First House in Douglas

Location: 249 Washington Street, Douglas
Date: 1851

Built by Jonathan Wade and wife Fanny as their family home in 1851. Wade’s new lumber mill of the same year was the beginning of Douglas’s history. House is a two-room-up/two-room-down type—with a later “lean-to” addition at rear. It is of primitive traditional “plank” (not balloon-frame) construction of the time, and with clapboard siding to give it a simple Greek Revival form. It was called “Bay View” because of the view of what is now “Wade’s Bayou” to the east.