Picture Courtesy of Jim Kuntz

Picture Courtesy of Jim Kuntz

Constructed between c. 1857-1941, District buildings are good representative examples of the major styles and types of Washington, Missouri's historic structures, illustrating the evolution of a 19th century immigrant community into a small 20th Century American city. Perhaps the finest residential streets in the city, Cedar and Elm are lined with large, single family houses designed in a fashionable late 19th and early 20th century styles as Queen Anne, Colonial Revival, and Craftsman/Prairie. District buildings are unified by similar materials, scale, size and set-back.

Four houses in the Tibbe Historic District were erected in the 1850s and 60s, eight more in the late 1880s and 90s, and the majority after the turn of the century.

The 1850s and 60s houses in the Tibbe District are characteristic of early Missouri-German vernacular houses in Washington and in other German areas of the state. Constructed of locally made brick, District houses exhibit modest Federal/Greek Revival forms and detailing.

In the mid-1880s Dutch-born Henry Tibbe and his son Anton, local corn cob pipe manufacturers, began purchasing land along Cedar Street. Soon after, both erected homes there which ushered in new stylish house designs and set a standard for the street.

By 1887, Anton Tibbe had acquired most of the land on the west side of Cedar between Third and Fremont Streets. Despite the fact that the Tibbes never platted a subdivision nor attached deed restrictions to the lots, it is clear they exerted considerable influence on development. Subsequent houses were uniformly set back and of substantial size and stylish design. By the early 20th century the street was graded, lined with trees and sidewalks, and provided with telephone and electric service furnished by companies owned by the Tibbe family.

[photo on marker is circa 1908, bottom photo is same houses in 2006]

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