The Calendar Rohrbough House is a historic house located at 3rd and Washington Streets in

Kinmundy Kinmundy is a city in Marion County, Illinois, United States. The population was 796 at the 2010 census. The town is believed to have been named after a place in Scotland, the birthplace of William Ferguson, a London agent for the Illinois Centra ...

Illinois Illinois ( ) is a U.S. state, state in the Midwestern United States, Midwestern United States. Its largest metropolitan areas include the Chicago metropolitan area, and the Metro East section, of Greater St. Louis. Other smaller metropolita ...

. The Italianate house was built in 1875 for Calendar Rohrbough, a local merchant and politician. It was added to 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 v ...

in 1979.

Architecture

The house is designed in the Italianate style. A

verandah A veranda or verandah is a roofed, open-air gallery or porch, attached to the outside of a building. A veranda is often partly enclosed by a railing and frequently extends across the front and sides of the structure. Although the form ''veran ...

wraps around the south and west sides of the house; the verandah features scroll

bracket 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 'r ...

s on its

cornice In architecture, a cornice (from the Italian ''cornice'' meaning "ledge") is generally any horizontal decorative moulding that crowns a building or furniture element—for example, the cornice over a door or window, around the top edge of a ...

and at the top of its supporting posts. Scroll brackets also decorate the cornice of the house's

hip roof A hip roof, hip-roof or hipped roof, is a type of roof where all sides slope downwards to the walls, usually with a fairly gentle slope (although a tented roof by definition is a hipped roof with steeply pitched slopes rising to a peak). Thus, ...

. The house's exterior windows are tall, narrow, and topped by arched brick

lintel A lintel or lintol is a type of beam (a horizontal structural element) that spans openings such as portals, doors, windows and fireplaces. It can be a decorative architectural element, or a combined ornamented structural item. In the case of w ...

s. The interior of the house features several rooms arranged around a central hallway and staircase; the rooms are decorated with

oak An oak is a tree or shrub in the genus ''Quercus'' (; Latin "oak tree") of the beech family, Fagaceae. There are approximately 500 extant species of oaks. The common name "oak" also appears in the names of species in related genera, notably ''L ...

trim, and the doors are topped with oak

grille Grill or grille may refer to: Food * Barbecue grill, a device or surface used for cooking food, usually fuelled by gas or charcoal, or the part of a cooker that performs this function * Flattop grill, a cooking device often used in restaurants ...

s. The Illinois Historic Structures Survey named the house as the best surviving example of the style in Kinmundy.

History

The house's first owner, Calendar Rohrbough, was born in Upshur County, Virginia and moved to Kinmundy in 1857. He served in the

Civil War A civil war or intrastate war is a war between organized groups within the same state (or country). The aim of one side may be to take control of the country or a region, to achieve independence for a region, or to change government policies ...

for the Union Army from 1862 to 1865, achieving the rank of captain as a member of the

118th Illinois Volunteer Infantry Regiment The 118th Illinois Volunteer Infantry was an infantry regiment in the Union Army during the American Civil War. On June 10, 1863, the regiment was converted to mounted infantry. Service The 118th Illinois Infantry was organized at Camp Butler i ...

. After returning to Kinmundy, Rohrbough founded the Kinmundy First National Bank and the Kinmundy Savings and Loan Association. He was also active in politics and was elected mayor of Kinmundy before attempting a run for U.S. Congress in 1888. After Rohrbough's death, Fred O. Grissom purchased the house in 1925. Grissom also served as mayor of Kinmundy; in addition, he served as the city's postmaster for twenty-three years and as editor and publisher of the ''Kinmundy Express'' for eighteen. Grissom lived in the house until his death in 1978. The house was added to the National Register of Historic Places on September 6, 1979.

Notes

{{DEFAULTSORT:Rohrbough, Calendar, House Houses in Marion County, Illinois National Register of Historic Places in Marion County, Illinois Houses on the National Register of Historic Places in Illinois Italianate architecture in Illinois Houses completed in 1875