Cherry House, Nassau Street, Cedar Rapids, Iowa
When you think of artist Grant Wood, what usually comes to mind is his most famous painting American Gothic.
Unless you're in Cedar Rapids, Iowa. Then you might be equally familiar with Turret Lathe Operator, The Coil Welder, or Ten Tons of Accuracy.
{source}
And, if you're really knowledgable about his work, you might know him for Leaded Glass Transom. It's an actual leaded glass transom window.
It hangs proudly over the front door in the home of the man who commissioned the factory paintings, Howard Hancock Cherry (1880-1970) and his wife Neva Wells Verbeck Cherry (1881-1947). (The listing specifies one window; I'm assuming the front transom is the original.)
When this house was built in 1921, Grant Wood's career was just getting started. He was teaching art at a junior high school and spending his summers learning about metalworking, woodworking, and stained glass window construction.
During the 1920's and 30's, Wood frequently partnered with architect and builder Bruce McKay on beautiful homes in the Cedar Rapids area, like this one.
McKay was known as the "Midwestern Builder [who] Features Homes with Spacious Interiors, Efficient Kitchens, and Good Styling."
His "entrance halls are wide enough to add a welcome atmosphere."
He also planned for good cross-ventilation, which is very apparent in this home. If it were mine, I'd pair the living room with this light and fresh design:
The equally spacious dining room is across the hall...
and I would use this design for its decorating inspiration:
{source}
The wallpaper has a graphic, nature-based motif that's a nice reference to some of Grant Wood's paintings, like Field of Corn, Iowa.
We could continue that feeling in the sunroom...
like this:
The kitchen and butler's pantry have been recently updated, but still reference 1920's efficiency and practicality:
This second sunroom rounds out the first floor:
Upstairs are five bedrooms are four bathrooms. The house has 6,828 square feet.
The master suite takes up a lot of that square footage, with its own office/sleeping porch...
that connects to a large walk-in closet...
recently remodeled bathroom...
and second-floor laundry room:
Not to be outdone, this second bedroom...
which, by the way, could look like this bedroom:
has access to a bathroom that is perhaps the highlight of the entire second floor:
It includes a tub/shower wet room and all the jets and sprays that two people could possibly want:
Similarly, another recent addition enabled the three car garage to house three more cars.
One last decorating suggestion would be this addition to those circle patio spaces:
This 1920's neighborhood is too new for the 1913 Sanborn map, but I'm including it because it shows the
J.G. Cherry Company.
{source}
In 1880, Howard Cherry's father J.G. invented and began producing a jacketed cream can and draw board egg case fillers for use in the dairy industry.
In 1928 it became the Cherry-Burrell Corporation -- the company is now Evergreen Packaging Equipment, but the Cherry building on the right is still there.
{source}
It offers 100,000 square feet of studio and work spaces, and a little bit of very appropriate art:
The building also has reproductions of the Grant Wood paintings that Howard Cherry commissioned for the company in 1925. The originals are at the Cedar Rapids Museum of Art.
It was his first big commission after he became a full-time artist. (American Gothic was painted in 1930.)
By the way, those "jacketed cream cans" that J.G. Cherry's father invented look like this:
{source}
Today's search for a Cherry-Burrell can yields something else entirely:
{source}
And by the way, the American Gothic house from the painting is now a visitor's center, providing every possible detail about it that you could want, along with the props for you to recreate the painting for your social media posts.
{source}
This week's YouTube video, the All Creatures Great and Small dollhouse living room, is here.
