Airbnb business preserves little-known historic home

Fixer-Uppers is a three-part series highlighting ambitious building preservation efforts happening around Washington. This article is the third and final installment.

WASHINGTON — The city of Washington contains a total of 16 locations listed on the National Register of Historic Places, from the now-demolished Winfield Smouse House to the County Courthouse to Alexander Young log house. While each entry in the nationwide database recognizes a different person, event or symbol of progress, the list is hardly exhaustive.

One item absent from the list: the former home of Ola Babcock Miller, Iowa’s first female secretary of state and a Washington native, whose underdog victory in the ‘30s catapulted her to political success. Miller established the Iowa State Patrol from the office in 1932, and was easily re-elected in ‘34 and ‘36. In that last race, she won more votes than any other candidate on the ballot, with the Iowa Biographical Dictionary declaring her, “second only to God in Iowa's public esteem.” Her initial longshot election victory also served as a proving ground for her son-in-law George Gallup, who correctly predicted the race’s outcome and permanently established his still-famous polling service as credible source.

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Miller’s Washington home, in the decades since, has faced the test of time. It changed owners on several occasions, before eventually falling into the hands of Clay Whisler and Corey Ringle, a couple in Washington who have converted the property into an Airbnb rental.

“I loved the character that the house had,” Whisler said. “You go in so many houses when you’re a realtor, and you see botched updates, you see houses that have been cobbled together, and this one, even though it had been neglected, it hadn’t been changed from the original layout. The original flooring hadn’t even had carpet put down on it.”

For the price of $247 per night, guests can stay in the four-bedroom house, according to the rental’s Airbnb page. Bringing it up to that level of habitability, however, was no small task.

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Contractors had to come in for an electrical overhaul, foundation fix and plumbing improvements. Ringle spent around a year repainting the interior, fixing wallpaper, gutting the kitchen, and refinishing floors with help from Whisler.

“It was a full-time job, every single day,” Ringle said. “If you’re working here, you’re really not getting paid, but you’re saving so much money by doing it yourself that it actually saves money in the long run ... we had to remind ourselves a lot, during the process, that it’s going to be worth it.”

One historical element left intact was the home’s insulation, or rather, its lack thereof. The walls lack modern insulation materials, and its windows — still the house’s originals — don’t help either. Ringle and Whisler said that drove up the energy bill, but saved them the time and investment of gutting the place.

The two have different motives to restore and maintain the old house.

For Ringle, it’s specifically about the home’s historical value.

“Ola Babcock is a very important woman for the state, and a lot of people in town don’t even know that she’s from here, or who she is,” he said. “I think it’s important to save that, that bit of history. It’s something even for a young generation in Washington to look up to, and say, ‘I can do something,’ there’s not a lot of influential people from this area, and this was kind of forgotten, so to save it is important for the town.”

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Whisler said he was more driven by a broad sense of responsibility to keep the neighborhood looking good.

“This is my hometown, and I tire of driving up and down the streets and seeing homes in various states of dilapidation,” he said. “I understand that it’s not feasible for everyone to maintain their house in a way that’s above and beyond, but I think everybody has an obligation to the place they live to try to make it better, in whatever way their skill set allows. And my skill set and Corey’s skill set is very hands-on, cosmetic.”

Their total home improvement investment worked out to around $60,000, plus the property’s purchase for about double that. Whisler said the Airbnb was well on its way to paying for itself.

While it’s good to see it in the green, he added that the income was anything but passive.

“Our family helps us a lot on cleaning this place, head to toe, and it’s a two-hour job,” he said. “It’s a labor of love, we would not do this if there wasn’t some emotion attached to it, if it were purely subjective. It’s not so much money that we’re going to get rich off it.”

Otherwise, most of the rental’s work comes down to promoting the property, not just as a place to stay, but a part of Washington’s — and Iowa’s — past.

"We want people to know that this is here,“ he said. ”There’s a lot of people that don’t know this is available, in town. There’s a lot of people that ask us if the project’s even done, and it’s been a year. A lot of people truly need a space to put their family in, in town, and we want this to be an option for them.“

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Comments: Kalen.McCain@southeastiowaunion.com