DECATUR — Nobody knows for sure, but historians’ best guess is that when workers laid the foundation at the house that today stands at 437 W. North St., the country was in the grips of the Civil War and the young men and civic leaders of Decatur were out fighting it.
Today, the house built around 1863 is being carefully restored to a semblance of its original form by a dedicated property owner who knows he likely won’t see the money back.
Curt Jackson and his wife, Malinda, owners of Jackson Property in Decatur, acquired the house about four years ago, and since then have put money into improving and restoring it. It’s on the National Register of Historic Places, and though there are compact-fluorescent light bulbs in some of the light fixtures and the place is heated through modern means rather than the steam-heating of two centuries ago, Curt Jackson said he’s aiming to re-create the general feel of a house built in 1863.
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He points out the walnut railing leading up the staircase — a clue to the time period in which the house was built, and still the original wood. Chairs in the parlor and upstairs bedroom are original rosewood furniture.
Beside the fireplace is a bed-warmer — a closed metal pan with a long handle — for those cold nights before central heating when it could be used to collect hot coals from the fireplace to place under the bed. The uninsulated outer walls of the house are solid brick. The wooden frames of the windows he’s replaced were custom-made to emulate the proper look, and some of the windows on the first floor still retain their old glass, noticeable by the imperfections and waviness that mark them as products of a pre-industrial America.
Jackson said he’s likely to spend upwards of $90,000 on fully rehabilitating it, and it probably won’t ever sell for nearly so much.
“If Decatur had higher real estate prices, we could fix and save a lot of these,” Jackson said, “but if you have to put a new motor in an old car, yeah you can do it, but when you’re done, it’s not worth what you put in.”
“What we’re really going back to (in this neighborhood) is single-family residential, and that’s good,” Jackson said. “What’s happened is that the government has built subsidized housing, and so (some people) are moving into new places with central heating and air, and country living people are sort of moving into the city.”
The situation highlights some of the contradictions in how Decatur’s most venerable structures are kept up. While Jackson admits his efforts to restore the circa-1863 house won’t yield dividends, across the street, the “Barnes House,” formerly the West North Street Nursing Home, stands abandoned, with windows busted in and tires sitting in the front yard.
Built in 1859 and purchased by Civil War hero and Decatur and Macon County Hospital founder Ira Barnes in 1864, numerous additions over the years made it into a nursing home, but the two-tiered edifice hints at its origins as a stately, antebellum manor. Peering inside, it’s apparent the place has become a refuge for squatters and a target for metal thieves.
Out on Heritage Road, Jackson is in the midst of rehabilitating another property. The old farmhouse was built in 1882, on a foundation not nearly deep enough to protect it from a century and a half of the freezing and thawing cycles of Illinois weather.
He had the 72-ton structure jacked up and the foundation repaired. Beside it, he enlisted the help of Amish and Mennonite contractors to build a barn, wherein he’s keeping farm implements used in olden days that he picks up at auctions.
He’d like to get everything cleaned up and out on display to help preserve the history of the era, but he acknowledges that he’s got long hours of improvements ahead of him on both historic properties.
“I’m making some progress,” Jackson said.
klowe@herald-review.com|421-7985
