The list of visitors at Prairie Ark through the years is most interesting.  Artists associated with Grant Wood have been guests, in particular Christian Petersen with wife Charlotte and daughter Mary, Lee Allen, and John and Isabel Bloom.  University people such as Don Schuster (Psychology) and Jack Lathrop (Physics) have also been frequent visitors.  At one time Bert taught astrology classes in his home.  Bert’s patient list includes a cross-section of the Ames population.  Former patients recall making unscheduled visits while Bert was engaged in construction, and having him give osteopathic manipulation with tar-stained hands in unfinished rooms or even on the roof in one instance.  As mentioned previously, the local astronomy club delighted in meeting on clear summer nights to use his 10” Astrola telescope.  Petting the sheep, goats, and ponies Bert formerly kept in the fenced pasture was a favorite activity for neighborhood children.  The home represents a wonderful piece of history associated with Ames residents for more than half a century.

The Adams Residence is a good, well-preserved example of residential modern architecture.  Its early date (1948, from my understanding) marks it as among the earliest examples in Iowa of its type.  It shows the distinct influence of Frank Lloyd Wright’s “Usonian” houses (in particular the Goetsch-Winkler House in Okemos, MI, of 1939 and the Herbert Jacobs House in Madison, WI, of 1937) on its designer/builder and the house is a unique and, I believe, fairly sophisticated interpretation of Wright’s principles.

In particular, the house adopts Wright’s interest in solar orientation very well.  Its clerestory roof uses sunshading, a light shelf, and a thermally massive interior to achieve an efficient natural illumination scheme.  This is a fairly advanced arrangement for its day, and it anticipates a long and important technical tradition in Iowa architecture that has involved passive solar heating and lighting.  Its use of materials—in particular concrete masonry and steel windows—is likewise innovative for its day.  Modern housing was an important development in postwar America, and while much of this construction occurred on both coasts there was a significant school of modern residential architecture in Iowa.

While much modern housing in Iowa dates from the 1950s, the Adams House is contemporaneous with such postwar developments as the Case Study projects in California and a national solar design competition sponsored by Libbey-Owens-Ford.  As such it is a good example—rare in Iowa—of the innovative techniques and designs that emerged in the late 1940s.  While its most immediate affinity is to Wright’s work, it has some ‘moderne’ features (curved interior walls and corner windows) and other elements that look forward to the more rigorously modernist work of the 1950s.

No one would mistake the Adams House for an actual Wright home, but as an example of the early diffusion of modernist principles throughout the Midwest it certainly demands attention and, I believe, preservation.  Its builder was certainly an amateur, but he was very clearly absorbing many of the interesting experiments and statements being built throughout the country at the time.  The Adams House is worth preserving as a fine—and very early—example of an important tradition in Iowa, that of modern residential construction.

This pen and ink sketch by Mary Adams is of the land west of the Adams home at 1013 Adams Street.  This pasture land is now The Reserve subdivision.