About 150 years ago, prominent Lisbon businessman Harrison Stuckslager started construction on a beautiful home for his bride, Mary Coldron, who waited for him for years while he built his fortune in cattle, lumber, and banking.
Built in 1876 for $10,000, the home now occupies an entire city block in the northeast quadrant of Lisbon, just a few blocks from the historic Main Street, and is listed in the National Register of Historic Places — a designation it received in 1979.
The home at 207 N. Jackson St. is a prime example of nineteenth-century Anglo-Italian design.
The two-story home, built in the shape of a cross, features many common elements with the Italianate style: wide bracketed eaves, decorative window hoods, windows with keystones, projecting bays, and six elaborate porches, according to the Lisbon Historical Preservation Commission.
The interior of the home reflects a simple, understated design. It boasts cleanly molded forms around the doorways, fireplaces, and the main staircase, 12-foot ceilings, walnut shutters, pine floors, and smoothly curved railings that lead to the second floor.
The original carriage house and woodshed remain on the property.
The home was built as a country estate, with the homes along what is now North Washington Street being pasture for the horses, what was once a barn is now a garage, and other land around the home was used for fruit orchards, vegetable gardens, and flower gardens.
In the areas immediately south and west of the house, the Stuckslagers had formal gardens reminiscent of English country homes. They also boasted ornamental shrubbery that Mary Stuckslager brought with her from Pennsylvania to plant on the grounds of her new home.
With their status in Lisbon, the Stuckslagers hosted many important guests, including performing musicians from nearby Cornell College, who would come to visit the family in the evening and socialize.
The house was in the Stuckslager family for three generations, with Harrison Stuckslager’s granddaughter, Rowena Stuckslager Friedrich, being the last family member to reside in the home. The home is now owned by Donald Crawford.
“I’ve always liked the way it was constructed,” Rowena Stuckslager Friedrich said in a 1979 article in the Des Moines Register. “Just the general architecture: The high ceilings, the woodwork, the windows with their rounded arch design, the inside louvered shutters — which are the original ones, you know. My father was born here and, as a child, I used to visit from our house down the street. I’ve lived here since 1935, when I came back to Lisbon to stay.”
Who is Harrison Stuckslager?
Harrison Stuckslager was a prominent self-made Lisbon businessman. He was born in Pennsylvania in 1825 to a German-immigrant family and arrived in Iowa in 1851. He began as an operator of a sawmill in Marion for three years, then he moved to Kansas for three years before returning to Pennsylvania.
In 1866, he married a demure Quaker girl named Mary Coldron and moved back to Iowa, where he raised crops and livestock. He later went on to open the First National Bank of Lisbon, which was established in 1874. The bank was later renamed Stuckslager & Auracher.
However, Harrison Stuckslager’s drive for success was not just for material gain, but for love. When he asked Coldron’s father for his consent to marry his daughter, he told him to make his fortune first.
“Actually, it was an incredible love story that built this house,” Rowena Stuckslager Friedrich said in a 1979 article in the Des Moines Register. “He was a man with driving energy: Demon-ridden for success. But there was a reason behind his single-mindedness. He had fallen in love, back in his native Pennsylvania, with a demure Quaker girl by the name of Mary Coldron.”
For years, while he made his fortune, Coldron waited for Stuckslager in Pennsylvania. As an homage to his love for her, he built the beautifully ornate home that still sits in Lisbon today.
“Well, they promised to wait for each other,” Rowena Stuckslager Friedrich said in a 1979 article in the Des Moines Register. “My grandfather got on the train and rode until the railroad stopped in Lisbon.”
A town rich in history
However, Lisbon remains rooted in its rich history today, with a historic downtown boasting historic buildings, a historic church, and the Stuckslager house.
Rebecca Hess, the chair of the Lisbon Historical Preservation Commission, said the home is an important part of the town’s history because it helps tell the story of the town’s founding.
“Because of [the house] being there, then people learn about [the town’s founders’] moving here, starting the town, building the town, and building their house,” Hess said. “So it is connected strongly to the beginnings of Lisbon and the people who came here from Pennsylvania.”