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Historical group asks and community responds as work to restore founder of Lowell’s home continues

Lowell’s Halsted House has a new roof after community members and local businesses stepped up to care for the 160-plus-year-old home of the town’s founder.

Dennis Keithley, with the Three Creeks Historical Association, said members learned after a roof inspection during the summer the entire cedar shake roof needed to be replaced. Keithley and TCHA members Gayle Painter, Diana McIntire and Connie Schrombeck met recently at the house to provide a tour.

“The roof was 20 years old and all deteriorating. It was moss-laden and missing shingles,” Keithley said.

The news of the needed new roof came in the midst of the pandemic when summer hours and activities that help fund the home’s maintenance would normally take place. The Halsted House has been closed to the public since the onset of the COVID-19 pandemic.

With only 29 members in the association, Keithley said the group turned to the community for support.

“Everybody has been so generous,” Schrombeck said.

Estimates to replace the roof with the same cedar shake shingles, which are authentic to the historical building’s original design, were $14,000, Keithley said.

“We really couldn’t do it on our own,” he said.

Keithley said the Crown Point Community Foundation provided a $2,500 grant to get the ball rolling. TCHA members then turned to the community offering lifetime and year memberships for donations. The drive proved successful.

The home has been on the National Register of Historic Places since 1978 and operates as a museum. The TCHA members have been responsible for maintaining the home, which was still occupied when they first took over.

“We had a lot of fun working together and fixing it up,” McIntire said.

Volunteers have worked to restore the Federal-style home built by Melvin Halsted, the town’s founder, for many years. It is a slow and ongoing process, they said. The 400,000 hand-kiln bricks used to construct the home, and almost every brick home in Lowell built before the 1900s, came from Halsted’s own nearby brick making business, Painter said.

Halsted, an Easterner, named the town Lowell after he moved here because he thought it resembled Lowell, Massachusetts, Keithley said.

Association members will happily share the story of Halsted and other prominent figures in Lowell’s town history during their events. They all said they are hopeful programming and association meetings can resume next year.

The group said they were overwhelmed by the support from the community when the needs of the association were made known. Thirteen businesses and 23 families donated $200 or more to become lifetime members of the TCHA. Another 16 families qualified for annual memberships. Donations are still being accepted to pay for the ongoing maintenance of the historic home.

“The community really responded,” Painter said. “Sometimes, you just need to ask.”

Carrie Napoleon is a freealance reporter for the Post-Tribune.