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In August of 1905, 32-year-old Nick N. Weber purchased 8013 East Street (lot 17) in Otto Hasse’s Subdivision from Math and Mary Steffes for $1,000. In March of the next year, he purchased the adjoining lot 16 from Otto and Anna Hasse for $115 to widen his 50 ft property to 100 ft. Nick and his wife Anna Schumacher moved in with their one-year-old son, Paul, and six-month-old daughter, Agnes. Three years later, daughter Eva was born. Then, in 1912, they purchased the old Episcopal Church at 1813 Main, which they dismantled, and built a new Dutch Colonial house for themselves.
They sold the house and lot at 8013 East Street to newlyweds Frank and Matilda (Tillie) May for $1,400 in 1913. Frank was a cement contractor who built barn foundations and many concrete silos in the area (with diamond pinnacles). They had four children: Arnold was born in 1918, then Frank Jr., Lorraine, and lastly, Eugene.
Son Arnold put himself through college, studying civil engineering at the U of I. He built the first bathroom in the house and installed plumbing in the kitchen so they could have running water in the house. Arnold also built a lovely windmill and pond in the backyard for his parents’ enjoyment. Son Eugene raised his family in Spring Grove and was village president from 1980-1983.
The original house was an attractive, simple, but popular home with an open front porch with columns and a spindle railing. Probably in the 1920s, Frank enclosed the front porch. He used molded concrete blocks made to look like artificial stone for the new porch walls that he no doubt made by hand using a concrete block machine. Each block would have been molded one at a time. He also did the same thing on the back of the house, either adding a new enclosed porch or enclosing an existing one. Note the decoration on the roof gable in the photo of the family in the backyard. This gable decoration would have also been on the front gable of the house originally.
Story by Laura Frumet
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