Bell, George and Annie, House - Lawrence, Kansas - U.S. National Register of Historic Places on Waymarking.com

The Bell House in Lawrence is a one-and-a-haIf story rectangular stone building with a gable roof. The main facade is oriented toward Ohio Street on the west. Because the house is built into a steeply sloping hillside, the cellar door opens at ground level so from the east the facade appears to be two-and-half stories tall. Although the house has three functional levels, it is relatively small approximately 17.5 feet wide and 29 feet long. In spite of the unsympathetic addition of a room to the north and a large redwood deck to the east the house has retained its historic feeling and appearance. Current renovation plans call for the removal of the room and modification of the deck.

The Bell House is constructed of locally quarried limestone. It is tan in color with occasional dark brown concentrations of iron is some stones. The uncoursed rubble walls are approximately eighteen inches thick. Larger interlocking stones at the building corners have been squared to resemble quoins.

The most distinctive exterior features of the house are the cut keystone arches over all the door and window openings in the west and east facades. Original openings in the side walls have large cut and tooled stone lintels and sills.

Other than the fine stonework, there is little exterior ornamentation. There is a flat wooden fascia board and a crown molding on the gable eaves.

In plan the house basically has two rooms on the first floor and two on the second with a central brick chimney in the main partition wall. There were originally four exterior doors on the first floor. In addition to the entrances on the south side of the east and west walls, there are full-length openings in the west side of the south wall and the east side of the north wall.

Beside each of the entrances including that of the cellar, there are two six-over-six wooden double-hung windows. Each gable end has a pair of windows with semielliptical arched heads. Those in the west gable have wooden shutters hung on pins set in the frames. The louvered shutters are painted black. Full single windows are regularly arranged in the side walls and the east half of the cellar. Two smaller casement windows light the west half of the cellar where most of the walls are below grade. A shed dormer window has been added at the southwest corner of the second floor.

The wooden exterior doors and most of the windows appear to be original or at least very early. There are three four-panel solid wood exterior doors on the first floor of the Bell House. Two interior doors, one into the modern addition and one leading to the cellar stair, are similar. There is a paneled exterior door at the cellar entrance.