DUANE
Duane's take
Here's how the official marker tells it, and I'm gonna give it its due. Now, somewhere in Houston County stands a house that took two full years just to get right — started about 1891, finished in 1893, built by a man named J.E. Downes, a prominent local businessman who apparently did not believe in cutting corners.
And the house itself proves it. We're talking Eastlake-Victorian architecture — and if you know that style, you know it isn't shy. It announces itself.
Much of the material in the structure was imported from other states, which in the early 1890s was no small undertaking. You didn't just click a button and wait three to five business days. You wanted the good stuff, you went and got the good stuff, however far away it was sittin'.
Downes lived in that house until 1910 — nearly two decades inside those imported walls — and then, the following year, he sold it. The man who bought it was Armistead Albert Aldrich, born in 1858, and if you're doing the math, he would live all the way to 1945 — eighty-seven years on this earth, a good stretch of them inside this very house. The marker calls him a distinguished civic leader and historian, and that title carries weight.
This wasn't a man who passed through. Armistead Albert Aldrich resided in that house until his death. And here's where the story takes a turn that no tall tale could improve upon, because the truth is stubborn enough on its own: the Aldrich family still occupies the house.
The same house. The one with the imported materials and the Eastlake-Victorian bones and more than a century of living soaked into its walls. Some places get preserved behind velvet ropes.
This one just kept being home.
What the marker says
An outstanding example of Eastlake-Victorian architecture, started about 1891, completed in 1893, by J.E. Downes, prominent local businessman. Much of the material in the structure was imported from other states. Downes lived in the house until 1910, and sold it the next year to Armistead Albert Aldrich (1858-1945), distinguished civic leader and historian, who resided here until his death. The Aldrich family still occupies the house.