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t NPS Form 10-900-a OMB Approval No. 1024-0018 <br />(8-86) <br />United States Department of the Interior <br />National Park Service <br />National Register of Historic Places <br />Continuation Sheet <br />Section number 7 Page 4 Dille/Probst House, St. Joseph County, Indiana <br />on the second floor in this bay. The northernmost bay consists of the corner tower <br />described above. <br />The interior of the Dille/Probst house is common to Queen Anne style houses, the <br />dominant feature being the large, squarish entry hall with a grand staircase (photo 6). <br />The staircase is broken with a landing at a ninety degree angle turning right, with a <br />round window immediately before the landing. The balustrade continues the outside <br />theme of an oriental design with stylized sunflowers. Despite the five year vacancy, the <br />woodwork throughout the house including the staircase remained amazingly intact. Only <br />minor repairs, cleaning and varnishing of first floor woodwork and painting of second <br />floor woodwork were required. <br />The first floor layout is a functional and open floor plan. The use of central heating <br />precluded the need to arrange the floor plan around fireplaces. In the Dille/Probst house <br />the entry hall is in the northeast corner with adjoining main rooms to the west that flow <br />together separated by original wood paneled and artificially grained pocket doors. Two <br />small rooms south of the entry hall were bedrooms and a sewing room. The <br />northernmost of the three main rooms contains the corner tower with all its windows in <br />the northwest corner of the room. The middle room has the projecting windowed bay <br />on its west wall. These first two rooms feature wood and plaster picture rails with a <br />metallic finish, and permanent wood louvered shutters, both of which are original to the <br />house (photos 7 and 8). Each window has three shutters that slide up and down in a <br />track to provide a varied amount of open window area. The third room has two doors <br />on its east wall, one to one of the small "bedrooms," and one to the current conference <br />room. This third room also has a door on the south wall that leads to the rear entry hall, <br />and a double window on its west wall. All window and door trim in the house are <br />original, and these three rooms forming the main living area have window trim featuring <br />corner blocks with an incised detail of the aforementioned stylized sunflowers. These <br />three rooms (and the entry hall) also have early hardwood floors that were refinished. <br />The original heating system used steam heat, and although all steam pipes and most <br />radiators were removed, five radiators were re -used in these three rooms as tables in their <br />original locations. <br />The conference room has original wainscoting on all four walls (photo 10). Originally <br />the kitchen, this room was adapted as a handicapped accessible space (photo 9). A small <br />butler's pantry located to the south was converted into a handicapped accessible toilet <br />room. The door to the toilet room was moved and enlarged to meet handicapped <br />