The oldest house in Moline will remain standing after Olde Town Roofing bought the historic home.
Built in 1858 a family of 6 lived there after moving back to Illinois, following the California Gold Rush in 1864.
Trimble Funeral Home took it over years later and was looking for a buyer, for years, to preserve the home.
Funeral Home owner Eric Trimble said he is excited to hand the keys over to someone he trusts will do great work, while preserving a piece of history.
“This house was as far outside of the city limits of Moline as you could get and be inside the city,” said Trimble.
Trimble said rather than tearing the house down, it was important to keep local history alive.
“We could have built new retail space if that was our goal and we could’ve done that with less expenditures,” Trimble said. “Restoring the historic building was important to us,” said Trimble.
Nearly 14 people once lived in the 4 bedroom home.
Olde Town Roofing Owner Sean Vogler said his company has completed several historic foundations around the Quad Cities.
He said he is looking forward to converting this location into their new modern day office space, while keeping the old building’s flare.
“We’ve got a pretty big lot here so it will be a nice little space where potentially bridge workers can come over and sit down and eat lunch or something,” Vogler said. “I think it’s going to be a good fit with everybody, a local Moline company and we can help out on the bridge with situations for the workers as well,” said Vogler.
Outgrowing their current office space, Vogler said they are slowly taking steps to prepare for new landscaping.
He said as a long time resident of Moline, he wants to help beautify his city in any way he can.
“We’re going to put this house back into the shape it needs to be in and it’s going to look like it used to,” said Vogler. “With the old rod iron fence and everything, the exterior and interior is going to look like an old house,” Vogler said.
Vogler said they do not plan on registering the house on the National Register of Historic Places although it qualifies.
He said they will start working on revamping the house as soon as they get the proper funding from the city.
