Shopping Small on Main Street

Gooooood mornning Belleville! I’ve been woefully inferior about maintaining any sort of regular posting schedule, which I absolutely apologize for! I’ll get right on fixing that. 😉 This morning, I want to share with you an incredible photo from the Romeiser Company during their heyday! These beautiful street fairs were wildly popular… and honestly, not […]

Researching the History of Your Home!

Hey everyone! Today I had the pleasure of speaking at Belleville’s Museum Day activities. I was at the Garfield Saloon talking about how to research the history of your home. I figured these would be great notes to share with all of you. I don’t claim to be an expert in historical research whatsoever, but […]

Daughters

Imagine the twinkle in a Father’s eye as he gazes upon his sweet children. Picture the care and devotion that went into nurturing tiny loves, joy felt in watching them reach milestones, the swelling of pride as they learned to read and sing and dance. Imagine an outing to a photographer in St. Louis specifically […]

Opportunity Doesn’t Knock… it Rings the Doorbell

I can honestly say that I never once in my life pictured an afternoon spent researching the history of the doorbell. But, it’s still cold outside (surprise, surprise), so what else am I going to do? Clean? Yeah… right. Recently, local Belleville history enthusiast and President of the Belleville Historical Society Larry Betz contacted me […]

The Belleville Library: Part II

Last week, we introduced you to the connection between the Romeisers and the Belleville Public Library. Missed the first post? Check it out here! And here… is the rest of the story. At the end of Part I, you learned about how monies from leftover Romeiser Company stock had been donated to the library by […]

The Belleville Library: Part I

Located on E. Washington Street, the Belleville Library was constructed in 1916 by way of a $45,000 grant from the Carnegie Corporation. Over the course of his adult life, Andrew Carnegie made it his personal crusade to build libraries all over the world. All said, Carnegie spent $55 million to build 1,679 libraries in the […]

“Belleville, Illinois, Illustrated”

Published by the Reid-Fitch Publishing Company in St. Louis in 1905, the ‘Belleville Illinois Illustrated’ book is a fantastic depiction of Victorian life in Belleville. It features text and photos of all the prominent businesses, structures, and homes in Belleville while also providing a little bit of history. I was so excited to find not […]

If Walls Could Talk…

Earlier this week Husband found our first artifact of any real note! In the walls of the 3rd floor, we’ve found things like a pair of pants, an old broom handle, a single baby shoe. (Which isn’t creepy AT ALL…) But this is different and special and OLD. Monday Hubs was crawling around with our […]

Bringing the Stairs to Life

Prepare yourselves for about 7,000 pictures of our staircase… We are REALLY thrilled with how it turned out and I find myself just standing and staring at the beautiful wood that’s come back to life. Here are a few shots of what it looked like before. Over the last 130 years, these floors have been […]

3rd Floor Dreamin’

Today I’m going to introduce you to the third floor… the part of the house that has been virtually untouched over the years. We don’t use it for anything other than storage at the moment but over time, we have BIG plans for this space. Simply put, the space is huge. The third floor alone […]