Lincoln Street

Start walking down Lincoln St. Your first stop is 238 Lincoln Street.  This house is designed in the style known as Gothic Revival.  What or why does it have that distinction? 227 Lincoln Street.  The Phi Kappa Psi fraternity house was the former home of the Taylor Family.  For many years, they were involved in merchandising and became very wealthy.  What would tell you that this was the home of wealthy people in 1910?  Be specific. Along side at 221 Lincoln Street is the English Cottage style.  Houses in this era were smaller than Victorians but had as much style even though they were simpler. Note the lack of a porch but the prominence of the entry, the large small paned windows, and the fireplace chimney.  They really do give a strong presence to the small house. 217 Lincoln Street is a house built around 1860.  Its style is French Empire.  Note the unusual roof line, which is steeply pitched from the flat deck on the top to a point below the floor level of the second floor.  Why would this be done?  Lower taxes.  This roof is known as a Mansard roof and was a tax dodge in Paris where it was invented to cause the assessors to evaluate the house as having only one story and a half, rather than two.  Essentially the second floor was considered to be an attic and not a second living floor.  There used to be a railroad that ran behind this house.  This was the �Switchman�s� house. Walk across Lincoln St. to the corner of:

Greg Luce wrote in A Neighborhood Analysis for the City of Mankato, 1969:�The Lincoln School Neighborhood can be considered a fair neighborhood. A neighborhood which needs help, but self-help should be sufficient.  The structures are very old and large.  The close proximity to the college creates a high demand and high rent for college housing.  The people of the neighborhood have yielded to the temptation of renting out portions of their homes� About sixty five (65) percent of students living in this area have or own automobiles � traffic is quite heavy at all hours.  The parking problem is also severe.  �The excess of the people is the base for most of the neighborhoods problems.  This causes high rent and expensive land.  The overuse of buildings causes their decay at a rate more rapid than normal.  This neighborhood and the Central neighborhood suffer from most of the same problems� Consider this problem and induce developers to build apartment buildings � encourage the university to provide married housing. Do you agree or disagree?  Why?