Historic house being restored
Staff writer
An 1887 house at Santa Fe and 3rd Sts. is being stripped to its studs and refinished.
Stained glass windows still hang, original banisters and columns grace the inside, and other touches of the time it was built can still be seen.
But the walls will all be replaced to insulate and rewire the house.
“I’m guessing it won’t be ready until next spring or summer,” Tammy Ensey said. “We don’t have a timeline we’re up against.”
She envisions the house being used as office space for counseling services and similar endeavors needed in the community.
Her parents, Glenda and Duke McCord, Lake Kiowa, Texas, bought the house for Ensey to develop.
She and her husband, Jeremy, own the Historic Elgin Hotel across the street.
The house was built one year after the Elgin, about the same time as the Bowron Building at 3rd and Main Sts.
“We started looking at it last summer before we purchased the Elgin,” Tammy said. “It’s right out the front door. We wanted to preserve it. I have a passion for history and for preserving that history.”
The house has been known as the J.W. Moore house, named for one of the proprietors of the Marion Belt and Chingawassa Springs railroad, which briefly in the 1890s rand down 3rd St. to the Chingawassa Springs resort northeast of town.