Built 1893 NRHP Reference # 77000529 | Architectural style neo-Jacobean Added to NRHP August 2, 1977 | |
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Location 935 E. College, Iowa City, Iowa Architect George F. Barber and Co. | ||
The Lindsay House is a house in Iowa City listed on the National Register of Historic Places. It is perhaps most famous as the model for the Bloom County boarding house. Currently, it is run as a not-for-profit cooperative by the River City Housing Collective.
The house was built in 1893 by John Jayne, an Iowa City bridge builder. Jayne gave the house as a wedding gift to his daughter, Ella, and her husband, John Granger Lindsay. The Lindsays moved to Chicago in 1913. The house was subsequently divided into apartments, and in 2005 became a 10-bedroom unit of the River City Housing Collective.
Berkeley Breathed, writer of the comic strip Bloom County, which is partially set in the house, called the house one of “the ugliest houses in the five-state area... Six different architectural styles in one house is a milestone at least and at most a landmark to bad taste”.