DISTRICT FEATURED               PROPERTY

Avery Historic District, Parkersburg’s first suburban development, is highly significant for the historic role it played in sustaining the city as one of West Virginia’s leading cities.  It housed the families who were the life blood of the City’s growth.  One of those structures significant within the District is the building at 10th and Avery Streets.    

It was built between 1860 and 1879 and is a two-story frame house in the stick Eastlake Carpenter Gothic style.  Its roof has a complex composition of hips and gabled wall dormers pierced by two brick chimneys.  It was added to the National Register of Historic Places on December 10, 1982 and was part of the Parkersburg Downtown Multiple Resource Area.  Its period of significance was from 1850-1899.  In the 1920s it was bought by the Mehl family.  An early owner had the last name of Masters. However, the ‘Kaltenecker House’, as it is known in more recent years, was not owned by anyone from that family until 1974.  The house features sawed woodwork that makes it the most highly gingerbreaded ornamental residential building in downtown Parkersburg.

 

The house has a connection with the tragedy of the Quincy Hill water tank disaster.  In March 1909 a water tank on the hill burst, destroying the one next to it which in turn sent two million gallons of water, mud and debris into City streets.  A picture found taken in front of the house showed three bodies being loaded into a hearse.  

 

This structure is surely a good example of why preservation is so important.

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