This home’s original lot is now part of the IWU campus

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 Waibel House, 305 South Main St.

This week we again feature a house that is relocated from its place in the 1909 Mount Pleasant Beautiful publication. The home was built in 1907 by William and Emma Mitchell.

Mitchell was a well-established businessman in Bloomfield, Iowa when he and his wife moved to Mt. Pleasant in 1898 to seek better educational opportunities for their two sons, both of whom subsequently graduated from Iowa Wesleyan. William Mitchell was a traveling salesman for an Ottumwa drug company after coming here.

The family was struck with tragedy in 1912 when 30-year-old Glenn died suddenly of a heart attack. Glenn was a practicing attorney in Kansas City after graduating from Harvard Law School.

The loss proved too much for his father and just 12 days later he succumbed to a heart condition that he had carried for some time. He was 63 years old.

Emma Mitchell subsequently moved east to be closer to her other son but returned to Mt. Pleasant in the mid-1930s and resided in the P.E.O. home until her death in 1945, more than 30 years after the passing of her son and her husband.

In 1920, the home was sold to Dr. Charles Gardner, a physician who had been in practice in Winfield.

However, three years later, Gardners sold the house to the college and moved to the McCoid house at the corner of Walnut and Monroe.

The college had bigger plans and in 1926 they moved the house to its present location.

Why? Because the college wanted to build an impressive new building on the lot where the house sat.

Originally in conjunction with P.E.O. it was built as a library but today houses the Wesleyan administrative offices and college art gallery.

The relocated house is now in private ownership but was for more than 50 years used by the college for faculty housing.