Clifton is a historic building located in the West End of

Davenport, Iowa Davenport is a city in and the county seat of Scott County, Iowa, United States. Located along the Mississippi River on the eastern border of the state, it is the largest of the Quad Cities, a metropolitan area with a population of 384,324 and ...

, United States. The residence was individually listed on the

National Register of Historic Places The National Register of Historic Places (NRHP) is the United States federal government's official list of districts, sites, buildings, structures and objects deemed worthy of preservation for their historical significance or "great artistic ...

in 1979. It was included as a

contributing property In the law regulating historic districts in the United States, a contributing property or contributing resource is any building, object, or structure which adds to the historical integrity or architectural qualities that make the historic distric ...

in the

Riverview Terrace Historic District The Riverview Terrace Historic District is a historic district (United States), historic district in Davenport, Iowa, United States, that was listed on the National Register of Historic Places in 1984. It was listed on the Davenport Register of ...

in 1983. with

History

The house was constructed for J.M.D. Burrows. He was an early settler to Davenport having arrived in the town c. 1838. In 1844 he established a wholesale company, Burrows and Prettyman. They did business along the

Upper Mississippi River The Upper Mississippi River is the portion of the Mississippi River upstream of St. Louis, Missouri, United States, at the confluence of its main tributary, the Missouri River. History In terms of geologic and hydrographic history, the Upper ...

and west to the Missouri River in

Iowa Iowa () is a U.S. state, state in the Midwestern United States, Midwestern region of the United States, bordered by the Mississippi River to the east and the Missouri River and Big Sioux River to the west. It is bordered by six states: Wiscon ...

and

Nebraska Nebraska () is a state in the Midwestern region of the United States. It is bordered by South Dakota to the north; Iowa to the east and Missouri to the southeast, both across the Missouri River; Kansas to the south; Colorado to the sout ...

. They also made significant profits from their contracts with the U.S. Government supplying

Fort Snelling Fort Snelling is a former military fortification and National Historic Landmark in the U.S. state of Minnesota on the bluffs overlooking the confluence of the Minnesota and Mississippi Rivers. The military site was initially named Fort Saint Anth ...

and

Fort Crawford Fort Crawford was an outpost of the United States Army located in Prairie du Chien, Wisconsin, during the 19th century. The army's occupation of Prairie du Chien spanned the existence of two fortifications, both of them named Fort Crawford. The ...

along the Mississippi. with He lost his firm in the Financial

Panic of 1857 The Panic of 1857 was a financial panic in the United States caused by the declining international economy and over-expansion of the domestic economy. Because of the invention of the telegraph by Samuel F. Morse in 1844, the Panic of 1857 was ...

. Burrows mortgaged the house to

Antoine LeClaire Antoine Le Claire (also "LeClaire"; December 15, 1797 – September 25, 1861) was a US Army interpreter, landowner in Scott County, Iowa, and Rock Island County, Illinois, businessman, philanthropist and principal founder of Davenport, Iowa. ...

to pay off his debts. He was never able to regain the title to the house and it eventually went to the descendants of

George Davenport Colonel George Davenport, born George William King (1783 – July 4, 1845), was a 19th-century English-American sailor, frontiersman, fur trader, merchant, postmaster, US Army soldier, Indian agent, and city planner. A prominent and well-known ...

. Both Davenport and LeClaire founded the city of Davenport and developed it in its earliest decades. In 1905 the house was sold to John Winters, who converted it into apartments.

Architecture

The house is typical of the

Italianate The Italianate style was a distinct 19th-century phase in the history of Classical architecture. Like Palladianism and Neoclassicism, the Italianate style drew its inspiration from the models and architectural vocabulary of 16th-century Italian ...

style in Davenport in that it also included elements of the

Greek Revival The Greek Revival was an architectural movement which began in the middle of the 18th century but which particularly flourished in the late 18th and early 19th centuries, predominantly in northern Europe and the United States and Canada, but a ...

style found especially at the main entrance. It is a two-story, nearly square Italianate palazzo. It features a large square

cupola In architecture, a cupola () is a relatively small, most often dome-like, tall structure on top of a building. Often used to provide a lookout or to admit light and air, it usually crowns a larger roof or dome. The word derives, via Italian, f ...

on the center of the

hipped roof A hip roof, hip-roof or hipped roof, is a type of roof where all sides slope downwards to the walls, usually with a fairly gentle slope (although a tented roof by definition is a hipped roof with steeply pitched slopes rising to a peak). Thus ...

. The cupola has five narrow, round-arch windows on each side. The two show fronts are five

bays A bay is a recessed, coastal body of water that directly connects to a larger main body of water, such as an ocean, a lake, or another bay. A large bay is usually called a gulf, sea, sound, or bight. A cove is a small, circular bay with a na ...

wide. The garden front on the south has a

pediment Pediments are gables, usually of a triangular shape. Pediments are placed above the horizontal structure of the lintel, or entablature, if supported by columns. Pediments can contain an overdoor and are usually topped by hood moulds. A pedim ...

tetrastyle A portico is a porch leading to the entrance of a building, or extended as a colonnade, with a roof structure over a walkway, supported by columns or enclosed by walls. This idea was widely used in ancient Greece and has influenced many cult ...

portico A portico is a porch leading to the entrance of a building, or extended as a colonnade, with a roof structure over a walkway, supported by columns or enclosed by walls. This idea was widely used in ancient Greece and has influenced many cul ...

. The wall brackets on the

cornice In architecture, a cornice (from the Italian ''cornice'' meaning "ledge") is generally any horizontal decorative moulding that crowns a building or furniture element—for example, the cornice over a door or window, around the top edge of a ...

continue onto the portico. The columns that hold up the portico follow the

Renaissance The Renaissance ( , ) , from , with the same meanings. is a period in European history marking the transition from the Middle Ages to modernity and covering the 15th and 16th centuries, characterized by an effort to revive and surpass ide ...

Ionic order The Ionic order is one of the three canonic orders of classical architecture, the other two being the Doric and the Corinthian. There are two lesser orders: the Tuscan (a plainer Doric), and the rich variant of Corinthian called the composite ...

after

Vincenzo Scamozzi Vincenzo Scamozzi (2 September 1548 – 7 August 1616) was an Italian architect and a writer on architecture, active mainly in Vicenza and Republic of Venice area in the second half of the 16th century. He was perhaps the most important figure t ...

. The columns rest on paneled pedestals. Between them is a cast concrete

balustrade A baluster is an upright support, often a vertical moulded shaft, square, or lathe-turned form found in stairways, parapets, and other architectural features. In furniture construction it is known as a spindle. Common materials used in its c ...

that was extended in the early 20th-century in a semi-circular fashion beyond the portico. The north front of the house has a one-story

porch A porch (from Old French ''porche'', from Latin ''porticus'' "colonnade", from ''porta'' "passage") is a room or gallery located in front of an entrance of a building. A porch is placed in front of the facade of a building it commands, and form ...

that covers the middle three bays. At one time it stretched the entire length of the house. When the house was built there were single-story, two-bay wings on the east and west sides. They stopped short of the main wall on the south front and ended in short recessed porches. Sometime after 1905, the porches were eliminated and a second floor was added to both wings when the house was converted into apartments.

References

External links

{{West Davenport Houses Houses completed in 1853 Greek Revival houses in Iowa Italianate architecture in Iowa Houses in Davenport, Iowa Houses on the National Register of Historic Places in Iowa National Register of Historic Places in Davenport, Iowa Individually listed contributing properties to historic districts on the National Register in Iowa