Iowa State University’s Farm House Museum will welcome visitors for its annual “Glad Tidings” celebration Friday, inviting the community to step into a Victorian-era holiday experience complete with traditional décor, winter crafts and expanded opportunities for families to meet Santa.
The event, held inside the oldest building on the Iowa State campus, combines festive programming with the museum’s mission of preserving and interpreting the early history of the university and the people who lived within it.
Built in 1860 and once the center of ISU’s Model Farm, the Farm House has served as a residence, instructional space and cultural touchstone long before becoming a museum in 1976.
“It is the oldest building on campus and in Story County,” April Wigdahl, a senior in history and part-time intern at the museum, said. “They actually had to pause construction because of the Civil War — all the manpower was left. So it holds a place not just in university history but in Iowa history too.”
For most of its early years, the house served as the residence of the Dean of Agriculture, Charles Curtiss. Curtiss lived in the home for 50 years and later served as U.S. Secretary of Agriculture. His long tenure still anchors the house’s legacy.
“What happened here helped shape national agricultural policy,” Nicky Christensen, the marketing specialist for the university museums, said. “This house was at the center of how Iowa became a leader in agricultural knowledge and innovation.”
Over time, 17 families lived in the house, and it eventually became a hands-on laboratory for home economics students. Their curriculum included child-rearing, a detail that always surprises visitors. Students cared for local infants and toddlers in their homes until the program ended in 1958.
“It’s wild to imagine,” Christensen said. “They just gave college students a kid and said, ‘Figure it out.’ People are always shocked to learn that it happened right here.”
Today, the museum serves as both a teaching site for public history students and a gathering place for seasonal programs that allow visitors to experience history through texture, sound and space, rather than behind a glass panel. In winter, the home assumes its most atmospheric appearance.
“One of our curators always says this house is made for the holidays,” Christensen said. “The color scheme, the coziness, the wood tones, it all feels warm the moment you walk in.”
This year’s “Glad Tidings” celebration will feature winter crafts prepared by student interns. Guests can create their own ornaments or fold and weave traditional Scandinavian paper hearts, known as julehjerter in Denmark.
“It’s a little paper basket you weave together,” Wigdahl said. “It looks complicated at first, but once you get the hang of it, you feel really successful. It’s magical when it finally clicks.”
Santa will visit both Friday and Saturday, offering families a chance to meet him during an already full season. The museum will offer cider, small treats and stickers alongside the craft stations, giving the event a calm, come-and-go feel that mirrors the cozy charm of the house itself.
Although the festivities bring out the warmth of the season, staff emphasized that the deeper purpose is to help visitors feel the past in a way that is immediate and real. Because the Farm House is a preserved home rather than a traditional gallery, guests move through narrow doorways, tucked staircases and rooms that still retain their original quirks.
“People don’t always know why history matters,” Wigdahl said. “But when you walk into a house like this, the questions just start coming, why is there a fainting couch, why so many staircases, what was daily life like. Being physically in the space makes you curious.”
Jake Snyder, a senior in public relations and a PR and marketing intern at the Farm House, said preserving a home like this matters far beyond nostalgia. He noted that the space provides a grounded reference point during ongoing cultural conversations about tradition and values.
“I’m a big proponent of the idea that if you don’t know history, you’re bound to repeat it,” Snyder said. “Especially right now, with this return to conservatism and traditional values, it’s important to know what life actually looked like back then. Knowledge is power, and this house is a form of knowledge.”
Wigdahl’s favorite spaces include the timeline room, lined with archival photographs that chart the home’s long story, many featuring children from the home management program. Christensen prefers the upstairs, which he describes as a maze that never loses its sense of discovery.
“They don’t make houses like this anymore,” Christensen said. “Every corner you turn up there, you find something new.”
As the museum prepares for Friday’s celebration, staff hope visitors leave with both a festive memory and a deeper understanding of Iowa State’s earliest roots.
“This house has been everything over the last 165 years, a farmhouse, a family home, a model farm, a classroom and now a museum,” Christensen said. “All that history is still present. The holidays are the perfect time for people to come in and feel it for themselves.”
“Glad Tidings” is free and open to the public. Santa will appear from 5 to 7 p.m. on Friday and from noon to 3 p.m. Saturday, with crafts available both Friday evening and Saturday during regular museum hours.
