This house was built in three phases. William H. Mahar, who operated a stage line, built the north portion of the house, and Emery Bruley, a blacksmith and inventor from Ottawa, Ontario, erected the southern half of the house in 1885. The following year, the locally prominent Dewhurst family acquired the house. Richard Dewhurst was an attorney, Wisconsin legislator, and banker. In 1909, Dewhurst removed the Italianate porch, and the building assumed its present Queen Anne flair. The cross-gabled roof sheltering the two-story clapboard house is highly ornamented with scroll brackets, spindlework, and jigsaw-cut king posts. A steeply pitched hipped roof crowned by a roof crest surmounts the northern bay window, lending a turret-like appearance. A one-story veranda on the asymmetrical facade curves to form a semicircular entrance porch and extends diagonally to create a porte-cochere. Along the length of this porch, Ionic columns support an entablature ornamented by modillion blocks.
A later owner was Mary Dewhurst, who became president of the Neillsville Bank after her father’s death in 1895. Such a prominent business position was unusual for a woman at that time. The house is now an inn.