In the 75 years since Grant Wood painted “American Gothic,” the work’s gaunt, pitchfork-wielding Midwesterner and his grim daughter have become nothing less than pop culture icons, parodied in everything from cornflake commercials to editorial cartoons.
Only slightly less recognizable is the simple white house behind them, whose arched, Gothic Revival-style window was Wood’s inspiration and the raison d’etre of the painting’s title.
But fame hasn’t always meant good fortune in the blink-and-you-miss-it town of Eldon, Iowa, home to the 1881 board-and-batten cottage that Wood sketched for his famous painting.
“Some know that [Wood's] sister posed for it, fewer know that his dentist posed for it, and fewer still seem to know that this was a real house, or where the house is,” says Steven Biel, Ph.D., director of the program in history and literature at Harvard, and author of the newly released book American Gothic: A Life of America’s Most Famous Painting.
The Gothic House itself was added to the National Register of Historic Places in 1974, and thanks to a series of restoration efforts it looks much as it did when Wood stumbled across it in 1930. Now, after years of talk about a visitors center to go with the home, a group of home-grown preservationists has finally put its money where its mouth is. This fall, site preparation and roadwork will pave the way for construction to begin in spring 2006 on the Gothic House Visitor and Educational Center, a modest, stucco-covered building with room for exhibits, classes, and a gift shop.
Gothic House has always drawn a steady trickle of tourists, who hop out of their cars just long enough to snap the requisite souvenir photo in imitation of the original “American Gothic” tableau, according to Brenda Kremer, an Eldon resident and member of the planning committee behind the visitors center. But the home, a few twisting streets away from the main thoroughfare, isn’t exactly on the beaten track-and that’s if you manage to find Eldon. “As you can tell, it’s an isolated spot,” says Kremer, gesturing to the wind-swept field across the street from Gothic House.
The house itself has never been open to the public, nor are there plans for that in the future. The State Historical Society of Iowa has owned the house since 1981 and usually rents it, but house has been vacant since January while the society tries to find a new tenant.
“We never thought of opening it to tours,” says Helen Glasson, an Eldon native whose grandparents were living in the house in 1930 when Grant Wood asked if he could sketch it. “It’s too fragile, and it’s so old.”
It’s also too tiny, with less than 700 square feet on the ground floor. But the hope is that the Welcome Center and its slate of Wood-philic exhibits-collections of letters written by Grant and his sister, Nan; art parodies of the original painting; costumes to add verisimilitude to an American Gothic photo op-will give tourists more of a reason to stay a while.
The building project comes on the heels of a furious grassroots fundraising effort. According to Steve Siegel, a member of the Wapello County Board of Supervisors, the cost of the visitors center was estimated at $340,000-a daunting figure for the rural area. So getting the go-ahead hinged on the project’s qualifying for a Vision Iowa grant of $150,000. The catch: Eldon had to come up with about 40 percent of that amount before December 31, 2004. “They gave us six months to raise $62,000, and there’s 900 people in our town,” says Priscilla Coffman, a committee member. “We were so far from it, it was unreal.”
Along with soliciting donations from local businesses (the Super Wal-Mart in nearby Fairfield kicked in $10,000) the committee’s half-dozen zealous members organized bake sales, recycled cell phones, collected spare quarters, held raffles and dressed as the American Gothic couple at local festivals. But by early December 2004, they were still $10,000 short. Salvation came in the form of a Des Moines Register article that documented their plight. Soon checks were pouring in from all over the state, often accompanied by hand-written letters fondly describing childhood visits to Gothic House or the Wapello County Fairgrounds. Eldon raised the $62,000 and got its Vision Iowa grant. A few smaller grants, some county money, in-kind donations, and volunteers will pick up the slack to both build the center and keep it operational.
In and of itself, the finished visitors center may add only one full-time job to the local economy. But Siegel thinks it could help change things for the down-on-its-luck town. “Eldon hasn’t had a good break for a long time,” says Siegel. “Their biggest employer for many years was the Rock Island Railroad, and that went down in ’79. So they’ve really been struggling since. They lost the grocery store. They lost the restaurant. They lost the bank. It’s like what a lot of small towns in Iowa are going through.”
If Eldon becomes a stop on a Grant Wood bus tour, Siegel envisions it ferrying visitors to Wood’s restored carriage house studio in Cedar Rapids and to his birthplace in Anamosa, as well, it could mean a restaurant or two, maybe even a small hotel. “I think it just puts Eldon back on the map,” he says.
The town has never shied away from capitalizing on its Gothic House connections. Banners on its main street wave with the image of the famous medieval-style window. The one restaurant in town was called Jones’ Gothic Room. There’s even a Gothic Apartments building. On the second Saturday in June, the town holds its yearly Gothic Days, a kind of old-home week that celebrates Eldon with a parade, a festival, and reunions for graduates of the now-defunct Eldon High School.
This fall, there will be another reason to celebrate: the Cedar Rapids Museum of Art, 120 miles away, will have the original “American Gothic” on loan from the Art Institute of Chicago from Sept. 10 to Dec. 4.
“They loved the idea that it would come back to its hometown,” says Terry Pitts, the museum’s executive director. “It’s kind of coming full circle.”
Perhaps the painting’s proximity will drive a few more visitors to Gothic House’s hometown as well.