Gordon-Van Tine Company Historic District

About this property

The Gordon–Van Tine Company Historic District, also known as the U.N. Roberts and Company Buildings, is a nationally recognized historic district located east of downtown Davenport, Iowa, United States. It was listed on the National Register of Historic Places in 2017. At the time of its nomination it consisted of four resources, all contributing buildings. The Gordon–Van Tine Company manufactured pre-cut, mail-order homes in this facility, beginning around 1916. Gordon–Van Tine was incorporated as a subsidiary of the U.N. Roberts lumber company in 1907. Originally, they were located in several buildings in the 300 block of Harrison Street. They began by selling construction materials to builders, but by 1910 they offered house plans and became one of the first companies in the United States to offer fully pre-cut houses. The customer could choose from a variety of floor plans, finishes, design features, and equipment choices. The lumber for the houses came from company mills in Davenport; Chehalis, Washington; St. Louis, Missouri; and from one of two southern lumber yards, first in Louisiana, and then in Hattiesburg, Mississippi. The company sold an estimated 54,000 homes under the Gordon–Van Tine name, and provided the lumber for another 20,000 to Montgomery Ward company, who contracted with Gordon-Van Tine to supply materials for their identical line of Wardway homes, beginning in 1917. While better known for their houses, Gordon-Van Tine also provided the plans and materials for pre-cut barns and other farm structures. Gordon-Van Tine remained in operation until 1946, when it was sold to a Cincinnati salvage firm that liquidated it just as the post–World War II housing boom was beginning. Building #1 is a four-story, rectangular, brick structure. It is the more ornate of the four buildings and the only one that has a defining architectural style, Neoclassical. The building features a limestone foundation, a main entrance with a stone surround and a simple limestone cornice, a stone water table across the top of the first floor windows, a stone string course between the second and third floor windows, and a simple classical brick entablature with a brick and stone cornice. The first three floors were built between 1908 and 1909. The fourth floor was added sometime before 1923. The building served as an office building for the U.N. Roberts Company and Gordon–Van Tine. Building #2 is a five-story, rectangular, reinforced concrete structure with brick curtain walls. Completed in 1910, it features brick pilasters between the bays on the third through fifth floors. It is capped with a simple brick classical cornice. A large two-story addition was added to the east side of the building in 1965. A differentiation in color of the bricks marks the two sections. Because it was built after Gordon–Van Tine was liquidated it has no ties to the company. Building #1 and Building #2 were linked by two skywalks at one time.

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Property data from the National Register of Historic Places, National Park Service (public domain).

Description adapted from Wikipedia under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 International License.

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