Nichols, J.L., House and Studio

About this property

The John L. Nichols House is a historic former residence in Bloomington, Indiana, United States. Built in a late variety of the Victorian style of architecture, it was constructed in 1900. Once the home of Bloomington's leading architect, it is no longer a residence, but it has been designated a historic site. Born in Bloomington in 1859, John L. Nichols was the first architect to practice in the city, and the only one active in the city for much of his life. As a leading member of local society, he was commissioned to design many city buildings in the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries; for example, he and his company produced over six hundred designs in 1908 alone. Many of the most prominent structures on Courthouse Square downtown are his work. However, he refused to limit himself to large-scale commercial construction: among his most prominent works is the Batman-Waldron House of 1895, which a local historic preservation survey has described as the city's "most eccentric mansion." Smaller residences were also within his purview; in 1902, he published a complete book of residential designs, many of which combined elements from the Neoclassical, Queen Anne, Romanesque Revival, and Stick styles to produce a distinctive and popular style that local historians have called "Free Classic." One of the buildings that Nichols held up as a leading example of his architectural ideals was the home that he designed for himself and his wife along College Avenue north of downtown. After building it in 1900, he made extensive use of it in his book as a demonstration of his theories of architecture. Nichols moved out of his new house just two years after its completion, but he maintained ownership until selling it in 1905 to the Indianapolis Southern Railroad, which at that time was engaged in the construction of a railroad line adjacent to the property. Except for twelve years as the home of a local railroad employee, the house was little used by the railroad. In 1940, the house was sold by the railroad, which had become subsumed into the Illinois Central; from this point to the present, it has been bought and sold by many different parties. Throughout the later twentieth century, the house gradually deteriorated, but by the 1980s it had been purchased by a new owner who began to restore the property to its original state. Characteristic of its designer, the Nichols House is a mix of architectural styles. Some of its elements are meant to recall the architecture of Ancient Greek temples, such as the Corinthian columns that support the roof of the entrance porch. A distinctive and unique design element is the stonework supporting the columns: rather than the dressed limestone that he used in many of his larger buildings, it is composed of small limestone geodes; almost no other Bloomington buildings employ these stones architecturally, even though they occur in large numbers in the city's vicinity. Other geodes were formerly used to support the chimney and as landscaping, although many of these have disappeared.

Location

Categories

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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