The Barney Kelley House is a historic residence in Washington Court House,

Ohio Ohio () is a state in the Midwestern region of the United States. Of the fifty U.S. states, it is the 34th-largest by area, and with a population of nearly 11.8 million, is the seventh-most populous and tenth-most densely populated. The sta ...

United States The United States of America (U.S.A. or USA), commonly known as the United States (U.S. or US) or America, is a country primarily located in North America. It consists of 50 states, a federal district, five major unincorporated territori ...

. Built amid a period of commercial prosperity for the city, it was home to some of the area's leading businessmen for many decades. Born in 1834 in Ireland, Barney Kelley immigrated to the United States and moved to Washington Court House in the 1860s. At this time, the city was growing rapidly due to improved transportation: multiple railroads served the city, making it a fine site for commerce. Kelley soon opened a combined saloon and general store on East Main Street, selling everything from food to cutlery.Owen, Lorrie K., ed. ''Dictionary of Ohio Historic Places''. Vol. 1.

St. Clair Shores St. Clair Shores is a suburban city bordering Lake St. Clair in Macomb County of the U.S. state of Michigan. It forms a part of the Metro Detroit area, and is located about northeast of downtown Detroit. Its population was 59,715 at the 2010 ...

: Somerset, 1999. In 1875, he arranged for the construction of the present house; and at this address he lived until selling it to Thomas Craig in 1896. Craig and his family, the owners of the city's Craig Brothers Department Store, owned the house until 1975. The Kelley House is a brick building with a stone

foundation Foundation may refer to: * Foundation (nonprofit), a type of charitable organization ** Foundation (United States law), a type of charitable organization in the U.S. ** Private foundation, a charitable organization that, while serving a good cause ...

, an asphalt roof, and various additional elements of stone.,

Ohio Historical Society Ohio History Connection, formerly The Ohio State Archaeological and Historical Society and Ohio Historical Society, is a nonprofit organization incorporated in 1885. Headquartered at the Ohio History Center in Columbus, Ohio, Ohio History Connect ...

, 2007. Accessed 2013-05-27. Designed and built by L.C. and B.C. Coffman and by Amos Cooke, it is one of several

Italianate The Italianate style was a distinct 19th-century phase in the history of Classical architecture. Like Palladianism and Neoclassicism, the Italianate style drew its inspiration from the models and architectural vocabulary of 16th-century Italian ...

houses in the city, but none of the others feature the Kelley House's most prominent component. Some of its typical Italianate features include the ornamental

frieze In architecture, the frieze is the wide central section part of an entablature and may be plain in the Ionic or Doric order, or decorated with bas-reliefs. Paterae are also usually used to decorate friezes. Even when neither columns nor ...

, the cornice supported by pairs of

brackets A bracket is either of two tall fore- or back-facing punctuation marks commonly used to isolate a segment of text or data from its surroundings. Typically deployed in symmetric pairs, an individual bracket may be identified as a 'left' or ' ...

, the keystones and architraves on the rounded arched windows, and the

quoins Quoins ( or ) are masonry blocks at the corner of a wall. Some are structural, providing strength for a wall made with inferior stone or rubble, while others merely add aesthetic detail to a corner. According to one 19th century encyclopedia, t ...

. Setting the house apart from the other Italianate residences is its unusual circular front

dormer window A dormer is a roofed structure, often containing a window, that projects vertically beyond the plane of a pitched roof. A dormer window (also called ''dormer'') is a form of roof window. Dormers are commonly used to increase the usable spac ...

, set in a semicircular extension of the facade. The side of the house is divided into two bays and the front into three, with the main entrance in the middle; a porch is placed across the full width of the facade. Washington Court House is not the only city in the region in which circular dormer windows are rare; the

Doan House The Doan House is a historic residence in the city of Wilmington, Ohio, United States. Constructed in the middle of the nineteenth century for a local medical official, it was for many years the home of one of the city's prominent lawyers. Th ...

is the only such residence with such a window in Wilmington to the southeast. In 1979, the Kelley House was listed on the

National Register of Historic Places The National Register of Historic Places (NRHP) is the United States federal government's official list of districts, sites, buildings, structures and objects deemed worthy of preservation for their historical significance or "great artistic ...

. One of several houses in the city with this distinction, it was listed both because it was the home of a prominent local citizen and because of its architecture.

References

{{DEFAULTSORT:Kelley, Barney, House Houses completed in 1875 Buildings and structures in Fayette County, Ohio Italianate architecture in Ohio National Register of Historic Places in Fayette County, Ohio Washington Court House, Ohio 1875 establishments in Ohio