County of building: Saint Charles County
Location of Marker: 302 Jefferson St., St. Charles
Marker Erected by: Midtown Neighborhood Association
Building number 233 on the NRHP Nomination Form
Marker Text:
302 Jefferson Street
This brick home was built in 1895 by Henry B. Denker as a wedding gift for his daughter Annie and her husband, William Rechtern. The Rechterns later gave the home as a wedding gift in 1950 to their son, Ralph, and his wife, Esther, who lived here until 1995. As of 2002, only two other families have called this home.
It is an architectural expression of enhanced eclecticism taking on varying characteristics of Queen Anne with an emphasis on the Romanesque style.
The home is noted for its distinctive rooflines and its intricate exterior stone and brickwork.
"Situated on an elevated corner lot, this 2-story Queen Anne Free Classic house has a coursed rock-faced limestone foundation, painted brick walls and a steeply pitched hip roof with cross gabled bays facing both streets. Each 1½-story, cross-gabled bay has a large Palladian window on the upper level. The Palladian windows have round arched upper sashes in the center (the one on the south side has leaded glass in the upper sash) and the flanking windows have elaborate window hoods and flanking paired brick pilasters. The one facing east onto Third has a canted bay window with a hipped roof with iron roof cresting, while the one facing south onto Jefferson has a large, round-arched tripartite window on the first floor that has bead-like pilaster strips on the mullions between the 1/1 windows. Like the Palladian windows, the round-arched window has a broad, brick lintel and dressed stone sills. To the west of the gabled bay on the south elevation is a shed-roofed extension with a hipped dormer above that forms the porch roof which is supported by 3 Doric columns (with matching pilasters on the brick wall). There are small dentils under the eaves of the porch, the sides of the shed roof have a sunburst detail, and the areas above the columns form flattened arched openings. The door is a half-glazed, 3-horizontal panel door and next to the door is a bottle glass 1/1 wood window. The brick knee walls are capped by a dressed stone course that continues to become a belt course and continuous lintel for the round arched window across the south façade. The dormer has paired rectangular window openings with round-arched sashes with leaded glass. On the east elevation, to the north of the gabled wing, is a clipped, pedimented dormer with an arched light. The shed roof over the first floor enclosed porch has dentil molding under the eaves (it was enclosed in 2003 with 4 pairs of casement windows). To the south of the gabled wing is a gabled wall dormer with 2 slender 1/1 windows. The pediment in the gable end is clad with halftimbered stucco and the peak is pierced by a brick end wall chimney." ~ NRHP Nomination Form