Cranmer-Cook House

926 South 7th Street
Springfield, IL

The John Cranmer Cook House was built by Charles Broeker in 1877, who sold it a few years later to Samuel H. Jones, maternal grandfather of Susan Cook House.  In 1887, John Cranmer Cook, with his wife and one year old daughter, Susan, moved into the house.  It remained in the ownership of the Cook/House families until around 1960.  The house is located at 926 South 7^th Street (northeast corner of 7^th and Clay) in the central part of the city.  The irregular shaped, two story brick house was built in the Italianate style, displaying characteristic deep bracketed eaves, long segmental arched windows with limestone sills, hipped roofs, a series of small rectangular attic windows, and a one story, frame porch with simply detailed square wood columns and bracketed cornice.  All of the main windows have louvered wood shutters with arched tops.  The house also has two compound, brick chimneys with corbeled caps, one in the center of the house and one at the rear.  The house measures approximately 40’ x 60’ and contains over 2,100 square feet on the two main floors.  There is a driveway on the north side of the house that leads to a frame, hip roofed 1-1/2 car garage at the rear of the 80’ x 160’ lot.   

The house has not been altered significantly over the past 115 years.  While there are a few intact examples of the simple hipped roof Italianate style remaining in Springfield (particularly in the Lincoln Home area), there are even fewer intact masonry examples of this style.  The relatively unaltered John Cranmer Cook House deserves to be preserved as a good example of this genre.   This house is currently used for retail and office space.  This house is listed on the National Register of Historic Places.