The 1901 Zitterell House at 821 Division Street, Webster City, is a classic Queen Anne, late Victorian home that is currently on the market. It is a rare opportunity to own a piece of history and a property officially listed on the National Register of Historic Places.

There is a genuine treasure on the market in Webster City.

One of only three structures on the National Register of Historic Places in the community, the William and Hattie Zitterell House at 821 Division Street is an iconic piece of local history that hundreds have called home in its nearly 125 years of history.

Known for its sprawling wrap-around porch that connects the main south and east entries, including a round gazebo jutting into the yard of the tree-lined street, the Zitterell House has been reinvented countless times since it was built in 1901.

While the inside has changed over the years, the exterior retains nearly all of its original grandeur.

A turret on the southeast corner of the house runs all the way to the attic, offering a bird’s eye view of the quiet street below. There are three sets of bay windows running from basement to second floor that seem custom-made for reading a book on a rainy day.

Its listing on the National Registry, which the late local realtor Walt Raven helped prepare, described it as a Queen Anne, late Victorian style. It is a place that for more than a century has provided shelter, hearth, home and infinite places in which to decorate a Christmas tree.

“If you have to move to a new town, and you want to ‘settle in,’ just buy an old house that everyone loves and start fixing it up … they’ll love you for it. Or maybe this is just a very, very friendly town,” wrote the late Neoma Thomas in her application to have the property placed on the National Register in 1994.

Thomas and her husband, Phil Thomas, moved to Webster City and purchased the Zitterell House in 1993 and spent the next eight years researching its history and restoring its grandeur.

The home had been split into four apartments in 1939. It is for that reason that so many have called it home, at least for a time.

The Thomases restored it to a single-family home. The staircase, which had been moved when the apartment layout was created, was moved again, using as many pieces as possible of the original structure. The exterior façade was aging, badly in need of paint and basic repairs, but the Thomases saw good bones in this faded old lady of a house.

“It is in surprisingly good condition, considering the neglect it has endured,” Thomas wrote in 1994.

Now painted a historically appropriate slate blue, with trim of a burgundy red and white, the exterior honors its past while the inside is a mix of history with modern comforts.

Listing agent Bev Stewart of Abens Realty is one of the hundreds of local residents who once called the Zitterell House home.

“When Earl and I got married in 1964, our wedding gift from his parents was six months of living here, rent-free,” Stewart recalled with a warm smile.

Her in-laws, the late Earl and Arlene Stewart, were travelling to California for the winter and so the newlywed Earl and Bev Stewart would have the first floor, east apartment, to call home as they began married life.

Three generations of the Stewart family once called the house home. Earl’s grandmother had the west apartment on the first floor, while his parents and brother shared the east apartment.

At that time, there were bi-fold doors on the front room to create a bedroom. The sunporch on the north served as Earl’s boyhood bedroom. It had no heat, but he recalls warming himself by the kitchen radiator when he came in on cold winter days.

“The radiator had a warming oven where you could put bread or other things to keep them warm,” Stewart explained. “Earl said he used to put his feet in there to warm them up.”

Regrettably, the radiator and warming oven are now gone. But modern home-buyers will likely not mind the trade-off as the kitchen has been renovated into a space where Martha Stewart could feel at home making Thanksgiving dinner.

Lots of white cupboards — many with glass doors to show off heirloom serving pieces — provide enough storage for the busiest of chefs. A deep farmhouse sink is placed on a peninsula, while a center island offers a pleasant workspace. The countertops are a gleaming white marble with streaks of gray.

The fireplace in the adjacent dining room has been redone, but still features the original green glazed ceramic tile as seen in other historic homes of the neighborhood. Wood columns offer grandeur, while those deep bay windows open up each room to make it feel even bigger than the more than 3,000-square-feet of the home.

While bedrooms and closets were typically small in the early 1900s, late century renovations created an upper bedroom suite that sprawls over the entire east side. It begins on the north with a large closet/dressing room next to a full bath. There are original built-ins for storage still present as the suite leads on to a sitting room and then, finally, the main bedroom on the southeast.

In all, the home boasts four bedrooms and three full bathrooms.

“I think it would make a wonderful bed and breakfast,” Stewart said.

She also noted that VRBOs have become very popular in Webster City.

“People are using them for weddings, reunions, even if they have to come into town for a funeral,” she explained.

Just as three generations of the Stewart family once shared the two apartments on the first floor, this house could still be ideal as a multi-generational home. With a full bath on the first floor, it would be quite simple to create a private space for a “granny flat” in the spacious downstairs.

The woman who restored the Zitterell House, Thomas, was a woman who appreciated history. As the new owner of the Zitterell House in the 1990s, she found it opened many doors to her.

“We can’t go to church or downtown without at least four or five people enquiring about the progress on the house. Since the day we arrived in town, our ‘claim to fame’ has been THE HOUSE (her emphasis). It seems like everyone in town either lived in it when it was apartments, or knew someone, or had a relative who lived here, or owned it at one time or another. When we meet new people, we are always introduced as ‘the Thomases — the ones who bought the old Zitterell House.'”

The current owner bought the house in 2021, moving from Washington state; she fell in love with the spacious layout, according to her daughter Danielle Horton. Her mother is parting with the house only for health reasons.

“I hope another family falls in love with the house and makes it their home,” Horton said.

The old Zitterell House doesn’t look as old as it did before the Thomases bought it more than 30 years ago. It’s been in good hands since the Thomases left, and is looking for a new caretaker to take it to the next chapter in a long and interesting life as a house.

As a final note from Stewart, prospective buyers need not worry about purchasing a property on the National Register. There are really no restrictions on such properties, unless the buyer accepts federal or state grants. New buyers can do anything they wish, even tear it down — but please don’t even think of such a thing.

Who were William and Hattie Zitterell?

William (W.J.) Zitterell: 1860 – 1932

— Married Annott McClurg, 1883. The couple had one daughter, Wynnie Zitterell Rhodes, before Annott passed away in 1896. He married Hattie J. Olmstead in 1898;

W.J. was president of Zitterell Mills, Webster City;

He served two terms as president of Master Builders of Iowa, 1914 and 1927;

Zitterell Mills built the Kendall Young Library, which is now on the National Register of Historic Places.

Zitterell Mills was the builder of numerous Carnegie libraries in Iowa, including Carroll Public Library, which is also on the National Register.

W.J. personally laid the cornerstone of the Masonic Temple in Webster City.

Hattie J. Olmstead Zitterell: 1866-1932

Graduate of Cedar Falls Teacher’s College, taught eight years in Black Hawk County;

Married Dr. Charles Childs in 1890, widowed in 1893;

Met William Zitterell while working at a bank in Waterloo. Married in 1898;

Instrumental in organizing the Webster City Women’s Club;

Served on the Kendall Young Library Board of Trustees, 1915 through 1954. She had been appointed to the board by the original trustees named by Kendall Young in his will.

Listing Agent Bev Stewart in the spacious kitchen that offers modern touches in an historic context.