View source for Placeography:Minnesota Pioneer House Project

[[Image:Sesqui_logo.jpg|thumb|right|200px|This project is part of the [http://www.mnhs.org/events/sesquicentennial/ Minnesota Sesquicentennial Celebration.] ]] While not nearly as sexy as as their Victorian cousins, these houses built by early Minnesota settlers from the days when Minnesota was a territory and a young state are as historical if not even more so. These were houses built while most of Minnesota was still wilderness and finding skilled labor was difficult if not impossible, where sometimes if you wanted a shelter you had to build it yourself. 

Help find and document the remaining pioneer houses built from before the end of the Civil War (1865). Many are known to local historians but many more are undocumented. To make matters worse city or county records often document these houses as being built when building records started begin kept, usually around the 1880s or 1890s. 

Many left from that period are Greek Revival, the first true architectural style to achieve popularity in Minnesota.
General characteristics of Greek Revival Style  include corners defined by pilaster strips, which are corner boards in the shape of half-columns (often of  the Greek Doric pattern); heavy friezeboards, trim  boards under the eaves at the cornice level; full  triangular pedimented gables similar to Greek temple  triangles, principal entries with sidelights and  transoms; and six-over-six pane double-hung  windows with thin muntin divisions. Where a  porch is present, the posts supporting the porch  roofs are often in the form of classical columns. <ref>Nelson, Charles. "Early Architecture of Minnesota."
TECH TALK Minnesota’s Architecture • Part I MINNESOTA, Jan. 1999. <www.mnhs.org/about/publications/techtalk/TechTalkJanuary1999.pdf>.</ref>

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== Notes ==
1.[http://www.pbs.org/ktca/farmhouses/ Death of a Dream: Farmhouses in the Heartland]

2.[http://shop.mnhs.org/moreinfo.cfm?Product_ID=281 Old Rail Fence Corners]

3.[http://www.walnutgrove.org/museum.htm Laura Ingalls Wilder Museum]

4.[http://www.upress.umn.edu/Books/P/peterson_homes.html Homes in the Heartland]

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[[Category: Projects]]