1009 College Avenue
The house was once owned by a Nobel Prize winner.
This Queen Ann Victorian style house was built in 1892 by Ferdinand W. Weiber. The house was built to be 2 ½ stories high with a wood framed structure that featured a cross gable roof. Weiber was the owner of “Whol Meats,” a successful meat wholesale business. He and his wife Sophia would continue to live there for 47 years. Between the years of 1898 to 1902, Weiber purchased two more land plots for the property and used them to build a garage in 1908, increasing the property’s value.
The front entrance of the house opens into a porch that spans across the entire 32 feet of the north side of the house. The roof is shingled and the original asbestos siding was replaced and is painted a dark sage green. Windows on the first floor feature stained glass designs of pink roses, which are the symbolic flower of the Delta Zeta sorority. The first floor additionally displays a beautiful six foot long fireplace made of brick. The third floor features a bay window with a tin roof that overlooks College Avenue. The inner layout of the house is asymmetrical, with dark wood used throughout for trimmings, doors, molding, and banisters.
In 1939, Corbin T. Eddy purchased the house and resided there with his family for 31 years. Eddy was a professor in metallurgical engineering at Michigan Technological University as well as a Nobel Prize winner. While he and his family resided there, a bay window was added to the dining room of the house around 1950. In 1970, Eddy sold the house for $35,000 to John M. Clark and his wife, who later sold it in the late 1980s to Ron and Lou Hellman. The house had not undergone any major renovations and remained very close to its original state at this time. In 2001, the house was sold to Michigan Tech’s Lambda Theta chapter of the Delta Zeta sorority for $200,000. The sorority renovated the top floor to be suitable for more bedrooms for its members and significantly updated the kitchen in 2020.
Sources: Miller, M. (2003, April 28) 1009 College Ave. A history.; Residential Assessment Record from 1970; Historic Houghton Walking Tour (c. 2000); Image: Delta Zeta House. (~2022). photograph, 1009 College Ave. Houghton, MI 49931.