This home is another of the famous ‘Barber houses’

With the cooperation of the Southeast Iowa Union/Mt. Pleasant News, The Mt. Pleasant Historic Preservation Commission will be publishing, every week or two, peeks at some of the featured homes in the 1909 book, Mt. Pleasant Beautiful.

In the series, the 1909 picture will be contrasted with one of recent vintage. The Commission has been collecting information for the eventual issuance of a new book updating the information on the still standing homes from the 1909 publication.

You can test your knowledge of historic Mt. Pleasant with this column. The identity of the featured home will be published with the next featured home.

The last featured home was the Hargrave home at 410 South Main St.

This week we feature a home quite prominent on the Mt. Pleasant landscape. Built in 1899 by Joseph Green on a lot he fabricated by purchasing two houses and moving them. He built the house for him and his sister Alice, both in their late 40s and unmarried. Their parents were a pioneering family from Pennsylvania who had settled in the Trenton area.

The house he built as another of the famous Barber houses that we have visited before in this series, constructed from the mail-order plans of Tennessee architect George F. Barber.

Joseph Green was described as a capitalist money lender by profession in the Biographical Review of Henry County.

Although the Mt. Pleasant Daily News marveled at the anticipate expenditure of as much as $10,000 for the structure and its setting, that sum equates to about $340,000 in today’s dollars. It is doubtful that the structure could be built today for anything near that amount of money.

The siblings did not long enjoy the showpiece they had built. Alice passed away early in 1901, at just 48 years of age.

Joseph left the home and lived out his life as a resident s of first the Harlan House and then the Brazelton. He died in 1915 of a stroke. At that time he was vice president of the Mt. Pleasant Telephone Company and on the board of the Henry County Savings Bank.

Meanwhile, in 1910 the home had been sold to lumber dealer and builder M. C. Hall who has been involved in a number of homes we have featured in this series. The Hals kept it but two years, selling to judge and Mrs. (Emma) Wade Gillis. Hall is said to have “modernized” the house.

In 1919, the Judge sold the house to James and Ida Allender, owners and operators of the Allender Café on the square for about 20 years. Less than a year later James Allender succumbed to a major infection which arose from a lesion on his ankle in just about a week.

Ida retained the home for a few years but in 1924 sold it to IWU fraternity Sigma Phi Epsilon for their chapter house. She also served as house mother for the group for ten years.

In August of 1927, major damage was done by a fire which came close to destroying the home. However a major reconstruction project was immediately started and by November, the college boys were able to move back into the home. It is said that evidence of the fire can still be seen on the third floor.

In 1938 the frat boys moved on and the home became an apartment house, with seven apartments. The current owners repurposed the home as a single family in 2015 and it is in the rental market.