In its own quiet, modestly self-confident way, this brick house is as reassuring as the county courthouse it faces. Conventional in appearance, it was obviously the comfortable home of a prominent local family. Perhaps unconventionally, the designs of both the original portion and an early-twentieth-century addition are credited to women.
The builder, Melville Peck, was a newspaper owner, prosecuting attorney, and twice-elected mayor. His wife, Cora May Crim Peck, planned the house. When the Pecks moved in 1907, Mrs. Peck's brother, a banker and businessman, bought the house. His wife, Virginia Talbott Crim, planned the addition, creating a new living room and adding two rooms above. Both women must have been eminently practical. Considering its prominent location, not to mention the prominence of the owners, the house is extremely restrained stylistically. Built of brick, painted red, the irregularly shaped, two-story building has both gable- and hiproofed sections. Relatively steep gables and sawtooth trim along the cornice and gable ends are suggestive of Victorian Gothic, but round-arched gable windows and a one-story porch with Tuscan columns preclude any simplistic stylistic identification.