The Williams-Gierth House in 2014.Photo bySkye Marthaler, CC BY-SA 3.0 via Wikimedia Commons.

The historic Williams-Gierth House is at 848 Vine Street in Poplar Bluff, Missouri (Butler County). It was listed on the National Register of Historic Places on November 6, 2012.

According to Zillow, the house was listed for sale in 2019 and removed from the listing the following year. Visit here for photos.

This home was built in 1892 and is also referred to as the Castle House. It's a two-and-a-half story home carrying the architectural style of Late Victorian: Shingle. It has a reconstructed wraparound porch and two turrets (small tower-like structures attached to the house). The foundation is concrete and the walls are shingles and weatherboard.

132 years old

The Williams-Gierth House is well over a century old. That makes it special. The first story consists of clapboard siding and the second story has shingles.

Inside the home is original wood flooring and decorative woodwork. At one time, the house was divided into apartments and later underwent rehabilitation to be returned to a residence.

The Williams-Gierth house had deteriorated as most historic homes do. Around 1937, stucco was applied to the house which preserved the clapboard and shingles as discovered and removed in 2012 by an owner.

The front porch was reconstructed to original materials which was performed to preserve historic and architectural integrity.

This house was originally constructed for Horace Dickenson Williams. He was the president of the H.D. Williams Cooperage Factory claiming to be the largest in the world. Later, entrepreneur Charles Gierth owned the home.

Horace Dickenson "H.D." Williams

Horace Williams was born in New York in 1859. In 1879, he was an apprentice at Standard Oil Company in Cleveland. He had different roles with the company taking him to Philadelphia and to Poplar Bluff. The Williams Cooperage’s largest client was the Standard Oil Company.

Williams and his wife, Carra Lavera Williams, lived in the house with their son and daughter, Arthur Cogswell Williams (b. 1883 in Ohio) and Carra Cogswell Williams (b. 1900 in Missouri). They also had two servants living in the house, namely William and Jesse C. Pearce.

In 1894, the house was deeded to wife, Carra. When she died in 1900 without a will, the property was divided between their children. When Williams died, he was proceeding to relocate his company to Leslie, Arkansas. In so doing, he gave the power of attorney of his house to a local real estate developer. The understanding included that when it was sold, half of the proceeds would go into a trust for his daughter.

Williams relocated his office to St. Louis which was where he married the widow of his servant, Jesse Pearce.

Charles Alvin "C.A." Gierth

In 1909, the house was acquired by Gierth who was a shoemaker. He lived in the house until 1936.

When Gierth relocated to Poplar Bluff, he became a real estate developer who was well-known in the community and county. He and his wife, Emma, and their seven children resided in the house.

In 1914, his daughter, Edith Emma Gierth (1894-1983), married a local doctor, William Spaulding, at the house.

In 1930, Gierth's wife died and due to his health and age, he moved out of the house in 1936 to live with his other daughter, Flora Taylor, and her family.

Gierth had deeded the property to a contractor named Dewitt Greer who purchased Gierth's share of the house when Gierth died in 1945. The purchase price was divided between Gierth's children.

Greer also built Kinyon Elementary School which was west of the historic house. From 1936 to 1945, the house was vacant. Greer was the one who had stucco applied to the house to lessen the amount of maintenance. In 1946, Greer sold the home to his daughter, Elizabeth, and her husband, Ezra Cox, and it remained in their family until 1988. Cox, a respected insurance agent, had his office in the house.

Interestingly, children who attended Kinyon Elementary School could visit the house. Elizabeth Cox would provide them with free food. She also operated a daycare in the house. It was the children who called the house, The Castle.

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