11
(Photo by Richard F. Hope)
Dr. Innes House (20 North 3rd Street, now Quadrant Book Mart & Coffee House).
3-1/2-story brickface building with three tall chimneys, built in a “Gothic/Jacobian” style.[1] Garden at rear was at one time an indoor conservatory in the mansion.
The property is part of original town Lot No. 141, as surveyed by William Parsons when Easton was established in 1752.[2] That Lot was formally obtained from the Penn Family by John Rees (also spelled Reese) in a patent dated in April of 1776;[3] in the underlying survey, Rees agreed to build a “stone dwelling house” on the property.[4] John Rees also informally occupied the adjacent Lot No.142,[5] finally purchasing formal title to it in 1789.[6] Rees had also formally purchased the following Lot No.143 from its owners in 1775,[7] and sold it to his son Jacob in 1805.[8]
John Rees was a “Taylor” by trade.[9] After his death, his remaining real estate (i.e. Lot Nos.141 and 142) was broken up (“partitioned”) by Orphan’s Court, to be split up among his three children. Part No.1, at the corner with the alley that later became Church Street, had 33 feet and three inches of frontage on Pomfret (now called North 3rd) Street, but appears to have been unimproved by any buildings. To support its valuation at £400, the “partition” included a right to “make use of the southern wall of the house erected on the adjacent “Part No.2”, which would help the new owner build their own house. At Orphan’s Court proceedings on 25 April 1807, Rees’s daughter Christina (married to John Carey the Elder) accepted “Part No.1” for a portion of her inheritance.[10] Although changes have been made at the rear of the property, it still has essentially the same frontage on North 3rd Street today.[11]
John Carey was a carpenter, as was his son John Carey the Younger (whose wife was also named Christina!).[12] In 1808, father and son entered into an agreement under which John Carey the Elder would sell this land to his son, for £400 paid in installments, provided John Carey the Younger agreed to build “in a good workmanlike manner a two Storey frame house twenty two by twenty eight feet” by the summer, on the “lower corner of the Lot” fronting on the alley (presumably what became Bank Street in the rear of the property), for occupation by the father and his wife during their lifetimes. Otherwise, the son was allowed “immediate possession” of the “Front half of said Lot”.[13] In 1812, a deed confirmed that the money had been paid the other agreement commitments had been kept. Accordingly, title was transferred to John Carey the Younger. This deed continued to recite the right to “adjoin and make use of” Jacob Reese’s “Southern Wall”.[14]
John Carey the Younger kept the property until 1833. At that time, he sold the front part of the Lot, 120’ deep, to Abraham Beidelman for $1,500. The deed recited that the property had a “Frame Shop” on it, but did not recite the presence of any house, suggesting that Carey had used it to carry on his carpentry trade. By this time, however, Carey had retired (he was listed in the deed as an “Esquire”).[15] Abraham Beidelman had already owned the adjacent northern part of Lot No. 141,[16] including the “Southern Wall” that the deed language (duly carried over from prior deeds) allowed him to “adjoin and make use of”.
Beidelman may be the same “Abraham Beidleman” who, as one of the six sons of Elias Beidleman, inherited jointly over 153 acres of property in Lower Saucon Township from their father. A 4-acre “Meadow” had been sold out of this property, which Abraham paid £36 to have returned in 1783.[17] He may also have been the “Abraham Bidleman” who, along with the other men in his company, had received a $6 advance on his enlistment pay as a private during the War of 1812.[18] In 1823, “Farmer” Abraham “Bidleman” paid $8,893.80 to purchase two properties in Williams Township, one containing over 157 acres, and a smaller one containing more than 27 acres.[19] In his later deeds, Abraham “Bidleman” listed his occupation as a “Gentleman”[20] or “Esquire”.[21]
Beidelman retained this Easton property until his death on 21 February 1843.[22] In 1847, his heirs and their legal representatives sold the property to Charles Innes, “Doctor of Medicine” – still reciting the right to use the “Southern Wall of the Stone Messuage erected on the said Abraham Beidelman’s Lot.” The sale price was $4,350.[23]
A modern newspaper article states that Dr. Charles Innes, “during that year [when he purchased the house,] had the present building erected”, but gives no source for the statement.[24] The newspaper might have been looking at the architectural style, because in fact a “Gothic Revival” style did “spread across America in the 1840’s and 1850’s”. However, the actual features of the house, which include “a polychromatic exterior finish” (that is, a contrast of building materials colors between the stone corners and the brick walls), as well as the apparent flat roof (instead of a gabled one more usual in early Gothic buildings), suggests that the visible architectural style more nearly reflects the later “Victorian Gothic” of the 1860-90 period, as remodeled from an earlier, simpler style of building.[25] That same flat roof, as well as the recessed front entry, and very simple entablatures retained above the windows, may indicate that the earlier house style was in fact “Greek Revival”, typical of an earlier period. Moreover, a comparison of Beidelman’s purchase and sale prices provides circumstantial evidence that in fact he, and not Innes, built the house. The sale price that Innes paid the Beidelman estate was almost three times what Beidelman had paid to purchase the property just 14 years before,[26] suggesting some considerable construction by Beidelman. Moreover, a comparison with other property prices in the area suggest that Innes bought a considerable house, rather than building it himself. In 1846 (just one year earlier), Dr. Charles Innes himself bought a comparably-sized piece of property farther up the other (East) side of North 3rd Street – and paid only $350 for it (compared with the $4,350 he paid for what became 20 North 3rd Street).[27]
At all events, Dr. Charles Innes took up residence in his property at least by 1852.[28] He was again listed there in 1855, when the assigned address was 8 North Third Street.[29] With the 1874 inauguration of the modern street numbering scheme, his house was reassigned the modern address of 20 North 3rd Street.[30]
Dr. Charles Innes (1802-1880)[31] was a son of early Easton settler Robert Innes, a merchant whose house had been located at the NW corner of Centre Square and Northampton Street.[32] He served on the School Board committee that planned the organization of Easton’s McCartney High School in the 1850s.[33] He retired from medical practice “shortly after the Civil War” for health reasons, and died in 1880.[34] He was survived by his widow (Matilda “Tilda” Mixsell Innes) and son (Edward), who lived in the house into the early 1880s.[35]
In 1883, Edward Innes sold the house for $12,000 to his uncle, Easton lawyer Matthew Hale Jones [the second],[36] whose illustrious father (the first Mathew Hale Jones) had lived across the street in the mansion at the NE corner of North 3rd Street and Centre Square that later became the basis for the Hotel Huntington.[37]
· There were ultimately four successive “Matthew Hale Jones” in Easton. The second one – who features in this building’s history – is often confusingly referred to as Matthew Hale Jones Sr. He had studied law in his father’s office, until opening his own law practice with partner Floyd B. McAlee in 1896.[38]
In fact, the first Matthew Hale Jones had died just a few months before the purchase, leaving the Jones Family house to his three children, two sons (Robert I. Jones and a second Matthew Hale Jones) and a daughter (Elizabeth, wife of lawyer William S. Kirkpatrick).[39] His son Robert I. Jones continued in residence in the family homestead,[40] while his namesake Matthew Hale Jones [the second] moved across the street to take up residence in the Dr. Innes House.[41] However, after four years (in 1887), Matthew Hale Jones Jr. sold Dr. Innes’s former house for $18,000 to his sister, Elizabeth, wife of William Sebring Kirkpatrick,[42] and apparently moved his residence back into the family homestead at the corner with Centre Square.[43] The Kirkpatricks took up residence in the Dr. Innes House by 1887.[44] William Kirkpatrick (1844-1932) was a successful lawyer with, in addition, a long history of government positions. At various times he served as the President Judge of the Pennsylvania Third Judicial District Court, the Attorney General of Pennsylvania (1887), and a U.S. Congressman (1896).[45] Note that his term as Attorney General in 1887 roughly coincided with his move to the more centrally-located Dr. Innes House.
The large increase in sale price after only four years reckoned between lawyers Jones and Kirkpatrick – with due allowance for the fact that it was a “family deal” and not really a market transaction – nevertheless suggests that a significant improvement was made to the property by Jones before it was transferred to his daughter. As discussed above, the 1880s is consistent with the time period when the “Victorian Gothic Revival” architectural styles were in vogue,[46] suggesting that the current façade of the house may date from this period. Judge Kirkpatrick’s taste in similar late Victorian revival façades is corroborated by the “two handsome houses” he owned in 1885 done up in Tudor Revival style at 120-22 North 3rd Street, one of them “occupied by . . . Mrs. Kirkpatrick” at that time.[47]
Judge Kirkpatrick continued to live at 20 North 3rd Street after 1900,[48] but moved out to by 1910.[49] In that year, the resident was cement mills clerk Francis G. McKelvey.[50] In 1920, residential space was occupied by banker Mark Swartz,[51] while in 1926, real estate company H.T. Updegrove, Inc. was located in the building.[52] A florist business (Kleinhan’s Florist) operated out of the building by 1928. The florist’s clerk, John Limeberry, believed that he had been promised a proprietary interest in the Kleinhan shop in exchange for low wages, but was never actually made a proprietor.[53] Kleinhans Flower Shop, as well as other businesses and apartments, occupied the building in 1930.Residential space was occupied in 1930 by silk mill thrower Margaret V. Hillliard,[54] but by the late 1930s flower shop owner Arthur Kleinhaus and his wife also lived there in one of the apartments.[55]
After Judge Kirkpatrick’s death in 1932, his sons (William and Donald) acquired ownership.[56] They continued to rent out space in the building to various tenants, including (among others) Kleinhans Florist (into the 1950s)[57] and later Ken’s Delicatessen.[58] In 1967, they also began renting space in the building to Harold Kares, a podiatrist.[59] In 1971, Harold Kares purchased the building,[60] bringing to an end 124 years of ownership by the Innes/Jones/Kirkpatrick Family.[61] The house came to be known for him as the “Kares Building” in the 1970s.[62] By then, however, the building had fallen into disrepair. In 1976, the Easton Redevelopment Authority (“ERA”) took over the building by eminent domain,[63] leaving the building vacant.[64]
· Dr. Kares then purchased the Charles Coburn Homestead (42 North Third Street) from the Easton Parking and Realty Corp.,[65] and moved his business and residence there.[66]
As part of “Urban Renewal”, ERA planned to widen Church Street from Fourth to Third Streets into a thoroughfare, to allow customer access and parking, and truck access and loading in the rear of Northampton Street stores such as the former Bush & Bull Department Store building (occupied by a large Woolworth’s store at that time).[67] The project design required removing the “Kares Building” at Third Street, as well as the “Cinruss and Patio Buildings” on North Fourth Street. This plan engendered a multi-year political controversy in Easton, which raged between pro-development and pro-preservation forces.[68] Meanwhile, Woolworth’s itself closed in 1978,[69] leaving that large building vacant, and the owners lobbied heavily to have Church Street widened throughout the block, to encourage a new retail use of the space.[70]
In 1979, a proposal was made to resolve the dispute by demolishing the Fourth Street buildings and widening Church Street half-way, but retaining the “Kares Building” on North 3rd Street (and extending its property through the rear part of the lots all the way back to 4th Street). The “Kares Building” property was to be sold to bookseller Richard Epstein for renovation.[71] In the meantime, the Northampton County Industrial Redevelopment Authority took over formal ownership of the redesigned property, which now stretched all the way back to 4th Street, alongside a widened Church Street.[72] Epstein transferred his Quadrant Book Mart from West Easton, and opened it instead on North 3rd Street, beginning in 1979.[73]
· The name “Quadrant” came from the mechanism on a cable car that grabs the cable, which he thought was appropriate to Centre Square because of the cable car routes that had once converged there,[74] especially the celebrated one up the hill to Lafayette College.
A deed finalizing the sale to Epstein was finally completed in 1999.[75]
In 2003, Epstein sold the property to Joanne (“Jo”) Moranville and Andris (“Andy”) Danielsons.[76] They have continued to operate the bookstore, art gallery and restaurant as a meeting place for some members of the Easton political and arts communities.[77] Jo Moranville also has participated personally in Easton civic projects, such as organizing a neighborhood block watch[78] and Easton’s traditional garlic festival.[79] Meanwhile, Andy Danielsons works with the books, and at times has provided celebrated chili such as his particularly spicy variety known as “Death in a Jar”.[80]