Luce-Dyer House, Pike County, Missouri.Photo byJim Roberts, CC BY-SA 4.0, via Wikimedia Commons.

The historic Luce-Dyer House is at 220 North Third Street in Louisiana, Missouri (Pike County). This house is also known as the Stark-Carlson House. On September 23, 1982, it was listed on the National Register of Historic Places. It's also a contributing property to the North Third Street Historic District which was listed in the National Register in 2005.

The two-story Luce-Dyer House was constructed between about 1856 and 1860 by Powhatan Baird and Levi Ruggles. In the summer of 2016, the house suffered a fire but was still standing. Restoration began although the process was slow. According to the Redfin real estate website, this house was last sold in October 2019.

Photo byMissouri's Little Dixie Heritage Foundation via Facebook.

This house faces east toward the Mississippi River. It features the Italianate architectural style. The bracketed cornice and gabled roofline are amazing.

From the start, this home was elegant. Several prominent residents of Louisiana called this structure home. The grand Neo-Classical portico installed in the 1930s makes the house stand out, so imagine the effects of this addition way back in its early days.

Subsequent owners

William Luce built his historic home for his son, Homer. Luce was a tobacco merchant. He acquired the site of the house in February 1856.

In 1872, Homer Luce's heirs sold the property to the Honorable David P. Dyer. When he lived in the house, it was described as "an elegant residence, one of the most attractive in the city."

The house in the 1880s.Photo byMissouri's Little Dixie Heritage via Facebook.

In 1879, Dyer sold the house to his friend, Brigadier General and U.S. Senator John B. Henderson, a co-author and co-sponsor of the Thirteenth Amendment which abolished the practice of slavery at the end of the Civil War.

In 1902, the house was purchased by Judge Eugene W. Stark (1865-1909), grandson of James Stark. The Stark family line goes back to 1816 when Judge James Hart Stark (1792-1873) came to Missouri from Kentucky. He founded Stark Brothers Nurseries which has been strong for over 200 years. The Stark family lived in the house until 1981.

Inside the house in the central hallway is a detailed carved staircase. This wasn't the original one but it dates to the beginning of the 1900s. At the time the house was nominated for the National Register, the original doors and woodwork in the house were painted.

This house is on a large landscaped lot not far from the downtown business district. The property remained in the Stark family until Merton and Edith Carlson purchased it from Lawrence Stark's widow.

The house was donated by Mrs. Carlson to the Twin Pikes YMCA, and it was auctioned in 2000. On July 10, 2016, the house caught on fire by an unknown cause and it took over 12 hours to put it out. The restoration was a slow process.

The house is currently listed on the Civil War Preservation Fund website. Visit here to donate.

Thanks for reading.