O. A. Hougland, a Chariton-based architect who practiced widely across the south of Iowa during the late 19th and early 20th centuries, has been overshadowed in the collective memory of his hometown by William Lee Perkins, active into the 1950s, who designed many of our National Register of Historic Places landmarks.
Thanks to Chris Laing for bringing Mr. Hougland back to life briefly during Sunday's 19th annual Chariton Cemetery Heritage Tour. Here's the script that Chris used:
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My name is Oran Alonzo Hougland and I was Chariton’s first and most prolific architect. You may call me “Lon.”
And yes I know that William Lee Perkins is much better known as an architect --- he designed many of those Chariton buildings now on the National Register of Historic Places. But I died too young, too many of my buildings have been demolished in the name of progress and I left only a grandson, age 10 when I died, to tell my stories. So I’ve been largely forgotten.
I WAS BORN Sept. 8, 1859, in the village of West Liberty, Missouri --- west of Unionville and not far south of the Iowa state line in Putnam County. My father was John W. Hougland, a physician, and my mother, Elizabeth.
My father was 50 when I was born and my mother, a dozen years younger. She had been left a widow with four children when her first husband, Nicholas Jarvis, died; and had married Dr. Hougland during 1858.
Even though we lived close to Iowa, northern Missouri was not a good place for Union loyalists to live as civil war threatened and then broke out. So not long after my birth, my parents moved north to the village of Livingston in southwest Appanoose County, where my sister, Catherine, was born during 1862.
My father died soon after Catherine’s birth and so we were raised by my mother in Appanoose County. Catherine went on to marry J.J. Moore and they settled in Illinois. Mother eventually moved to St. Joe, Missouri, near some of my Jarvis half-brothers, and died there at the age of 75 in 1897.
I was raised near Moulton, also in Appanoose County, and came to Chariton in 1875, when I was 15, with my uncle, Bannock W. Hougland, a carpenter by trade. It was from him that I learned the basic skills of the building trade.
My uncle moved on to Kansas after a couple of years and suggested I accompany him, but I had formed an attachment to Miss Harriet Neff, daughter of Joseph and Sarah, who farmed near Chariton. Although she was only 17, we decided with her parents’ permission to marry and did so on the 15th of October 1877. I was 18 at the time.
NOW ON MY OWN, I was fortunate to find employment in 1878 with Mr. William Layton, still in his 20s but well on his way to becoming Chariton’s leading contractor. We formalized our relationship as a partnership, William Layton & Co. and then Layton & Hougland, during 1880.
If I learned the basics of carpentry as an apprentice to my uncle, I developed the basic skills needed to design buildings and carry them through to the end of construction as principal contractor from my much-lamented friend, Mr. Layton.
He was only 38 when he died of cancer on the 28th of December 1892, leaving a widow and three children.
WHEN IT BECAME evident that Bill Layton would not recover, I opened my first solo office in 1892 --- in Col. Warren Dungan’s building on the north side of the square, and advertised my services as an architect for the first time.
I had been in the trade leading up to this for 14 years, I calculated, and was well prepared. At the time, in Iowa, there were no college programs in architecture; one learned as an apprentice. And so during the years I had worked as a carpenter and contractor, I also had arranged to spend a few months during the slow winter seasons each year in Des Moines, working in the offices of architectural firms, most notably Foster & Liebbe, designers of Lucas County’s 1893 courthouse.
I ALSO HAD BECOME deeply involved in my community. I became a charter member of the Chariton Volunteer Fire Department --- serving in the Hook & Ladder Company --- when it was organized in 1877.
Harriet and I were active members of St. Andrew’s Episcopal Church where I served many years on its vestry and was licensed by the Bishop of Iowa to lead services in the absence of a priest. If you visit St. Andrew’s today and notice six tall gold candlesticks on the high altar --- two of them were given in memory of me.
And I devoted a great deal of time to Chariton’s fraternal lodges. As a member of Orion Lodge No. 64, Independent Order of Odd Fellows, I held many local, regional and state offices. I was very active, too, in Chariton Lodge No. 63, Ancient Free & Accepted Masons, and at the time of my death was Lucas County’s only Scottish Rite Mason.
And then there were my chickens. I had always fancied poultry and as chickens didn’t require much space and could be kept in town, exotics were a hobby of my from the 1870s forward. That led at the turn of the 20th century to a farm south of town, where I raised cattle. Had I not been an architect and builder I would have been a farmer.
MY FIRST MAJOR commission in Chariton was the new First Baptist Church, built during 1892 and 1893 at the intersection of Grand Street and Linden Avenue. Some of you will remember this polished red brick building with towering gables, a steeple, acres of stained glass and a dizzying flight of steps to its front doors. Sadly, it was demolished during the late 1950s as obsolete and replaced with the current church building.
I was also a proud member of Company H, Iowa National Guard, and designed the Armory building for it at the intersection of South Main and Armory Avenue during 1895. That building later burned.
And then there was the Lucas County Home, constructed just northwest of Chariton during 1904. A Hy-Vee distribution center now occupies that site.
AS THE 19TH CENTURY closed, I was very busy, but focused on local projects ranging from houses and barns to public buildings and commercial structures.
But after 1900, as my reputation grew, I became what sometimes seemed insanely busy designing school buildings, churches, Carnegie libraries, hotels and other commercial structures, county homes and more across the southern half of the state. I learned to work on trains as I traveled to and fro from Chariton almost daily.
I WAS A SUCCESS professionally and financially, but there was great sorrow, too, in my own life and that of Harriet --- the fact that all of our children pre-deceased me.
Our eldest, Justin, born during 1878, died a year later; and then that great plague, tuberculosis --- known as consumption --- claimed the others between 1897 and 1912.
Joseph Emory, born during 1880, was just 17 when he died. Daisy, born during 1882, had married John Blouse and given birth to our only grandchild, Oren Hougland Blouse during 1901, when she became critically ill during June of 1908 and died on the 18th. George Frederick, known as Fred, was 26 when tuberculosis claimed him on the 14th of July 1912.
GRIEF, OVERWORK and perhaps a family history of heart trouble claimed my life a month later, on August 8, 1912. Harriet and I had driven to Lenox to visit relatives and also to sign the contract for a new hotel I had designed there. I was in the bank, having just signed that contract, when I suffered a fatal heart attack at age 52.
Harriet continued to live in the family home on North Grand Street, where she raised our grandson. She lived to be 87, passing on the 4th of February 1947.
Our grandson, Hougland, spent much of his life in Chariton. He married Beulah Marie Kendrick during 1925 and they had two children, Jean Blouse Clore and Jim Blouse, who brought me four great-grandchildren to carry my story onward.
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