Visitors are immersed in aspects of Victorian daily life through tours, programs, meetings, and social events at the E. This historic house museum is a place to relive history, and gather for community discussion, entertainment, and fellowship. Julien Cox and his wife Mariah built this home and raised their family here. The women raised in this house made local and state history. The Cox House interprets the lives and experiences of Victorian women and tells those stories in dynamic ways to diverse audiences. Eugene Cox was one of the earliest settlers of St. Peter’s first Mayor, and a representative to the State House and Senate. The home was built in 1871 and is one of the few fully restored Italianate homes in Minnesota. His daughter Lillien Cox Gault followed in her father’s footsteps and eventually became Minnesota’s first female mayor. In addition, her sister Irene would be one of Minnesota’s first female attorneys. The Cox House was donated to Nicollet County Historical Society and restored before it reopened to the public as a house museum in 1971. The Cox House is a prime example of a Carpenter Gothic-Italianate Cottage, a combination of styles that were all the rage in the latter half of the nineteenth century in the cities of the American East but would have stood out for its exuberance and style in 1870s pioneer Minnesota. The architecture shows vertical board & batten siding, pillars, long windows, and cathedral cupolas that lend an imposing look to the structure. The house is as it was on the original blueprint. The wallpaper was matched as closely as possible with the original first layer on the plaster. The woodwork is pine and still shows plane marks - evidence of the use of early tools.
