Common laborer’s home built in 1847 could be on Belleville’s next demolition list

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A vacant house hidden behind long overgrown trees and shrubs is likely the oldest building on Belleville’s North Jackson Street. And it could soon be headed for demolition.

German immigrant John Steinwasser likely built the house at 217 N. Jackson St. in 1847 — 14 years before the Civil War, according to Bob Brunkow, historian for the Belleville Historical Society.

“He was a common laborer,” Brunkow said. “The house kind of reflects that: It’s small. Wood frame rather than brick.”

Belleville officials once considered preserving the house as a museum. Now, the city has filed a petition in court to get permission to tear it down , arguing it has become a hazard.

A judge hasn’t ruled on the city’s petition. And the current owner, a Blue Springs, Missouri-based limited liability company called Topstone, wants to bring it back from condemnation, according to Kent Mak, a company executive and the LLC’s registered agent.

Belleville Building Commissioner Steve Thouvenot said condemnation doesn’t mean the building can’t be fixed; it means the structure is unsafe in its current condition and, likely, “would cost too much to bring it back to life.”

Topstone hasn’t received the city’s summons to make its case in St. Clair County Circuit Court.

Brunkow believes the house has survived as long as it has because descendants from a single family owned it for nearly 150 years: from 1850 to 1998.

The family sold it at a private auction to a former Belleville Historic Preservation Commission member. At the same time, city leaders asked researchers to study historic maps and ownership records for the house because they were interested in making it a museum.

They were specifically trying to determine how old the building was and whether Ninian Edwards, the only governor of the Illinois Territory and the state’s third governor, was responsible for its construction.

Their research couldn’t find a connection between Edwards and the house, according to St. Clair County Board Chairman Mark Kern, who was the mayor of Belleville at the time. But Brunkow said the former governor owned the land it’s built on from 1817 until he died in Belleville in 1833.

Edwards’ heirs sold the land in 1840, seven years before Steinwasser made it his home. Still, researchers concluded that the house warranted preservation because of its age.

Today, it’s “falling apart,” according to the building commissioner.

Bricks falling out, foundation problems

The small, 1½ story frame house at 217 N. Jackson St. sits just north of East Main Street near the Belleville Philharmonic Society headquarters. Its brick has been covered by gray siding.

The house had already been condemned as unsafe before Topstone bought it at a county auction and Thouvenot became building commissioner, both of which happened in January 2021.

Thouvenot said he revisited the property during his first year on the job and sent notice to the company in July 2021 that the building wasn’t up to code and the city would start the condemnation process within a month if it didn’t make improvements.

During a BND tour of the property this summer, Thouvenot described the structural problems he saw.

The bricks underneath the house’s siding are falling out in one spot. It might be where an old chimney got covered up or the whole wall may be crumbling, according to Thouvenot. “Either way, that brick is failing,” he said.

Vines are climbing the exterior. They can wreak havoc on buildings, Thouvenot said, because their roots can grow into mortar joints, the space between bricks, and push everything apart.

Then there’s the foundation problems. The stone is cracked and pieces of it are falling off along one side of the house. On the other side, the foundation has a hole, leaving the basement open to water damage. It’s possible it was a window at one time or it could be the foundation caving in, according to Thouvenot. But inside is more evidence: The tops of door frames are sloped because the foundation underneath is “sinking or failing completely,” he said.

How the historic home got to this point has become a familiar story in Belleville.

Somewhere in its history, an owner stops paying property taxes. Years go by with little to no maintenance until the county forecloses on it and sells it at auction for as cheap as $800.

Then, the investor who buys it doesn’t make the costly repairs it needs. The home sits vacant and continues deteriorating and bothering neighbors with the unwanted blight on their street and, sometimes, break-ins or fires.

In the end, the city steps in and foots the bill to demolish it.

From possible museum to foreclosure

John Steinwasser built both 217 N. Jackson St. and the house next door, 213 N. Jackson St., a few years later, according to Brunkow, the Belleville historian.

They have stood out for more than a century on a block full of grander houses because, Brunkow said, wealthy businesspeople established their homes on North Jackson: a farm equipment dealer at 300; a prosperous farmer and property owner at 303; a coal operator at 316; and a major dry goods store owner at 323.

“North Jackson Street was a place of prominence,” Brunkow said.

Michael Hartnagel, also a German immigrant who became a teamster moving things between Belleville and East St. Louis, bought both 217 and 213 N. Jackson St. in 1850. The houses then went to his son Michael Hartnagel Jr., and finally his great-granddaughter Doris Jenks, who lived at 217 until her death in 1998.

217 N. Jackson St. exchanged hands two more times after that before ending up in foreclosure.

Former Belleville Historic Preservation Commission member Karl Carl bought the house at a family auction after Jenks died, and the city of Belleville approached him about the idea of preserving it as a museum.

Kern said the city wanted to save the house during his administration, but the owner was “uncooperative” and didn’t want to sell it.

Carl disputed Kern’s recollection.

“I would have sold it in a minute,” he said. “They never even made me an offer.”

Carl said the city’s planned investment in the house only fell through because researchers couldn’t determine that former Gov. Edwards ever lived in the modest home, which he always thought was unlikely.

When he owned 217 N. Jackson St., Carl was restoring another historic home down the street: 321 N. Jackson St. He said he couldn’t find time to do the renovations himself after the museum plan was scrapped, so he sold it. The next owner, Matthew Chandler, stopped paying property taxes in 2017, according to county property records.

“I was too busy,” Carl said. “I did a lot in Belleville.”

He had “a friendly banker,” a background in construction and an interest in old buildings, so Carl said he purchased and renovated at least six historic Belleville properties.

The Belleville Historical Society also looked at taking 217 N. Jackson St. on as a preservation project before the foreclosure, but the group couldn’t afford it at the time, according to Brunkow.

“We’re a very small organization,” he said. “We’ve got four buildings — at that time, we had five — so you can’t take on every project. And this one does have some pretty substantial work that needs to be done to it.”

Company outbid neighbor at auction

Marty White, who lives at 213 N. Jackson St. today, said he tried to buy the vacant and overgrown house next door when it went to a St. Clair County foreclosed property auction in 2020, but Topstone outbid him by about $3,000.

The company bought the property for $4,750. It was the highest of four bids, according to Whitney Strohmeyer, president of Joseph E. Meyer and Associates, the Edwardsville-based company that serves as the county’s trustee and delinquent-tax agent.

Strohmeyer said properties at auction typically go to the highest bidder. The county wants to recoup as much money as it can because the proceeds have to be divided up among the public schools, city, county, library and other services that had been losing out on years of property tax money from that foreclosed home.

St. Clair County Board members who approve the sales have sometimes questioned those involving out-of-state LLCs from as far away as California, according to Strohmeyer. But he said a buyer’s proximity to a property hasn’t always guaranteed a house survives either.

“It’s hard to predict what’s going to happen. You never know what they’re going to do with it down the road,” Strohmeyer said. “We’ve sold to neighbors and the house has gotten torn down.”

Mak, the company executive, said Topstone bought houses like 217 N. Jackson St. to turn them into government-subsidized rentals . But the company paused its plans when the owners couldn’t find tenants, and people broke in to strip the copper while the renovated homes sat empty, according to Mak.

White said he has reached out to Topstone several times since the auction about buying 217 N. Jackson St. from the company, but it hasn’t responded. In the four years he’s lived next door, he said not much work has been done to the property.

“I mow the back lawn just because I wanna cut down on the critters running around,” White said. He’s seen skunks, raccoons, opossums and cats there, as well as people he believes are homeless and squatting on the property.

This spring, limbs from a big tree in 217’s yard fell onto their power lines, according to White. He said he’d like to see the city demolish the house and clear the lot.

“It’s a rundown mess that needs attention,” White said.

Historic structure ‘warrants preservation’

Fever River Research in Springfield, which conducted the historic map study of 217 N. Jackson St. for Belleville in 1998, concluded in its final report that “this house documents an early dwelling for Belleville and Illinois and warrants preservation.”

It also suggested that limited archaeological excavations be conducted at the property because of the “potential to contribute significantly to our understanding of early Belleville.”

Carl, who owned the property at the time, provided a copy of the report to the BND.

St. Clair County Clerk Tom Holbrook described the house as a “true treasure” because of its history. And Kern said it would be a shame to tear it down. But both county officials said preservation is expensive and not much grant funding is available to help.

They noted that Holbrook secured a state appropriation for Belleville to buy the Gustave Koerner House when Holbrook served in the Illinois House and Kern was mayor, and that the city is still raising funds to restore the historic property on Mascoutah Avenue at Abend Street.

Belleville Historical Society President Larry Betz said the group would endorse a movement to save 217 N. Jackson St., but it doesn’t have the money to take the preservation on either if the house were slated for demolition.

The city of Belleville’s demolition lists have included historic structures in the past, including German American folk houses from as early as 1852.

The future of the house that has stood at 217 N. Jackson St. since 1847 is in the hands of Topstone, a company based 250 miles away.

Scott Tyler, Belleville’s director of health, housing and building, said the city would rather see Topstone fix up its properties than pay for another demolition.

“I would love to see them make all the properties they own in Belleville livable,” Tyler said. “We don’t wanna demolish anything. ... At some point they leave us no choice.”