This cottage is the last surviving workers' cottage from Oswego's iron industry. It was probably built in the late 1870s or early 1880s by local carpenters Albert Clinefelter or Lucien Davidson, who constructed many buildings for the iron company. Though it appears to be a conventional frame house, it was built with vertical plank construction, or box framing, a now almost forgotten method in which wide vertical planks nailed to a perimeter beam and top plate support the roof without posts or studs. The walls are only one inch deep aside from siding and interior finishes, the windows and doors were cut out after the plank walls were erected, and the house stands on brick piers. Built for quick, inexpensive housing, plank houses were used in the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries for farm housing and tenant cottages. This rectangular cottage contains two bedrooms on the west side, two parlors on the east side, and a shed-roofed kitchen at the rear, with a central cast iron stove for heat. It has undergone very little modification and retains all but one of its original windows. In the nineteenth century, the Oswego Iron Company and its successor, the Oregon Iron & Steel Company, operated company-owned villages and provided housing for workers, especially those with specialized skills in mining, charcoal burning, and iron making. They paid employees in scrip for use at the company store, and during shutdowns allowed tenants to live rent-free in hopes of keeping skilled workers. Between 1867 and 1888, the workforce grew from 80 to 325, and in 1882 the company owned 21 houses and 6 barns. Many workers with families depended on company housing, and census records suggest that large families often crowded into small cottages like this one.