"Castle" built in Victorian style

Royalty does not reside in the house known as "Castle" on 502 Franklin Street, but several proud members of Phi Kappa Theta treat the house as their castle.

Since its erection, the Castle has had many owners and residents. Samuel M. Pickler (the namesake of Pickler Memorial Library) built the Queen Anne style house circa 1880 with his second wife, Ida Martin Fowler, according to "The History of Adair County" by Eugene Violette.

Pickler was born in Indiana in 1846, and he moved to Kirksville in 1866 to study at the Normal School (now Truman), according to Violette. When the school became a State Normal School, he became a regular member of the faculty as an instructor of Elocution, Logic, Bookkeeping and Math until 1873. He then turned his attention to journalism as owner and editor of the Kirksville Journal, which is when he built the house, according to Violette.

Cole Woodcox, department chair of English and Linguistics, said many of the high style Victorian houses built in the late 1800s surround the area where the house is.

"Victorian style was popular in 1880 to 1890," Woodcox said. "Kirksville has a number of those - many of them torn down - up along Franklin Street."

The Victorian style is much different from the early 20th century style houses built after the Castle in the early 1900s.

"These [Victorian style] houses have much more confined spaces, very large rooms, but they don't communicate as openly with each other, flowing the living room into the dining room into the hallways," he said.

During this time period, entertaining was not a high priority, so Pickler built his house to fit his practical needs. Pickler was busy as editor of the paper but handed over the position to the Link family in 1891, according to Violette. Subsequently, he managed a mercantile store on the north side of The Square, Pickler's Famous, which Kirksville city councilman Todd Kuhns is attempting to reopen. In 1906, Pickler constructed another house across the street and sold the house to Judge Solomon Stahl, according to the 1986 Historic Inventory.

Stahl was born in 1851 in Bethel, Mo. , and moved to Adair County in 1866 with his family, according to Violette. He lived outside of town and participated in several small-town businesses as a mercantile agent and coal developer until moving into town in 1882, according to Violette. He moved to Bentonville, Ark., for several years and returned in 1906 to be president of the Kirksville Savings Bank and purchased the Castle.

The house had several other residents before being split into three, three-bedroom apartments occupied by six members of Phi Kappa Theta and three other Truman students.

Senior Pat Myers has lived in the house for the past two years and said members of his fraternity have occupied the house for the past two decades.

"The first thing the alumni do when they get into town is stop at the actual fraternity house on Osteopathy and then come to Castle," he said. "The house is really important to us. Every year we take a picture of all the people living in the house on the roof, and the pictures span more than two decades."

Myers said the house is known as the Castle because of the exterior, but the interior of the house no longer represents any historical features.

"The defining feature, the reason we call it Castle, is the turret on the right side of the house that appears to be castle[-like]," he said.

Myers said the fraternity plans to fill the entire house next year and reside in the house as long as possible.

"You can definitely tell it's an old house," he said. "It appears to have been modernized in the 1970s. All the walls are matching wood paneled throughout every apartment."

Landlord Nancy Mihalevich has owned the house since 1982. She said Phi Kappa Theta members have lived in the house since she started renting it out, but they have not always filled all the apartments.

She said that when she purchased the house it already was split into apartments, but she has updated the house frequently.

"I have done regular updates on the house, and I've remodeled since I've owned it about three times," she said.

Although the house is historic, it has mostly been updated to accommodate college students rather than present its historic beauty, but Mihalevich said she has discovered historic features in the past while working on the house.

"When I replaced the siding, they took the old siding off, and there was a lot of neat work that has been covered for years," she said. "There are a couple of windows that still have the original lead glass."