Tempe Historic Property Survey

Prominently located on the northeast corner of 6th Street and Forest Avenue, this house was significant for its historic association with some of Tempe's most influential citizens, most notably, the Reverend Daniel Kloss. It was important as well for its architectural value. Reverend Kloss, who was 61 years old when he migrated from Kansas to the Salt River Valley in 1891, was a well-schooled minister and educator. He began operation of a 160-acre farm under the Tempe Canal, and in 1892 he organized the First Congregational Church of Tempe, serving as its minister until 1900. From 1893 to 1897, Reverend Kloss sat on the board of the Territorial Normal School (now ASU). During his tenure the Main Building (HPS-170), which was the school's first substantial construction effort, was completed. Kloss also served as director of the Tempe Irrigating Canal Company and was president of the Kansas Society, a Valley-wide organization of Kansas immigrants. In the winter of 1895, the Reverend Kloss began construction of this handsome town home, and occupied it until about 1904, when it was sold to his daughter, Annie L. Daggs. Her husband, P. P. Daggs, along with his brother, W. A. Daggs, held controlling interest in the Bank of Tempe in the early 1890s. The failure of the Bank of Tempe in 1894 brought indictments of embezzlement against the Daggs brothers. Litigation of over 20 civil and criminal cases continued for ten years. Annie Daggs moved from Tempe to California in 1909 and the house was sold to Andrew Nielsen, a real estate broker who occupied the house until 1914. Lewis S. Neeb, head of the Arizona State Teachers College Industrial Arts Department, converted the house into apartments in the late 1930s.

The Kloss/Daggs/Nielsen House was a single-story structure, constructed of brick, measuring 32 feet square with a hipped roof ell extending 20 feet to the rear (north) of the house. The building was designed in a modest Neo-Colonial format, a popular style for Western residential construction near the turn of the century. Major architectural features which exemplified the house's stylistic derivation included a truncated hipped roof set over a square symmetrical floor plan, a central entry, and subtle classical detailing. The central entry was accentuated at the roof by a pedimented ventilator dormer detailed with diamond shingles. Dormers on each of the flanking roof planes were more subdued with hipped roofs. Masonry detailing included corbelling at both chimneys and window hoods articulated with raised brick and separated by a saw tooth brick band between openings. The original seven-panel wood door with transom at the main entry was flanked by double-hung windows. Fenestrations on the east and west facades were similarly arranged. The original veranda, which extended around three sides of the house, had been removed from the south (front) and east walls. Small knee-braced canopies covered the door openings at those locations. The house was demolished in the 1980s.

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