Criffield-Whiteley House
Open-knowledge reference entry
The Criffield-Whiteley House is a private house located at 601 Main Street in Dowagiac, Michigan, United States. It was added to the National Register of Historic Places in 2016 and was designated a Michigan Historic Site in 2019.
History
This house was built in 1897 by Fred Corber for Charles and Cora Criffield. Criffield was a farmer in Silver Creek Township and wished to move to town so they would be close to their son Loyd's school. In April 1896 the Criffield's and Corber traveled to Grand Rapids to review modern house plans and they picked this Queen-Anne's style house.
It was suspected that the design was copied from a 1893 pattern book of houses and cottages designed by D.F. Hopkins, a Grand Rapids architect. The design is very similar. The estimated cost to build the house was $2,400 - $2,900 (present day estimate = $102,000) If no plumbing was to be included $250 could be deducted ($9k today) an if no hard wood was to be used for the woodwork you could deduct $100 ($4k today). Very happy they chose to build with plumbing, electricity and wood work. It was a very modern home in 1897
The cut Michigan fieldstone for the foundation was brought from the Criffield's farm.
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This entry incorporates text from “Criffield-Whiteley House” on English Wikipedia. Contributors are listed in the page history. Text is available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 License. Selected authority identifiers and statements are retrieved from Wikidata under CC0; their references and qualifiers remain part of the verification path.