'I would like to find even more Fisk houses.'

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