304 South Oak Street
Lake City, MN, USA

National Register of Historic Places - James C. Stout and Agnes M. Stout House (Stout Cottage)

Statement of Significance:

The Stout House is an outstanding Minnesota example of the Gothic Revival cottage popularized by Alexander Jackson Downing and others in the two decades before the Civil War. The steep roof pitches, broad veranda, and fanciful window treatments all recall pattern book rebellions against the severity of the Greek Revival antecedents. The ogee-cased windows centered within the two gables are among the most elaborate in the state and mark a late development of the style. Delicately shaped porch piers and balusters also mark a departure from Downing, though they retain his generally ignored sense of simplicity.

The Stout House fits clearly into the Agricultural Development and Railroad Construction context developed by the Minnesota State Historic Preservation Office. It was the third known Lake City residence of James Stout, a New Englander of Irish stock who came to the city during its first decade and quickly became an important developer of its first businesses and residential neighborhoods. Stout built the first brick commercial block in town and developed much of the area in which his houses were located. The building of his Gothic Revival cottage was coincident with the completion of the CMSP rail line through Lake City, and dramatically illustrates the clean break Lake City builders were making from the tenacious Greek Revival tradition. The older style had hung on through the 1860's. As a result, the influence of Downing and other eastern anti-classicists arrived late and was immediately mixed with the mid-Victorian penchant for historical detail. The Stout House thus exemplifies the quick catchup with eastern taste that often coincided with the birth of the railroad era. Its builders, the local contractors Tupper and Collins, must have had some design source more current than Downing, for the contour and crocheting of the ogive window surrounds derives quite specifically from the English Tudor models that Downing tended to vernacularize.

Placing the Stout House in a statewide architectural context is difficult both because of the rarity of the Cottage Gothic style in Minnesota and because of the absence of any consistent pattern in response to the larger movement of which the style was a part. Psychologically, the occurrence of Gothic Revival cottages in fledgling Minnesota cities was a bit of an anachronism; for first generation townspeople were justifiably more concerned with the establishment of urban character than they were with Downing's passion for pastoral settings and an architectural style with a rural flavor. Stillwater alone produced a concentration of Gothic cottages, but the city enjoys an exceptionally hilly terrain whose difficulties for development dictated a retention of picturesque, wooded lots. Other Gothic cottages in the state, like the Bunnell House in Homer (1858, NRHP) and the B. 0. Cutter House in Minneapolis (1856, NRHP) were more isolated stylistically from their neighbors. In Lake City itself, several small houses from the 1860's and 1870's display evidence of Downing or Alexander Jackson Davis' influence in the frequent use of pointed-arch drip caps over paired windows and the abundance of simple verandas placed and detailed in the fashion of Downing's 1842 "suburban cottage." The Stout House stands apart from these in the sophistication of its detailing and its conspicuous departure from earlier Cottage Gothic norms established by Downing, Davis and their many pattern book copyists and followers. The profusion of steeply pitched gables is reduced to one on each of the principal facades, and these stretch the full width of the second story. The veranda also stretches the full width of the street facade and wraps both corners. The house thus shows a renewed interest in symmetry and simplification of form that, while it does not appreciably compromise the pictorialism of the Cottage Gothic style, indicates a more modern development. The Stout House is both the last important Gothic cottage in Minnesota^ and a signpost to the late Victorian developments that followed it.