The Ira Hill House in Isle La Motte

The Ira Hill House stands on the west side of Main Street in Isle La Motte, just south of the town hall. Built in 1822 by James Ritchie, a regionally prominent Scottish immigrant stonemason, this two-and-a-half-story house stands as one of the rural community's finer stone houses of the period. The main block is fashioned out of quarry-cut limestone, some of it exhibiting fossils found in the island community's limestone outcrops. It features a gabled roof and a long wood-frame and stone ell extending southward from its left.

The house is fronted by a two-story shed-roof porch, a late 20th-century recreation of an earlier Victorian porch with turned posts and scrolled brackets. The ell has two parts: the outer end is a stone barn whose first floor was built contemporaneously to the house, and whose second floor was added about 1840. The joining section consists of a rear stone wall and a front wood frame wall.

Ritchie built the house for Ira Hill, a prominent local businessman and son of one of the island's major landowners. Hill engaged in a wide variety of businesses, including the operation of a hotel and tavern on these premises. The house was listed on the National Register of Historic Places in 2003.

Sources: Wikipedia, OpenStreetMap, Wikidata, Wikimedia Commons