451 West Broadway Street
Winona, MN, USA

Dr. J. W. S. Gallagher House

The Dr. J. W. S. Gallagher House is a 1913 Prairie School house in Winona, Minnesota, United States, designed by the architectural firm of Purcell & Elmslie. The house was listed on the National Register of Historic Places in 1984 for having local significance in the theme of architecture.

Description

The Dr. J. W. S. Gallagher House is essentially rectangular, with a gabled porch on the side and another on the rear. It is two stories with side gables, a low-pitched roof, and wide eaves. The house has stucco walls with cypress trim. Architectural details include a five-sided bay window on the northeast corner, sawn wood decorations, and came glasswork windows. It was nominated for being a well-preserved example of the modest residential commissions that typified Purcell & Elmslie's work, despite their acclaim for more prominent projects such as Merchants National Bank in downtown Winona.

National Register of Historic Places - Dr. J. W. S. Gallagher House

Statement of Significance:

Completed in 1913 in Winona, Minnesota, the Dr. J.W.S. Gallagher House is significant for its architecture, particularly for being an extremely well-preserved, unaltered example that is typical of the domestic work of the Prairie School firm of Purcell and Elmslie.

Purcell and Elmslie was the product of the partnership of William Gray Purcell and George Grant Elmslie, both of whom worked for a time in the office of Louis Sullivan. In 1906 Purcell formed a partnership with Cornell University colleague George Feick. This Minneapolis firm was joined by Elmslie in 1909 and was known as Purcell, Feick and Elmslie until the 1913 resignation of Feick. Purcell and Elmslie continued together until their partnership were dissolved in 1922.

There is little question of the national significance of Purcell and Elmslie. According to P&E authority David Gebhard, "Next to Louis H. Sullivan and Frank Lloyd Wright, the partnership . . . Cof Purcell & Elmslie] produced several what have come to be acknowledged as major monuments of the prairie school. Though the careers of both Purcell and Elmslie were at times closely connected with Sullivan and Wright, their buildings turned out to express a highly personal of the Prairie mode" (Macmillan Encyclopedia of Architects v.3, p. 500).

The date of the Gallagher house--1913--turns out to have been important. It was the high-water mark for the Prairie School movement, observes Prairie School historian H. Alien Brooks: "The most significant years for the Prairie School were 1912-14, years made memorable by the quality, quantity, and diversity of the work produced" CHAD, The Prairie School, p. 200]. For P&E, they had just completed one of their and the Prairie School's most notable works, Merchants Bank of Winona. Winona, Brooks observes, was typical of the small Midwestern towns where Prairie School architects conducted much of their business. Finally, as noted above, 1913 was the year in which Feick decided to leave the firm. The Gallagher house, then, was designed and constructed at a time of considerable and important activity in both the profession and the firm.

According to Brooks, even though P&E designed significant buildings such as the Merchants Bank and large, expensive houses such as the Bradley and Decker houses, "inexpensive houses for small city lots typified the firm's endeavors" C219]. These houses incorporated "simplicity in massing, a corresponding compactness of plan (yet, if possible, without suggesting constriction), and the use of inexpensive materials."

P&E's client was a Winona dentist who had to have been aware of firm's just completed Merchants Bank. The house they built for him is an excellent example of the modest houses that Brooks sees as typical of P&E's work. Situated on a relatively long, narrow city lot, it uses a simple two-story massing with a broad, overhanging gabled roof line like other P&E houses. Also typical is the window arrangement, tinted stucco, and banding. In addition, the interior plan is like other P&E plans of the period and, moreover, survives intact with the central fireplace and woodwork largely unaltered. In summary, the Gallagher house is important not because it is an anomaly or an unusual variant or turning point in P&E's design work, but because it is such an excellent and well-preserved representative example of the bulk of their work. As such, it makes a fine contrast to the Merchants Bank in the same city which is important for all the opposite reasons—it is pivotal, unique, and a masterwork.