Loucks Grove Church
a.k.a. Wahtawah Christian Church
7 mi. N of jct. of IA 25 and IA 92, then 3 mi. E and 1.5 mi. N on unnamed co. rd., Greenfield, IAThe Hotel Greenfield is locally significant under Criterion A (History-Community Development) for its association with community efforts to make Greenfield a full-fledged county seat community in terms of the commercial amenities (a modem hotel being one of these). The hotel represents the successful result of a long-struggling local collective effort to provide a quality hotel. A modem hotel was one that offered sufficient first-class housing for important community visitors; provided a restaurant and public meeting quarters (including a sampling room that was convenient and adequate for serving local businesses); and a convenient location and reasonable fire protection. Greenfield had other private hotels, all of the frame construction, but these could be best classified as boarding houses. This hotel building was the only physical manifestation of a community-wide booster and fund-raising effort. The other hotels were of short duration and none of the other hotel buildings survive. Greenfield is a smaller county seat community, but it was able to boast of a very substantial and modem hotel facility as a result of the movement to establish one there.
A building of this scale also warranted securing the services of an out-of-town architect, William Gordon, and a skilled contractor who was also a stranger to the town. No claim is made for significance under Criterion C, Architecture, despite the fact that the building does constitute a well-preserved and simplified example of the Classical Revival/Commercial style. No claim is made on behalf of the significance of the architect, although the building is the only known hotel design that can be credited to architect Gordon. If and when more is known about the complete corpus of the architect, such a claim could be potentially made. The period of significance is restricted to 1920, the year during which the building was placed in service. The significant date is also 1920, for the same reason.
Listed in National Register of Historic Places in 1995.
The National Register of Historic Places is the official list of the Nation’s historic places worthy of preservation. Authorized by the National Historic Preservation Act of 1966, the National Park Service’s National Register of Historic Places is part of a national program to coordinate and support public and private efforts to identify, evaluate, and protect America’s historic and archeological resources.