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Titonka

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There are many variations on how a service station building with a cut-into corner might be designed. The one at the northeast corner of North Main Street and First Avenue in Titonka has a much wider than usual cut. Four piers are needed to accommodate the two lengths of this cut. The walls and piers of the station (now the K. H. Co-Op Oil Company) are in dark red-brown brick with an overlay of patterns carried out in light tan brick. To bring emphasis to the corner, the architect designed the parapet as an ascending step pattern with the highest point at the street corner. The building was probably built in the late 1920s.

A “silo home,” designed in 1983 by Arthur Peterson for himself, is located .5 miles east and .5 miles south of Titonka on route P66. It is a commercially produced round concrete silo banded with metal and topped in this case by a balconied octagonal penthouse. An entrance projects off one side of the silo; the silo interior is divided vertically into four levels: a utility room on the ground level, a gameroom above it, a kitchen on the third level, and a bedroom on the fourth. At the very top is the living-room penthouse. The various levels are connected by a central steel spiral staircase. It all adds up to a romantic combination of the high-tech style and vernacular traditionalism.

Writing Credits

Author: 
David Gebhard and Gerald Mansheim

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