Houses on West Washington Street Have Many Stories to Tell
By Ruth Cobb & Karen Schmidt
Three houses in the 800 block of West Washington Street are among many West Bloomington homes with fascinating histories. Numerous residents of all three houses had connections to the Chicago & Alton Railroad and the nearby C & A Shops. The homes at 809, 811 and 813 were built by different people between the mid-1800s and early 1900s, but for many years, all three were owned by members of the Oliver family.
The earliest mention of 809 W. Washington in the Bloomington City Directory is in 1868, with lawyer John Spence as the owner. By 1917, Henry and Vertie Oliver had moved to this home, which they owned for the rest of their lives. Henry was an engineer on the Bloomington to Chicago trains for 20 years and was an avid gardener. Their son, James Oliver, was nine years old when his family moved to the house.
The elegant home at 811 W. Washington was built around 1895 by William F. Spreen, another engineer with the C & A Railroad. It was featured in a publication called Illustrated Bloomington and Normal, Illinois in 1896. That same year, Engineer Spreen narrowly escaped death when his train collided with another Alton freight train. Spreen and his wife rented out rooms to others before they sold the home in 1905. The 1943-
1944 City Directory indicates neighbor James Oliver lived at 811, which had been converted to five apartments. James Oliver was an interior decorator, and he and his wife, Charlotte, owned this building until they both died in the late 1990s.
The City Directory does not list a house at 813 W. Washington until 1909, when Jacob Hess and his wife, Minnie, built a home on the site. Jacob owned a stonecutting operation at 1300 W. Washington Street (across the street from Mid-Central Community Action today). According to City Directory listings, Jacob and Minnie built a home on Broadway Place in Normal and moved there in 1925. Pantagraph pressman Herbert V. Johnson and his wife, Ida, were among the subsequent owners between 1935 and the mid-1940s.
So… what tied these three homes together? Bloomington has often struggled with a shortage of housing for its residents.
The 1943-1944 City Directory indicates that Henry and Virtie Oliver had converted the upper floor of their house at 809 W. Washington to an apartment that was occupied by Claude Lingle, a superintendent at the nearby Beich Candy factory. Lingle lived in that apartment until at least 1949. After his parents died, James Oliver inherited the house at 809 and continued to rent out the apartments in both 809 and 811.
The year James Oliver acquired the home at 813 could not be confirmed. He retired from his work as an interior decorator in 1973, and operated Oliver’s Tropical Fish Supply from 1971 to 1984 from a two-story garage he built behind the house at 813. The basement at 811 also included a huge concrete tub he used to raise the fish. James Oliver also devised a simple whole-house vacuum system, and after he was mugged in the driveway after collecting rent from a tenant, he figured out a way for his tenants to convey their rent payments between the structures that did not require him to be outside.
James Oliver died in 1994, but the time and energy he put into maintaining and improving the houses is still evident. 809 and 813 are single-family homes again, and 811 still has four apartments. These three buildings are physically very close to each other – 811 and 813 share a driveway. While each of them have had a number of owners and occupants over the years, the Oliver family helped ensure the preservation of these distinctive homes in our neighborhood.