(gentle music) (gentle music continues) - We are the Howells and this is Duncan Manor in Towanda, Illinois.

- Welcome to our home.

(gentle music) - So we were renting a house in Denver and it was getting, it was fairly pricey out there and we had a pretty small house.

And so we wanted something that we could work on together that had space.

We're both designers.

I started looking on a website called CIRCA Old Houses, and we came across this house.

We just fell in love with it.

I don't know, it gave me chills when I saw it.

(gentle music) This was in April of 2014 when we found the house.

And we ended up coming to a wedding for a friend in May and we came to see the house and it just, I think, what, three or four weeks after that we ended up buying it?

- [Dave] Yeah, I think so.

Pretty close to it.

- And quit, I quit my jobs, he quit school.

(gentle music) - [Dave] The house was abandoned.

It probably sat vacant for .

.

.

- 20 years.

- Almost 20 years before we purchased it.

- And it was like a few weeks after we bought it that I drove by on Route 66.

I was shocked.

I was like, "Oh my gosh, we bought that house."

(laughs) That everybody else is like, "This house.

I always look for it."

(gentle music) - When we first arrived, it was, we stopped by a Walmart and bought a air mattress and a bottle of champagne.

- Yeah.

- I think we drank the champagne for breakfast.

- Yeah.

(laughs) - (laughs) Because we didn't have any food and we just pulled up.

- Well we pulled up at three in the morning, so it was pitch black.

- It was interesting.

We walked around with a flashlight when we first pulled up and then the next morning, you know, waking up on the porch with the sun and just walking in and thinking, "All right, this is it.

What are we, you know, what's the game plan?"

- [Randi] There was nothing.

There wasn't plumbing, there wasn't electrical, there wasn't water.

So it was like, it was a big feat.

We had thought we would live with my dad while we were getting this livable, but when we got here, we're like, "Nah, we're just gonna stay."

So we just kind of camped for a number of months.

- [Dave] And this was in such back condition in here.

I mean the plaster was crumbling, we had to pull plaster off.

We were pairing, sanding.

- [Randi] Windows were sealed up, so it was July.

So it was also very hot in here.

- Yeah, we didn't have any- - And there wasn't electricity so we just kind of made the back two porches, like upstairs was our bedroom and downstairs- - Was our kitchen.

- We eventually had a fridge on the back porch.

We had a porta-potty and we had like a solar bag shower in the tree.

But we met, we've met a lot of amazing people.

(laughs) Luckily people weren't coming up that often.

Well, they were coming up, but we had a lot of people reach out and offer us meals or would let, like, bring your stuff, come over, and have a shower.

- Yeah, I mean I would basically wake up at whatever time, six o'clock, whenever the sun came up, and I would just constantly work on this place.

That was my full-time gig was getting this place habitable.

(gentle music) - William Duncan, he built the house.

He purchased the property in December of 1866.

That's what we know.

There's no record of when the house was built.

And he was a shorthorn cattle breeder.

He lived in Kentucky, in Clark County, Kentucky, and he came up here in 1863, but he really made a name for himself and for the shorthorn breed here in central Illinois in the short amount of time he was here.

The driveway used to come from the railroad tracks and then later Route 66.

But he even had a stop on the railroad tracks 'cause he would have sales here.

So yeah, he was pretty prominent, I would say, in the short amount of time he was here.

He had three wives.

First wife passed away before he left Clark County.

So he had two wives during his time here.

His second wife, he had four children together, I believe.

She passed away while they lived in Towanda.

And then he remarried another woman from Kentucky and brought her up here and they had five kids.

His fifth child was born just a couple months before he passed away in 1876.

So she and the younger kids ended up going back to Kentucky and his oldest daughter inherited the house.

And this house is interesting because it was a rental property for all of the 1900s.

It was just very transient residents.

We wanna have events and classes out in the shed, not just weddings, but classes for the community.

But I just think there's a lot of opportunity out here.

And we've seen over the years, I mean that first, the very first open house we had, there was over 3,000 people that showed up in one weekend.

And that's when we realized, "Okay, so this house really means something to a lot of people."

- [Dave] When we bought this, it was- - It wasn't a home yet.

- We knew it was historic, but, you know, and we wanted to obviously save and preserve a piece of history, but we had no idea it was this big of a draw.

- I think in the beginning, people were a little iffy just because of how the house had been treated in the past, you know, wondering if we were here to actually help or not.

But we've just truly been embraced by the community.

I don't know if we would be here now if we hadn't had chosen such a supportive community.

It's been amazing.

(gentle music) So we plan to just really pour everything into this house and I don't know, I don't think William Duncan ever really completed it and it never became what he envisioned.

And so I think we can do that and create a space that the community can enjoy and that can just keep growing.

Just a place for people to kind of come and stay and just forget about, you know, your stresses and life for a little while.

(gentle music)