Oskaloosa Monthly Meeting of Friends Parsonage

Oskaloosa, United States

Exterior only

Visible from the street; the inside is private.

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Heritage registerNational Register of Historic Places↗

Built in 1915 in Oskaloosa, Iowa, the Oskaloosa Monthly Meeting of Friends Parsonage is a two-story frame structure rendered in stucco, designed in the Prairie School style by A. T. Simmons, an architect from Bloomington, Illinois, who had completed the nearby Iowa Yearly Meeting House-College Avenue Friends Church three years earlier. The house features a gable-end facade, concrete block foundation, ribbon windows, and a wrap-around front porch with its own gable-end roof. Its historical significance extends beyond its architectural merit: as the residence of pastor Clarence Pickett during World War I, the parsonage became a flashpoint for tensions over the Quaker Peace Testimony. In 1917, it was vandalized with yellow crosses painted on its walls, and Pickett was tied to a spring wagon and paraded through town—acts of hostility that recurred with yellow paint smears during World War II. Listed on the National Register of Historic Places in 1996, the parsonage stands as a tangible record of the local Quaker congregation's principled stance on pacifism and conscription.