Tolono history tour

TOLONO &ndash If you miss the June 17 historical bus tour of Tolono you might have to wait another 30 years for the next one.

That's how long it has been since the last historical bus tour in Tolono, which the Tolono Township Library sponsored on May 16, 1976 as part of the nation's bicentennial celebration. The Tolono Township Library sponsored the tour, and the Junior Service Club organized it. Junior Service Club founder Frankie Lee Reifsteck, who is now a member of the Tolono Historical Society, suggested that the event be held again this year to mark the town's sesquicentennial.

The tour, which will start on the west end of Main Street, is expected to take about an hour and a half will leave at 10 a.m. and 1 p.m. Radio personalities Dave Gentry and Diane Ducey will be the narrators.

Meanwhile, the Tolono Historical Society building at the corner of Holden and Vorcey streets will have a display open from 9 a.m. to 4 p.m.

The historical society has only been in existence since 2003 and was patterned after the county's. "There aren't many historical societies in this area," Historical Society President and former mayor William Kirby said. "Usually it's a fact of life that as you get older you get more interested in history." Sites on the tour include the following:

Ted Meharry residence 208 E. River Rd.

The size, height and many gables of the home at 208 E. River Road have led many to refer to it as a castle.

The home was built for Jesse and Eddie A. Meharry, the great-grandparents of current owner Ted Meharry. Construction started in 1887 and finished in 1893. It is said that the barn was built first and the lumber for the house was stored there to cure. It was two years in construction and the head carpenter lived in the house while building it. He is reported to have received $1 per day and room and board as his pay.

Jesse Meharry's brother Abraham built a sister house in rural Tolono that Scott Reifsteck now owns.

There are 10 rooms and two hallways downstairs; six bedrooms and a bath with a wide hallway upstairs with a door that opens onto a small sitting porch. The door window is of amber glass. There are 10 partitioned rooms in the basement and a huge attic that covers the entire third floor with several small rooms in the front. A stairway leads to the cupola.

The house boasts two stairways to the second floor and one to the attic.

Most of the rooms downstairs are large and have hardwood maple floors with parquet design in the front hall. There are 10-foot-8-inch ceilings downstairs.

There are four fireplaces downstairs and three upstairs with mantles of birdseye maple, quartersawn oak, beech and butternut woods. The marble is believed to have been imported from Italy. Each fireplace is surrounded by Italian tile that was probably ordered from Chicago. "They're all different in nature," Ted said.

Each upstairs bedroom was originally equipped with a lavatory. The rooms have different wood trims and doors including birdseye maple, butternut, pine, oak and beechnut. One room downstairs has a plate rail around the entire room about nine feet high. The original gas fixtures were brass plated and were removed in 1921. Modern electric lights and fixtures were installed in 1940.

There are three sets of pocket doors and a sliding 8-foot-wide glass patio door that leads to a conservatory to the front east side of the house. The glass in the roof has been removed, but years ago the room was heated and used for plants and flowers.

The house contains over 100 windows. There is stained glass in the doors and some of the windows. The doors have brass knobs and hinges.

The boards used on the front porch run the entire width of it.

The barn to the north of the house was made using wooden pegs instead of nails. Most of it was removed in the 1960s after it suffered storm damage. There is still a summer kitchen, carriage house and a three-hole outhouse. A 1967 newspaper article said that the last time the house was painted it took 60 gallons of paint plus the thinner and oil.

There were no supports used for the suspended slate roof. It is 60 feet from the cupola to the ground, according to a blueprint found in the house.

Walnut, maple, linden, yellowwood, cucumber magnolia, buckeye, hemlock, cedar, sassafras and hickory trees surround the house. A black iron picket fence that stands in the front yard is considered a landmark.

Rural mail delivery came to the house in 1899.

The home's last owners, Bill and Alma Houston, lived there from 1936 to 2000. Ted Meharry bought it in fall 2003. Meharry had first asked the Houstons if they would be interested in selling him the house in 1990, fearing that a developer might buy it and raze the historic structure. After Bill passed away in 1999, Alma saw to it that Meharry had a chance to buy it. "I don't know how to explain it," Ted Meharry said of the feeling he gets living in the house his great-grandfather started building 119 years ago.

Meharry is restoring the home and hopes to have it registered as a historic landmark someday.

Bonnie Samson residence 317 N. Bourne St.

P. Richards, who later became a Champaign-Urbana banker, built the home at 317 N. Bourne St. The first three rooms were built in 1868 and the rest was built up around it over the years. A one-story addition with its own entrance was put on as a part-time home for a neighbor who sold his house and moved to Florida.

Former owner Lyle Franks was very active in the Champaign County Forest Preserve's formation. He helped create Lake of the Woods and was a very avid outdoorsman.

Franks' widow Harriet sold the house to current owner Bonnie Samson in 1988. The Franks had bought it from Harriet's parents, who had an antique business, and the home is still furnished mostly with antiques. Samson put a new kitchen on and decorated the living room and dining room with period fabric and wallpaper.

The home's interior features a carved gray marble fireplace and a stairway carved from various woods. The downstairs area has all of the original woodwork. "It's really beautifully done," Samson said. "The staircase is incredible. It's carved and pretty." The house has three full bathrooms and six bedrooms, one of which Samson uses as a sewing room. Samson found the original brass light fixtures for the dining room and living room in the basement with their globes.

"Living in this house was like a little girl's dream come true," she said. "I love it. There's just a lot of craftsmanship in it." Samson said the upstairs, which the Franks family rented out as an apartment, is built very much like a farmhouse of the day. "It's simpler than the downstairs," she said.

One of the apartment's tenants was a University of Illinois school of horticulture doctoral student, who planted a buckeye tree in the yard as a project. "It is laden with fragrant blossoms in the spring," Samson said. "It's very pretty." One of Samson's favorite parts about the house is its size and how solidly the walls were built. "My son could have friends over and you never knew they were there," she said. "It's also been nice having parties here and family gatherings." The home's exterior features decorative trim. An oil street lamp in the yard is one of 12 the village ordered on Oct. 11, 1875.

"It's different to live in a house that's sort of a center of attention," Samson said. "One year I didn't decorate for Christmas and this lady in town told me she really missed it." June Gardner residence 112 E. Walnut St.

Thomas M. Salisbury, a banker and the brother of Dr. S.S. Salisbury, built the home at 112 E. Walnut St. in 1894. It is a Champaign County Historical Site.

"The story we have been told is he (Salisbury) and his wife had visited family east of Cincinnati, and they had just recently built a new home," owner June Gardner said. "Mr. Salisbury was so delighted with it he decided to build this one." June and her husband Karl bought the home in 1946. "We wanted a place where we could have trees and a garden," June said. Karl's father was in the construction business, and June had grown up in eastern Indiana where Greek revival homes were abundant. Both appreciated good architecture.

One day Karl told June about the house in Tolono. "He said, 'I think it's too much but I'd like you to see it,'" June recalled. "We both fell in love with it. Our families thought we were stark raving mad." The Queen Anne floor plan used in the house is a popular one in older homes, according to Gardner. A wraparound porch, two stories, a tower and art glass ý either stained or leaded, characterize the house. The Gardner home has all birdseye maple trim on the first floor. "It's a beautiful wood used primarily for bedroom furniture," June said. There are two sets of maple pocket doors. The Gardners used 60 gallons of varnish remover to restore the wood to its original state. "It does make the house lovely," June said. Salisbury's second wife put in parquet floors in the major room downstairs, the hallway and the large master bedroom. There are four bedrooms, two fireplaces upstairs and two downstairs.

There is a full basement and attic in addition to the home's two main floors. The biggest change the Gardners made to the home was in the kitchen, which still had a cook stove when they bought the house. They also converted a pantry into a bathroom.

It was with great reluctance that June has decided to put the house up for sale. The Gardners have lived in it longer than any previous owners. "It's very pleasant," June said. "It's a comfortable home." Former residents include Louis Kaskie and Charlie Harper. Laird Thompson residence 305 N. Second St.

Former Pennsylvania resident and grain dealer George W. Ghere built the 17-room Victorian mansion at 305 N. Second St. in 1872. It was likely built with bricks from the Tolono tile and brick factory. Mr. and Mrs. William Meharry, who owned thousands of acres of Champaign County farmland, bought from the Gheres and moved into it in the fall of 1882.

Built in the style of the Second Empire with mansard roof and round-hooded windows, the house has six rooms and a bath downstairs, five rooms and a bath upstairs, five rooms in the basement, and the third floor is divided into two large rooms where the original owners held their social events. There are two stairways since at the time it was built, most families with a house its size had servants who used the back stairway. A mahogany stairway reaches from the first floor to the second and continues to the third floor. The woodwork is also mahogany but has been covered with many coats of paint.

The house has three chimneys and a flat roof. The windows are narrow with rounded tops. Most of the doorknobs are porcelain and some are brass. The walls are masonry that ranges in thickness from 18 to 24 inches. The north parlor of the home and the dining room directly behind it have floors made of alternating planks of dark-colored and light-colored wood. In both rooms hang old chandeliers with gas jets still present, although they have been wired for electricity. The chandelier in the dining room is supposed to have hung originally in the governor's mansion in the Philippines. A gray marble fireplace remains in the rear room of the house.

The home's basement is made of limestone. There is a story that a tunnel once led from the basement to the barn.

Other former residents include Les Gates, Ron Dowell, Elmer Allison and News-Gazette production manager Ben Crackel. It is a Champaign County Historical Site.

Jason and Lacy Epperson residence 319 N. Vorcey St.

Tolono mayor Laban C. Burr, who was one of the village's earliest residents, built the Georgian style house at 319 N. Vorcey St. in 1872. It is believed to have been built with brick from the Tolono tile and brick factory. Burr was a furniture maker, casket maker and undertaker. The home was used as a kind of mortuary. The board elected Burr for his first two terms, which were 1874-1875 and 1878-1879. The people elected him for his second two terms, which were 1888-1889 and 1893-1895.

Burr was responsible for Tolono having a water tower and public water system and was mayor when the water plant was built. He died of a heart attack the day the water was to be turned on.

After his death, an Evelyn Durfey bought the property in 1900 and for a time it was "duplexed" to serve as a home for a Mary Parry also. In 1931 the property was deeded to John W. Leslie and his wife Jeanette "for love and one dollar." In 1961 Richard W. Perry and his wife Susan, who were music teachers, bought the house. In 1966 retired UI Division of Vocational Rehabilitation coordinator Eden Nicholas bought it, and current owners Jason and Lacy Epperson bought it in 2003.

The home's interior features Egyptian revival woodwork around the doors and windows. Homeowner Lacy Epperson said the home was built to resemble the state capitol building in Springfield. In the front is an old black hitching post that matched the black horses used to pull the hearse when it was a mortuary.

"The interior garage wall looks like an old barn," Lacy said. "It has a swing door where they kept sawdust to burn. There's a really old cistern in the back." Lacy added that the doors and all of their hardware is original. "I love the character of it," she said. "I don't know if my husband loves the upkeep all the time." Fountain of Life Fellowship Church 102 E. Main St.

In 1873 John T. Webb built the building that is now the home of the Fountain of Life Fellowship Church. It was the second bank in Tolono and had a public hall overhead known as City Hall that was to used for balls, meetings, exhibitions, home talent plays, high school graduations and fraternal organization meetings.

In February 1874 a Mr. Vaughn opened a restaurant in the basement.

A man named Bell operated a grocery store there until his death in the early 1900s. Phillip McDonnell ran a grocery store there from 1907 until 1915.

Some time later a man named Baker started a moving picture theater there.

O.C. Harden owned and operated the Tolono Ford Motor Company there for many years. Model T Fords were assembled there.

Rev. Ken Young has had two different connections with the building. In 1971, when he was a teen-ager, his father bought the building for $100 for his mother to use as a beauty shop. The price was $100 on the condition that the second floor be removed.

"I was the slave labor," Young recalled with a laugh. "When he purchased it, it was a condemned building; the brick was falling off the facade." Over the years the building also has housed an auto paint shop and a seed corn business. At one time the post office was in the rear of the first floor.

The church bought the building in 1988.

Curves 104 E. Main St.

In 1889 Dr. Craig built the building that is now the home to Curves. Craig, who was a doctor in Tolono from 1896 to 1899, moved to Champaign that year and Scott Maxwell's father ran a restaurant there.

Abbott Duell operated a restaurant in the 1900s and was followed by O.W. Bogen, who repaired harnesses and shoes there.

A Mr. Loudy had space in the building for repairing watches in the early 1930s. The Building and Loan Association was also located there. Duell returned to open an antique store at the location.

George Shipley dispensed alcoholic beverages there for about four years and it became known as the Shipley Building. Ralph Monical, founder of the Monical's Pizza chain, made and sold his first pizza there when he operated the Side Pocket Billiard room. Glenn Shipley Jr. sold real estate there and the New Hope Center for Hearing business was there for a short time.

Curves owner Kathy Harden bought the building in September 2002.

Shirley Goodenough residence 102 E. Walnut St.

Dr. S.S. Salisbury, who was a doctor in Tolono from 1861 to 1910, built the home at 102 E. Walnut St. (at the corner of Walnut and Vorcey) in 1867, making it the sixth oldest house in Tolono. Salisbury sold it to D. Scott Maxwell, whose family lived there for many years.

In 1990 owner Shirley Goodenough bought it from the estate of Maxwell, who was the assistant cashier at Citizens Bank of Tolono. Maxwell said that although the rooms have largely been kept the way they were, an addition has been added on, preventing the home from being registered as a historic place. There are four rooms on the main floor and two upstairs. "The nice thing about this house is there have only been three families here," she said. "You can tell when the doctor built it it was very well built." According to Goodenough, Maxwell's wife was a piano teacher. "There was always music coming from the house," she said.

Joe Rudd residence 601 N. Vorcey St.

The Joe Rudd residence was built on the site of Isabel Bower's home in 1857, was moved to the site of Casey's General Store in 1900 and was moved to its present location in 1907. Rudd tore down the historical part of the home in the 1980s.

The home was two stories and was on sandstone, which began to pull away when the trains would go through town. Rudd used the 20-foot long 2-by-4 lumber from the old part of the house in an addition he built and has saved the old square nails that came out of it. He has also made carvings of animals from the baseboard that went up one side of the stairway.

Rudd has remodeled, changed all of the house's wiring and added a furnace and air conditioning. Tolono Historical Society building 101 E. Holden In 1869 William Redhed built the building at 101 E. Holden St. that now houses the Tolono Historical Society. An Englishman, Redhed came to Tolono from Chicago in 1857. He was a leading proponent of building the township hall at 117 E. Holden in 1913.

The building at the corner of Holden and Vorcey streets was originally a grocery store and was a newspaper office for many years, housing the Tolono Herald, the South Side Journal and The County Star. It was most recently used as one of the locations in the movie "Welcome to Tolono." Dillavou Automotive Services 107 E. Holden The building that is now home to Dillavou Automotive Services at 107 E. Holden St. was built around 1888 and is the former home of Charles T.V. and Appliances. According to documents owner Doug Dillavou has, the property was sold in 1888 to an Edward Chapman. The Tolono Building and Loan Homestead Association released the loan on Nov. 7, 1893. "He died in 1922, and it was turned over to somebody else after that," Dillavou said. "It's just been handed down from one family to another." Dillavou bought the building about 20 years ago from a Pat Martini.

Douglas Johnson residence 114 E. Holden St.

Dr. S.S. Salisbury, who came from Ohio, built the structure at 114 E. Holden St. for his medical practice and shoe shop in 1869. Owner Douglas Johnson bought it in August 2001.

"I like the 10-foot ceilings," he said.