Built in the 1860s in the Carpenter Gothic, or Rural Gothic, style, this home uses jig-sawn ornamental woodwork to highlight its ornate porch and steeply peaked roofline. These purely decorative features increased the home's cost and were seen as an indicator of wealth, suggesting ownership by a middle-class professional such as a doctor or lawyer. In the mid-1800s, Andrew Jackson Downing popularized gothic cottages like this one through books, newspapers, and magazine articles, offering not only building designs but also advice on landscaping and furnishing homes to create a unified aesthetic that connected them with their natural surroundings. Built in the late 1860s for Isaac Atwater, the Atwater House originally stood in what is now the footprint of high-rise apartment buildings in Minneapolis's Cedar-Riverside neighborhood.