Jane (AH’77) and Jillian Johansen (B’05)
After more than a century, the Comstock House is still one of most the dramatic homes in Big Rapids. The Eastlake-style house has played a role in both the history of Ferris and Big Rapids. Although constructed now of drywall in place of lath and plaster after its most recent remodeling, the Comstock House’s walls still have a story to tell about wealth, skullduggery, mattress races and inadvertent beekeeping.
Double Vision
Owner Jane Johansen has two visions of what the ornate front staircase of the Comstock House looked like in days gone by. One is of lumberman and banker D.F. Comstock and his wife, Dollie Ann, who built the house, strolling down the stairs, hands lightly touching the intricately carved newel post at the bottom before heading out – perhaps for a gathering at some lesser home.
The other is of members of the Delta Sigma Phi fraternity – who purchased the house in 1966 – perched upon mattresses, hurtling down the steps toward an open front door.
“They also had to recite their Greek alphabet here,” says Johansen. “There’s just the right number of stairs.”
After the Delta Sig era ended in 2004, the Johansens’ bought and began renovating the house, transforming it into a combination bed and breakfast and meeting facility. In the process they kept the stained glass and pocket doors – even the graffiti carved into fireplace mantles.
“We call that ‘patina’ – it all tells the story of the house,” Johansen says with a smile.
Those details have been preserved in the upstairs bedrooms – the Dollie Ann, Eva Zunida and Jennie Marcia rooms, named for Mrs. Comstock and her two daughters. There is also a servants quarters where Jane’s daughter and Comstock House manager, Jillian, lives.
The major downstairs rooms – the former dining room, library, sitting room and parlor – now host wedding receptions and business meetings. With 12-foot ceilings, original floor-to-ceiling mahogany woodwork and such period details as ornate brass door hinges, the rooms convey the grandeur of an earlier era.
The Genealogy of a House
From the 1967 Ferriscope yearbook: “A healthy snowball fight in front of their new home releases Delt Sig energy.”
Finished in 1896, the house’s red brick matches that of the Nisbett building in downtown Big Rapids, which D.F. Comstock also conceived but only partially completed. Both the house and the commercial building were ambitious projects by an ambitious man.
Comstock moved to Big Rapids in the early 1870s, when he was about 40 years old. He made his money in the lumber boom and became president of Big Rapids National Bank and Mecosta County Savings Bank – the latter of which failed due to alleged embezzlement by Comstock and his son, Chester, in the same year his grand house was completed. Chester subsequently moved to Evanston, Ill., where the Comstocks’ had relatives. D.F. followed him there after his wife’s death in 1901.
When Comstock’s daughter, Jennie, married druggist George Washington Milner, she created a link between the house and the Ferris
Institute. In 1931 Milner, who owned City Drug Store located in the Nisbett building, became one of 39 local businessmen who formed the Ferris Institute’s Board of Incorporators who took over responsibility for keeping the Institute going during the worst years of the Great Depression. It’s likely that Jennie was willed the house after D.F.’s death in 1903 since she and Milner, who had been living in the house previously, continued to reside there until their own deaths in 1920 and 1938, respectively.
Lacking family to inherit the house, Milner apparently left the property to a valued employee, Ed Gillies, whose family lived there until 1955. The house changed hands two more times before the Delta Sigs purchased the house in 1966 and the Johansens’ in 2004.
A Sweet Legacy
All that history left its marks on the house.
When the Johansens’ began renovation, they faced a number of challenges including lead paint, the remnants of multiple deadbolts installed on bedroom doors and faulty wiring, which amazingly never caused a fire. On the other hand, all the original stained glass windows were intact, which was remarkable considering the front room was the fraternity’s billiard room.
Although Delta Sigma Phi was disappointed to lose the house, they’ve provided a lot of insight into their years there.
“Sometimes too much information – especially for me, who has to live here,” says Jillian. “A lot of ex-Delta Sigs, even younger ones from the 2000s have come back, and they’re so pleased. They realize that in the long run the right thing was done, because it saved the house.”
A lifelong Big Rapids resident, Jane says her prime motivation for taking on the large renovation project was not going into business, but to save the historic home.
“I was told that another party was in the process of trying to buy the house and piece it out – sell it bit by bit,” she says. “You can imagine what the stained glass windows, the fireplaces and woodwork would fetch on the open market. I didn’t want that to happen.”
All the years during which the Comstock House was a fraternity house, a colony of bees made its home in the west wall near the stairs. “When we tore the walls apart there were honeycombs in space after space inside,” says Johansen. “We still have some of the honey.”
The past isn’t always as sweet as that, but losing it never is. The Comstock House is an important piece of both Big Rapids and Ferris history – one which thankfully remains proudly intact.
Crimson & Gold
Crimson & Gold