Benjamin Stephenson House, Edwardsville

The Benjamin Stephenson House in Edwardsville, Illinois is the oldest brick house in the city and one of the oldest in the state. Colonel Stephenson built it in eighteen twenty from one hundred thousand bricks fired on the property itself. He had been a key figure in pushing Illinois from territory to statehood in eighteen eighteen, but died shortly after the house was completed and never spent many years in it.

The house changed hands fifteen times over the following century and a half. In its early years it hosted the wedding of Adlai Stevenson the First, grandfather of the Illinois governor and presidential candidate, who married Letitia Green here in eighteen sixty-six, and their first child was born within these walls two years later. The house is now a public museum furnished to the period of its construction.