This house was moved to make room for a gas station

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 Mahaffie House, 105 East Broad St.

Among the houses featured in this series, three are no longer located where they were at the time of the 1909 publication, Mount Pleasant Beautiful.

One of them, the Van Allen house was featured almost two years ago. It was moved from its original location on West Washington to North Van Buren to the Saunders School property.

This week we feature another of the wandering homes, this one moved from East Washington to make way for a Conoco Station in 1931.

Lucien and Belle Willard purchased the property on which the house originally stood in 1873 and at the time a one story house was there.

Unfortunately young Belle, just 30 years old and a new mother passed away in 1879. Lucien was a harness maker and 18 years senior to Belle. He did not remarry and enlisted his mother-in-law Almeda Ross to live with him and help in the raising of his son George.

The Willards were planning on building a new house on their property and about 1881 property values would indicate that the new house was built — or was it?

Some reports show a second story was added to the existing house. Either way a fine looking home emerged.

In 1887 Lucien sold the house and moved across the street.

It changed hands again in 1908 and the buyer was Dr. Homer Gilfillan and his wife Clara.

The newspaper reported extensive repairs being made and just six months later Gilfillan leased it to Phi Delta Theta for a chapter house. They moved to another remodeled house on North Broadway.

However, things were to change again only a short time later when Gilfillans moved back to the original house and Phi Delta Theta purchased a house somewhat closer to the college at 300 North Main for use as a chapter house. It kept them happy for the next 34 years!

Subsequently a Dr. Payne occupied the house and sold it at auction in 1926 to E. B Caris.

The last big change came in 1930 when the property was sold to Continental Oil Company shortly before Caris passed away.

The Conoco folks moved the house but it was a year or so before they constructed a new service station, complete with a 6,000 gallon underground tank.

One wonders if the demise of the handsome wrap around porch came at the time of the relocation. The rather neat looking brick service station was a stock design for the company.

An internet search turns up a restored example (albeit a mirror image) in Norton, Kansas.

Today the building is adjacent to a branch of Edward Jones and the “House Beautiful” is close by.