Our postcard identifies this large familiar home as the Hodgson Funeral
Home. That name tells us the card was published after 1941, when the
Hodgson Mortuary moved from 17th Street to 608 20th Street and changed its
name to Hodgson Funeral Home. Hodgson owners Alwin F. Lindoerfer and Walter
Hesemen had announced the previous year that, pending permission from the
City Council, they would purchase the DeSilva home for a funeral home. They
intended to make extensive renovations, and noted that forty years previous
it was considered a showplace of Rock Island. The Argus described it as
being one of Rock Island's most palatial residences.
The first owner of this 14-room house mansion, which was built about 1892,
was Henry B. Sudlow. Mr. Sudlow was a Superintendent of the Rock Island &
Peoria Railroad as well as a Superintendent of the Coal Valley Mining
Company. He was also a director of the railroad. His wife, Mary, may have
been a member of the railroad-owning Cable family. In the late 1890s, Mrs.
Sudlow hosted 200 people in this home at a reception to welcome Mrs. H. S.
Cable into Tri-City society. When the Sudlows sold the home to Dr. Joseph
DeSilva around 1901, they moved to a smaller home at 832 23rd Street.
Until selling to Hodgsons, Dr. DeSilva lived in the home with his son,
Edward, who was also a prominent physician. At that time, Dr. DeSilva, who
was about 70 years old, had practiced in Rock Island for 45 years. He said
that he would move to the Harper House hotel downtown, which he had
purchased from the Harpers in 1909.
The first known photo of the house appeared in Picturesque Tri-Cities,
published shortly after the DeSilva family purchased it. That photo depicts
a house that looks like the one on our postcard, but without the two-story
front porch. The octagonal tower, which showed retracted fabric awnings on
its windows, and the intricate roofline define the home as Queen Anne in
style, while the extensive use of plain wood shingles at the third floor
level are characteristics of the Shingle style.
The varying shades of gray in the vintage black and white photo indicate a
multicolor paint scheme, very appropriate to the Queen Anne style. On the
stone curb next to the street, Dr DeSilva had placed a large stone block
with his name carved in bold square letters - a stepping stone to help enter
high carriages.
So who added the big front porch on the postcard? Evidence points to the
DeSilvas, since old fire insurance maps show the porch appeared about 1930.
At the same time, a large addition was made at the northwest corner of the
home - far right on our postcard. A one-story porch on the south that
appeared in the early photo was removed. The intent of this remodeling - in
addition to creating more space - almost certainly was to "modernize" the
house from a Victorian Queen Anne to a Classical Revival, a style
repopularized in the 1920s.
The postcard depicts the house as white, with a darker trim strip between
stories as well as horizontal colored stripes on the porch balusters. The
coloration may be an artist's enhancement of the original photo. The
awnings are gone, but the tower windows are all fitted with forties style
wide slatted Venetian blinds with wide tape hangers.
There are more differences between the home on our postcard and the one
today. Now there's a two-story porte-cochere addition on the south where the
small porch was once located. Since this addition appears in a photo taken
in 1941, it is probably one of the extensive renovations planned by Hodgsons
in 1940. The first story on the front porch has been enclosed and, around
1980, aluminum siding was installed on the exterior, except for the gables,
where original shingles remain. The interesting rounded bay on the north
side that shows on the postcard has been covered with a vertical siding, but
it is still curved. The balustrade atop the porch roof has also been
removed.
One hundred and ten years old and only three "families." Not bad for this
old house!
Footnote: I received an e-mail from Dean Lindoerfer in Colorado. His father
was Alwin F. Lindoerfer, the owner of Hodgson Funeral Home which moved into
the DeSilva home. Dean writes:
The home was purchased for $7,500 by my father and my mother's brother,
Walter H. Heseman, not by the Hodgsons. My father was working for Hodgson's
but not at the DeSilva home location. My father purchased, renovated it
along with his brother-in-law. The home, if you haven't been it, has a
beautiful third floor ball room, now used for casket storage, etc. I now
reside in Denver, but can remember Dr. Edward DeSilva (son of Joe DeSilva,
who owned the home) talking about the big Rock Island County parties that
were thrown at the third floor ballroom...big bands, dances...etc.
For more information about this home you can contact him at this link: Dean Lindoerfer
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