Posted on 08/18/2005 7:19:05 PM PDT by saquin
When Grant Wood, who produced the most recognisable painting in American art, first passed a humble Iowa cottage with an oversized Gothic window, he burst out laughing at the pretension.
Now, on the 75th anniversary of American Gothic, it is hard not to lament the decline of the cottage and countless other Victorian buildings rotting across the Mid-West.
The house now stands empty The house has been empty for two years and the white paint is blistered and peeling off the prettily-turned wooden balusters of the porch. The tiles are buckling on the steep roof.
The cottage, built in 1881 on the edges of Eldon, a little farming town in Iowa's corn belt, was Wood's inspiration.
Only later did he decide, in his own words, "to find two people who, by their severely strait-laced characters, would fit into such a home".
He used his dentist, Dr Byron H McKeeby, and his sister, Nan Wood Graham, as models for the austere farmer and his daughter.
The combination produced the most parodied painting in America. In 1942 Gordon Parks first adapted the image to show a black cleaning lady holding up a broom in front of the American flag.
In 1968 Nan Wood Graham sued Johnny Carson and Playboy for displaying a version with the couple in skimpy swimsuits. In 2003 the model Paris Hilton and Nicole Richie, the daughter of the singer Lionel Richie, adopted the pose to publicise a reality show, Simple Life.
As the painting's fame grew, the house slipped into disrepair. Clapboard buildings for miles around, each with an idiosyncratic touch - Tuscan columns, Diocletian windows, Dutch gables, but only one with a Gothic window - are crumbling away.
Across the Mid-West, pretty Victorian towns are being hollowed out from the inside, as people move into mobile homes or head to the city for work and excitement.
Eldon's Victorian high street, straight out of a Hollywood western, is a sad sight. Black paint is flaking from the Doric pillars of the bank's grand doorway. The McHaffey Opera House, a splendid 1875 arts and crafts building, is now a thrift shop.
The barn on the right-hand edge of American Gothic has been demolished, replaced by three mobile homes.
"They knocked down a brick house; knocked down a stucco house, too," said Shirley Eakins, 70, who has lived next to the American Gothic cottage for 65 years.
Mrs Eakins was brought up in a clapboard house before moving to her mobile home, a gleaming blue box raised on stilts with a porch built from trellis. "You get a lot of people coming through here looking at the house, but I don't really take to it," she says. "Needs a paint job."
Her husband, Don, 70, shares her distaste. "I tried to buy it in the 1960s and knock it down for the land," said Mr Eakins, a retired railway worker on the line that ran through the town from New Mexico to Chicago. "But $200 was too much."
The house was a novelty gift and sweet shop before, in 1991, the State Historical Society of Iowa took it on. The society, offering the building for $250 a month, is finding no takers.
The rent is rock-bottom for a house with three bedrooms and a bathroom on the ground floor, two bedrooms, each with a Gothic window, on the first floor, and a basement.
The panelled doors are delicately joined, the sash windows covered with storm windows to withstand the Iowa winter. The interior is in unornamented Shaker style.
But when you can buy a mobile home with three bedrooms, two bathrooms and all mod cons for $17,000, it becomes easier to explain the sad fact that no one wants a collapsing Victorian gem.
Put it on ebay. It will sell.
Aw - that's just sad.
One would think there's a Grant Wood Foundation that could fix it up or something . . .
very sad to see the house in such miserable condition. can't someone at least paint it?
Why the hell isn't this a nationally protected landmark? why isn't the smithsonian involved?
I'd take it, even fix it up! I just live roughly 2000 miles away from it...
National Landmark? What a marvelous way to spend tax money. Got any other pet projects you want us to fund?
Across the Mid-West, pretty Victorian towns are being hollowed out from the inside, as people move into mobile homes or head to the city for work and excitement.
Victorian is nice, but I like Craftsman. I live in a Craftsman house in the mountains. Craftsman is cool.
Mobile homes? They've never been so rare in the Midwest! The guy is smoking his socks.
Eldon is however, a little too far from Iowa City, the Quad Cities, or Des Moines to make it easy to make a living. And southeast Iowa doesn't have the ag wealth of farther north either.
It is however, not far from Ottumwa. Maybe Radar O'Reilly could buy it.
"Most recognisable"? Just off the top of my head, both Whistler's "Arrangement in Grey and Black Number 1: Portrait of the Painter's Mother. (A.K.A. "Whistler's Mother") and Warhols "Marilyn" and "Soup Can" screens are more recognizable. Who wrote this crap?
Because it's in Iowa, in the heart of what the snobbish call "flyover" country. I love Iowa myself, being born and raised on a farm there.
I really suspect there is more to this story.
Two-thirds at least of the counties in the two ''layers'' of counties on the MO-IA border have done nothing but lose population for about 30 years. Of course, these don't involve ''cities'' by any reasonable defintion -- you've never even heard of Milan, Lawrence, Unionville, Stanberry, Palmyra, Kahoka, Princeton (that's Princeton MO, not the lefty factory in Princeton NJ).
Net bottom line, it seems to me at least in this state: people are leaving BOTH cities and small rural towns for -- what shall we call it? -- suburbia, exurbia, whichever.
BTW, these are ALL ag towns, as are dozens of others, and the solution, if there is one (arguable on either side) is to abandon the traditional crops, corn, beans, milo, wheat, and so forth, and instead go to specialty crops that are suited to the soil of the particular county or counties.
Ever heard of Crocus Sativa? It's a rather silly-looking species of crocus that produces a bright blue-purple flower once a year, with 3 longish red projections from the blossom.
These projections are the stigmata of the plant, and they are better known as saffron.
Saffron is the most expensive spice on this planet, and Crocus Sativa grows just wonderfully at Missouri (and many other) latitudes. There are literally dozens of other crops, while not any of them so expensive and profitable, that can be grown in mid-American latitudes in the very fine and fertile 'grain belt' soil.
Plus: "Dogs Playing Poker" and "Velvet Elvis."
How sad that nobody cares to look after it.
For later.
"Ever heard of Crocus Sativa?"
Yes, I'm ordering a few hundred bulbs this fall to see if they'll enjoy my southern hillside. Saffron is an interesting spice. Many people here enjoy saffron bread.
Plus you can always take your Craftsman house back to Sears and exchange it at any time if it ever breaks.
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