1800 14th Street Northeast
Faribault, MN, USA

National Register of Historic Places - Reverend James Dobbin House (St. James School for Boys)

Statement of Significance:

The Dobbin House/St. James School Is significant within a context of Faribault’s aesthetic development as represented in the built environment. This context spans both Minnesota Historical Society contexts: Early agriculture and River Settlement and Agricultural Development and Railroad Construction. Within that context the Dobbin House/St. James School building is an outstanding example of native limestone construction rendered in the Gothic Revival style in Faribault. It is one of two remaining stone residential buildings constructed in this style in the city. Built of locally quarried stone, this building represents one of Faribault’s most outstanding cultural resources, its native stone architecture. Its design contributes to the group of handsome stone buildings that began to assemble along Faribault’s eastern bluffs beginning with the construction of the Seabury Divinity Hall in 1863.

There are many factors which contribute to the aesthetic quality of a particular place. Faribault, Minnesota, is a community which, partially through fate and partially through insightful planning, achieved a high standard of civic pride. Early practices of social justice and tolerance did much to affect the enduring social and economic prosperity of the community. Proximity to natural building blocks did much to affect Faribault's architectural prosperity.

Locating on the Straight River the early residents had easy access to high quality limestone deposits within a mile of the Faribault settlement. Faribault's first three quarries were opened in the mid-1850s and owned separately by Alexander Faribault, Charles Wood and M.N. Pond. This indigenous natural resource, combined with the development of major religious and state institutions and their need for facilities, served to draw master craftsmen and designers to Faribault. Stonemasons William E. Jones, Edward Goodman, Thomas and Cormach McCall came to Faribault to work on the large stone contracts being generated by these institutions. Similarly, architects Henry Congdon of New York City, Cass Gilbert of Saint Paul, Willcox and Johnston of Saint Paul, and Thomas F, Ellerbe worked on large commissions and have left a legacy of finely designed, native limestone buildings in Faribault,

As the community and its institutions grew, so did civic and personal pride. The fine designs which flourished from the 1860s to the early 1900s were not, however, limited to public or ecclesiastical architecture; the designs of private homes displayed the same pride and sophistication as their more imposing institutional neighbors. The same entrepreneurs who were building elaborate Italianate commercial blocks on Central Avenue (then Main Street) were also building exquisite, highly refined residential styles in Faribault's neighborhoods.

The Dobbin House/St. James School originated as a classic Gothic Revival country cottage and Sivas built in 1874 at a cost of $3,800.00. It was then known as “Manney Hill” for its owner C.A. Manney and his father, the Reverend S.W. Manney, early Episcopal missionary and theology professor at the Seabury Divinity School. It is believed to have been incomplete until purchased by the Episcopal Reverend James Dobbin in 1880, No records of the renovations that Dobbin made at that time have been found,', but historic photographs depict a completed Gothic Revival cottage with steeply pitched and cross-braced gable ends, exposed eave brackets, pointed Gothic arch windows, a single-story front porch, and massive corbelled chimneys. In 1901, the Reverend Dobbin converted this residence into a boy’s preparatory school for the Shattuck Academy. At that time, a very sympathetic $6,000.00 Gothic Revived addition was built to the north end of the cottage by a contractor named A.H. Hatch. -The addition nearly doubled the size of the structure and relocated the entry to a central position on the new east front facade. The result, although constructed nearly thirty years after the original Gothic cottage. Is a fine example of the Gothic Revival spirit and bears all the earmarks of that style: aspiring verticality, visually interesting use of a variety of building materials, and Gothic detail.