John Reichard House, State Route 92 vicinity, Knoxville, Marion County, IA

Significance: The significance of the house is principally architectural. Stylistically, it is an example of the Gothic Revival style of nineteenth-century American architecture. Buildings in the style were common by the 1840s and continued to be built in Iowa and elsewhere in American until well after the Civil War. Although the house walls are brick, the scrollwork bargeboards and eaves, and the scrollwork at the entrance porch may be identified as Carpenter Gothic, an adaptation of the Gothic Revival style. The stilted square-topped arch motif of the porch, however, follows the Italianate style, extremely popular in the 1850s. For Iowans, one might suggest an added significance in the fact that the pointed-arch second-floor glazed door of the house, set in a steeply pitched gable wall, recalls the house that forms the background for the stern couple painted in Grant Wood's "American Gothic."
Unprocessed Field note material exists for this structure: FN-155
Survey number: HABS IA-55