NEWS for North Dakotans
Agriculture Communication, North Dakota State University
7 Morrill Hall, Fargo, ND 58105-5665

August 20, 1998

Plains Folk: Stucco, a Mix That Served Well

Tom Isern, Professor of History
North Dakota State University

©1998 Plains Folk

The profound prairie essayist John Ingalls of Kansas wrote, "Grass is the forgiveness of nature." Whatever carnage people might wreak upon the land, he said, grass eventually would cover and heal.

If grass is the forgiveness of nature, then stucco is the forgiveness of architecture. From Texas to Saskatchewan, settlers on the Great Plains have used stucco to make their houses more livable.

Euro-Americans arriving on the plains were inclined to build houses that were not practical. (We still do, of course.) What sense did it make to erect a big Foursquare farmhouse or a tall Gabled Front house on the open plains, with the extremes of heat and cold and wind? Those wood-frame houses exposed way too much exterior to the elements, were not tight enough, and were hard to insulate. Even modest wood-frame houses had the same problems in degree. What could be done?

Stucco—an exterior coating of some combination of cement and sand and gravel and plaster, the mix varied—was the answer. Tack up some chicken wire, and stucco could be applied to existing walls. Better yet, it could be applied as the exterior right from the start.

Stucco was plainsperson's answer to adobe, in compromise fashion. Builders on the plains kept their traditional architectural designs, but changed the exterior to stucco. It was not a perfect or complete adaptation to environment, but it was an improvement.

If you are at home on the plains, then when you get into country where the buildings are stucco, you feel good. I feel good traveling western Kansas and western Oklahoma and eastern Colorado, country full of stucco bungalows with ponderous porches built during the heyday of wheat farming in the 1920s.

I felt good last summer exploring Bowman County, North Dakota, on a survey of historic architecture for the state historical society. In this country there seemed to be a strong connection between sheep ranching and stucco.

Right now I'm looking at a selection of photographs of modest, one-story stucco ranch houses. What great buildings these are for the Great Plains! Built low in the walls and in the gables, they seem part of the rolling landscape. In a practical sense, they expose the minimum exterior wall to the elements. They are well built and well finished, too. None of these houses has been occupied for many years, but they stand sound and with even their exteriors intact.

On another sheep ranch, this one still in operation, we photographed the old ranch house, of stucco—that was to be expected—but there was much more. This place even had a vaulted- roofed airplane hangar of stucco, a beautiful combination of the earthy and the ethereal.

We found barns covered with stucco. Applying a stucco exterior to a barn was a considerable undertaking, but worth it, I suppose, if you cared about your livestock. Or perhaps the concern was for the milkers working in the barn, who would prefer to work in a stucco building! I noticed that those who stuccoed their barns generally only covered the ground level; the exterior of the loft was wood siding.

I'm a stucco fan. I like it on ranch houses in the Badlands, I like it on farmhouses in the Panhandle, I like it on the little cottages in the working-class neighborhoods of Regina.

Is there any garden scene prettier than a stand of hardy hollyhocks pastel against a whitewashed stucco wall?

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Source: Tom Isern (701) 231-8339

Editor: Dean Hulse (701) 231-6136