50 Bryant Street

Unique Home Built With Pieces of the City’s History – 50 Bryant Street – Circa 1895

The artist, a stone carver, at home with her dogs and art, many antiques

How the other half lived. This simple vernacular brick worker’s cottage provides a sharp contrast with the other homes on this tour, which were built for middle and upper-class families. Nevertheless, this small house is as well-designed and well-constructed as any built during the period, and remains a comfortable place to live.

The recessed entry leads directly into the dining room at the center of the house. To the left is staircase winding to the second floor, and the front parlor; to the rear is the pantry and kitchen. The ceilings on the first floor are nine feet high, and the principal woodwork is the original painted pine.

However, the history of this house is held to be more complex than the design. The house was probably built by Ernest Deutschmann, one of the owners of this property, in the 1890s. Deutschmann was a mason, which would account for one of the few brick houses built in the Lumber City during this period; especially striking is that it was apparently built as a rental property.

The earliest known occupants were the engineer Edgar D. Knibbs and his wife Mary, who were living here by early 1900. It has been passed down through the Deutschmann family that the house was built with bricks and timbers from the Vandervoort house of 1836, which had been torn down after a fire; some charred beams actually support the floor of this house. It is quite likely that bricks and/or timbers from an older structure were used in building this house, as reusing materials from demolished buildings was a common occurrence. However, proving whether those bricks and timbers came from the first brick house in the city will require much more research.