Gookins House

Description:	Drawing of the The Gookins Home, Later Coates College, by Juliet A. Peddle, Terre Haute Architect and Artist. The Gookins Home, Later Coates College, Which Stood on the Peak of Strawberry Hill, About Where Fifth and Osborne Streets Now Is. Drawing by Juliet A Peddle, Terre Haute Artist and Architect.The Gookins house, perhaps better known in later years as the Coates College building, stood south and east of what is now the Intersection of Fourth and Osborne streets.Judge Samuel Barnes Crooking, who built this house, came to Vigo County in 1823 with his mother and a brother. He was early apprenticed to John Osborne, publisher of the Terre Haute Register and Advertiser, but studied law on the side and in 1834 was admitted to the bar and became a member of the firm of Kinney, Wright and Gookins. This same year he married Mary Caroline Osborne, the daughter of John Osborne. By 1852 he was both prosperous and prominent in the community and decided to build a house suitable for the sort of entertaining he enjoyed having in his home. Accordingly he erected this large and spacious mansion which he called Strawberry Hill.When built the house stood about the center of a twenty-acre tract of timber and farm land and consisted of 24 rooms all large and well shaped according to an early description of the place. In this house he entertained generously and was known for his hospitality not only to his friends and fellow townspeople but also to distinguished visitors.Mr. Gookins daughter married George C. Duy and they occupied the house for several years after Judge Gookins went to Chicago in 1858. Herman Hulman lived here following Mr. Duy, but it returned again to the possession of Judge Gookins in the late seventies when he came back to Terre Haute to live. He died in this house in 1880.During the eighties the property was purchased by the Presbyterians to be used for a school which they contemplated starting with funds left by Mrs. Coates of Greencastle for this purpose. In order to make the building adequate to accommodate the teachers, a number of boarding pupils, and the administration offices of the school a frame wing was added. A separate school building and gymnasium also were built at this time.The school only survived seven or eight years and finally went under financially and the property was taken over by W. R. McKeen.During the following years the house served as the parsonage for the Washington Avenue Presbyterian church for a while but was rented most of the time after this. In the vicinity of 1905 or 1908 it was torn down and the last reminders of the spacious mansion house were removed.The above illustration was made from a photograph taken by Albert Duy, son of George Duy, as a young boy and brings back to us some of the flavor of its early prosperous days.This house was built rather late in the Greek-revival period and though it has numerous indications of the period which was to follow, it is without the rather overdone filigree which was so characteristic of these later houses. It has an atmosphere of prosperous dignity which must have been quite effective in its wooded setting.
Origin:	01/01/2005
Contributor(s):	Peddle, Juliet, 1795-1877
Source:	http://indianamemory.contentdm.oclc.org/cdm/ref/collection/rose/id/861
Collection:	Rose-Hulman Institute of Technology Logan Library
Rights:	http://rightsstatements.org/vocab/UND/1.0/
Copyright:	Copyright Undetermined
Subjects:	Architectural drawings Architecture Houses Schools Religious dwellings Crooking, Samuel Barnes, d. 1880 Architecture Domestic Life

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