“I’ve been strong and I’ve been sturdy And I’ve weathered every storm I’ve always kept your family safe and warm Now you’re packing up the laughter And you’re sweeping out the tears If this old house was built on memories I would stand a thousand years”
- This Old House by Craig Bickhardt and Thom Schuyler While this is my final part to the William Lipe House series, I will continue to check in on Frank Smoot over the fall and winter to see how the renovation of 704 S. Lafayette St. is coming along. As of this week, Frank is preparing to pour a new cement basement floor and hopefully before winter he will be able to paint the inside and outside of the house. The color scheme of the outside will most likely be painted white with dark red trim, as the house is believed to have been painted in 1884.
Meanwhile, word has reached me that another well-known family lived in the Lipe house, prior to the Boblaks, and I have made contact with them.
Kathy Townsend (now Karr) graduated from Macomb High School in 1974. She lived at 704 S.
Lafayette with her parents and brother ever since she was in first grade in the early 1960s. Kathy’s father was George Townsend, a prominent music professor at Western Illinois University for 32 years. In 1963, the Townsends, George and Joyce, paid $16,000 for the property, and sold it to the Boblak family in the late 1970s. The Boblaks owned the property for over 50 years.
Something I have found interesting when writing about this house is its ties to professional level music.
Becky Boblak, who grew up in the house, is a wellknown piano teacher in California and plays at concert caliber. Her brother, James Jr., another childhood resident of the house, owns his own music recording studio in Berkeley, CA. All of the Boblak “kids” were in band at Macomb High School and relate that band teacher Dave Wetmore was a major influence in their lives.
Kathy Townsend, another outstanding Macomb High band member, graduated from Macomb High in 1974, and left 704 S. Lafayette for college. She earned her bachelor's degree from Northwestern University and a master’s degree from the State University of New York at Stony Brook. Over three decades of WIU students learned music from her father, George Townsend. The house at 704 S. Lafayette was, over the years, a house filled with music.
Kathy now plays with the Louisville (Kentucky) Orchestra as Principal Flute, an honor she has had since 1988. Kathy states that one of her fondest memories of living at 704 S. Lafayette was jumping out of the second floor window of the carriage house into a pile of hay. She is the first of my interviewees that has mentioned the carriage house on the alley, so the structure was still there in the 1960s. How beautiful that property must have been in 1884, when it was the sole house on the 700 block of South Lafayette, with its ornate carriage house in the rear.
How Kathy Townsend Karr remembers the carriage house behind the William Lipe home, minus the cupola. The carriage house was still standing in the 1960’s.
George Townsend, center. Professional player of clarinet and music professor at WIU for 32 years. George owned the William Lipe house from 1963 to the late 1970s.
Kathy also recalls her mother having huge, beautiful gardens and that she loved to grow cantaloupe, tomatoes and corn, as well as all varieties of flowers. George Townsend built a treehouse for his son and daughter in a large tree in the backyard.
From everything I have read about the Lipes, the Townsends and the Boblaks, the children that filled the house with laughter, energy and music all likely left there with the same feelings - they loved the house and the memories it gave them. Hopefully, after Frank Smoot revitalizes the house, it will be home to another family, with children.
The karma is certainly there, waiting.
Speaking of renovator Frank Smoot, the Wisconsin man who ventured into Macomb, Illinois almost by accident, another property in Macomb has drawn his attention.
When he is finished with 704 S. Lafayette St., he is tempted to take on another project. Could it be that Frank Smoot, the house whisperer, is here to stay?
Credits: Kathy Karr Townsend Frank Smoot - house preservationist
