1920 – Dysart, IA
Originally a public post.
This home has been archived on OHD. The sold status is unknown.
Added to OHD on 9/16/17 - Last OHD Update: 10/14/19 - 23 Comments
This home has been archived on OHD. The sold status is unknown.
Added to OHD on 9/16/17 - Last OHD Update: 10/14/19 - 23 Comments
Off Market / Archived
3271 Highway D65, Dysart, IA 52224
$178,500- 4 Bed
- 1 Bath
- 1680 Sq Ft
- 6 Ac.
Looking For A Wooded Acreage With A Fantastic View On A Blacktop Road? Build A New Home Or Utilize The 1920 Farm Home And Landmark Barn On 6 Wooded Acres Filled With Wildlife. The House Needs Some Attention, But Filled With Character, Original Woodwork, Hardwood Floors, & Built In Hutches. The Landmark Barn Would Be A Great Place To Hold Country Weddings, Anniversary's, Hunters Bed & Breakfast, Or Any Special Gathering. Located Just 15 Miles South Of Waterloo In The Union School District. There Is Both Well Water For Outside Watering, And Rural Water In The House.
23 Comments on 1920 – Dysart, IA
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Six acres and on blacktop checks my boxes for an acreage. Rural water is a huge help and saves well and pump maintenance here in rural Iowa. Close to Waterloo helps too. Land alone is worth 60K.
I see work……lots and lots of work to restore this building. Still, there are some nice elements. Something wrong with the wall placement just inside the front door. And not sure what I’m seeing in the #5 picture. Too big for a barbeque. Maybe a crematorium? (lol)
I think the property can clean up to be pretty nice. Good to have plenty of land.
I think it looks “off” because the kitchen is in the opposite location it usually is, so the dining room (with the recliner) is the larger of the two divided rooms (living and dining rooms), which is reversed from normal I think. I’m going crazy trying to arrange it all in my head!
Looks like most of the effort is needed for cosmetics – particularly in the kitchen and bathroom. Keeping the same footprint (except for that odd front room wall – ?) will keep the tasks and expenses to a minimum. If this place was in upstate NY, I’d be all over it. Hope it is allowed to maintain its interior integrity. And, that barn is awesome!
They are two separate rooms, one a dining room and one a living room—this one just looks off because many homes had colonnades flanking the sides. Ours were removed to make way for a grand piano!
What looks wrong to me about it is the wall jammed up against the front door, with barely enough clearance for the trim. I’m a big fan of foursquares and don’t recall ever seeing that – even though the woodwork in this one definitely makes it look like the original location…
Here’s a picture of a similar situation:
https://i2.wp.com/www.kansamuse.com/wp-content/uploads/2017/04/DSC_1303.jpg?resize=676%2C448
Here’s a Sears foursquare blueprint showing the wall right by the door:
http://img.photobucket.com/albums/v108/rosethornil/A%20A%20A%201%20Sears%20Homes/Orlando%20Nebraska%20Movie/Orlando%201927%20MW%20catalog%20FP_zpsk6gnwskc.jpg
Side note: This blueprint shows a smaller dining room like I was talking about above..kind of a strange set up in the Iowa house.
Interesting… Definitely a disappointment in an otherwise appealing design. Thanks for the education! 🙂
I just love foursquares so wanted to pass on any info/pics I knew of, definitely not teacher material for this field!
I did want to tell you (lol) that I looked at our setup, and the trim just barely fits also—which reminded me of the two bedrooms above: they only have about 1″ trim around each door where it meets the interior wall, not the ~5″ that is everywhere else. Kind of goofy!
The layout isn’t uncommon for foursquare farmhouses, vs. suburban houses. The dining room would really be the center of daily life in a farmhouse like this–feeding family and farm workers, working on various tasks at the table, etc. It really wouldn’t be desirable or convenient to have everyone tromping through a front parlor with dirty clothes and boots, and a parlor wouldn’t really have been for daily, informal use anyway. It’s possible there were once more dwellings on the farm for extended family and workers, with everyone heading to this house for meals.
The big radiator below the pass-through/hutch is odd–generally radiators are placed on exterior walls and preferably beneath windows, so I wonder if that big boy was intended to function as something of a food warmer?
I’m not able to articulate my thoughts (via the keyboard) well on the wall placement—but the dining room was usually smaller in this type of foursquare with a centered front door. The picture (link) below shows a foursquare farmhouse with the dining room being the smaller of the two rooms (and the door smack next to the wall/colonnades). My house is the same.
https://www.oldhousedreams.com/wp-content/uploads/2017/08/1297-Holt-Rd-21.jpg
I don’t think a second home on the farm was remotely common in Iowa—families had –numerous– children.
The living room (“parlor”) was definitely the daily room for families. There was no other familial gathering place besides the table.
I was born and raised in rural Nebraska, descended from farmers. I am not unfamiliar with the variations and derivations of rural midwestern foursquares or multi-generational family farms.
I think you misunderstood my comment about having numerous children—they all helped on the farm simultaneously. I know of no multi-generational farms with multiple houses on the same plat, though surely there were some. Most families had several boys who helped on the farm, only going to (country) school until 5th grade, or 8th grade max. Girls helped, too; or at a young age helped neighboring families.
Farm houses were every half-mile or so, many more than today. I’m from Iowa and Iowa farm family myself—not sure about Nebraska, but I know Iowa farm homes…all the way back to the days of the soddy 😉
Iowa History was required in my day; I also enjoyed participating in Living History with the old folks; and of course hearing from dear relatives about the old days.
P.S. I should have mentioned since the door was discussed ad nauseam here (lol), it wouldn’t have been used anyway. You always used a side door or a back door via the kitchen. Maybe a traveling salesman or a minister would, but otherwise you wouldn’t go through someone’s front door (still to this day—use the garage entrance). Why they put in a front door then, I don’t know.
Are you talking about the outdoor wood stove?
I suspect the item in question is an outdoor furnace: a wood-burning boiler that would heat the radiators warming the house. The adjacent ‘pavilion’ would shelter a winter season’s worth of fuel from the elements.
The location is equidistant, and far enough removed, from both the barn and the frame house to reduce the risk of fire damage. And the aerial view also reveals quite a well-worn path from the back door to this spot … so I’d conclude that it’s the furnace.
If the acreage includes enough woodlot, it would be another step in the direction of rural self-sufficiency.
That thing is either a pellet heater/stove or wood burning. I’ve seen them before, not sure how they work. I have a friend that has one and it seems to work quite well.
Outdoor wood/coal burner sends hot water to indoor radiators.
Quintessentially Iowa—white foursquare farmhouse.
Check out the amazing view from the front windows.
Nice architecture and barn too.
First thing I would do would be to remove the suspended ceiling in the kitchen. I would not want that pantry cabinet to be whacked off at the top like that. Looks like there’s thimble in the wall next to the sink which is probably a chimney that I would expose the brick for an accent. There’s only one picture of the kitchen, so I would have to see the rest of the room to know the way I would go for updating/remodel. The room with nothing in it (has what looks like picture frames on the floor) may be a downstairs bedroom. My grandparents lived in a four-square in Iowa and it was like this.
Correct on the bedroom, and it would have (likely) had two separate doors, one from the living room, and one from the kitchen—I’m sure this one has the same setup.
There must be a million of these big old square farmhouses in the Midwest. Many built for large families and big kitchens to feed kids and farmhands. When you see this kind of kitchen and bathroom remodeling, it’s often work done by the homeowner when new conveniences became available. With the focus on making a living by farming, those remodels weren’t top of the line but more functional. Every Midwest farm kid either lived in one of these or had a relative or friend in one. Memories of a time gone by. BTW, I don’t think the wall near the front door would look so in your face if it wasn’t painted a contrasting color. And it appears the opening has sliding doors. The wood burner (pellet burners are not as tall) is usually used along with a propane unit – both can be used with the boiler as the owner decides.
The first thing that caught my attention was the roof design, a steep central hip with tall gabled dormers. The longer I looked at the roof design I figured it probably was a walk up attic. Not uncommon in four-squares, but they don’t normally have these steep roofs. Judging from the pictures, the pitch could possibly be as steep as 12/12 or even 15/12. The dormers appear to have the same pitch.
The square footage of this house suggest a measurement 28 ft., wide by 30′ ft., deep. This is a pretty common size for the style.
The remodeled bathroom is probably above the kitchen and this could be the reason for the suspended ceiling. Most likely some ceiling had to be removed to get to the plumbing for the tub and separate shower.