George Stone House (West Lawn Terrace)

The George Stone house is another of Iowa's impressive contributions to America's Italian Villa mode. The editors of The American Agriculturalist, in an article titled “An Italian Villa” (January 1850), observed that, “Houses in the Italian Style are most appropriately placed up the side or on top of a hill” (p. 25). The Stone house appears in just this fashion; from its large-scale belvedere one could look out over the city and the river beyond. The house is in fact a two-and-a-half-story dwelling with small windows tucked into the entablature between the paired brackets. At the front, the center of the roof is lifted up into a curved wall dormer, while to the sides of the building there are similar low curved dormers within the low-pitched gable roofs. This theme of the segmental curve then is repeated in wall dormers on each facade of the belvedere. There is an extensive porch on the ground floor. The posts for this porch are thin and tall and are connected to a curved band that suggests, in a linear fashion, arches between the posts. The brick walls are now stuccoed and painted so that they contrast with the building's dark trim.