The Gustav Rohrich Sod House was a sod house

Sod house

The sod house or "soddy" was a corollary to the log cabin during frontier settlement of Canada and the United States. The prairie lacked standard building materials such as wood or stone; however, sod from thickly-rooted prairie grass was abundant...

 located in Bellwood, Nebraska

Bellwood, Nebraska

Bellwood is a village in Butler County, Nebraska, United States. The population was 446 at the 2000 census.-Geography:Bellwood is located at ....

. It was built in 1883 on 80 acres (323,748.8 m²) of land by Gustav Rohrich (1849-1938), an immigrant from Austria

Austria

Austria , officially the Republic of Austria , is a landlocked country of roughly 8.4 million people in Central Europe. It is bordered by the Czech Republic and Germany to the north, Slovakia and Hungary to the east, Slovenia and Italy to the south, and Switzerland and Liechtenstein to the...

, for himself, his wife and three children. Its walls are made of sod

Sod

Sod or turf is grass and the part of the soil beneath it held together by the roots, or a piece of thin material.The term sod may be used to mean turf grown and cut specifically for the establishment of lawns...

laid in blocks, grass side down, with each block approximately 2 to 2.5 foot (0.762 m) long, 12 to 16 inches (406.4 mm) wide, and 3 to 4 inches (101.6 mm) deep.