The Kirby House

Location: 294 Center Street, Douglas
Date: 1890

Sarah Gill Kirby, the wife of a Douglas businessman, built this house for her family when she was 35 years old. Her husband died a few years later, and she continued to live here with her two children as one of the area’s reigning social matriarchs. By the 1920s she was renting rooms to tourists and growing ginseng for commercial purposes. She moved to California in 1932, where she lived until her death in 1951. The house was used as the area’s first hospital from 1931 to 1960. The builder of the home was local contractor George Kurz; it is now known as the Kirby House Inn.