Monitor House

Monitor House
U.S. National Register of Historic Places
Front of the house
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Location	375 W. Main St., St. Paris, Ohio
Coordinates	40°7′46″N 83°58′2″W / 40.12944°N 83.96722°W / 40.12944; -83.96722
Area	1.5 acres (0.61 ha)
Built	1860
Architectural style	Monitor Style
NRHP reference No.	74001408[1]
Added to NRHP	May 2, 1974

The Monitor House is a historic house in St. Paris, Ohio, United States. Located along West Main Street, it is a square brick structure resting on a foundation of stone and covered with an asphalt roof.^[2] Although the house is primarily one story tall, it is built around a 1+1⁄2-story square clerestory.^[3]

The house was constructed circa 1860, although its precise date of erection — as well as the names of its first owner and its designer — is unknown. Its five-bay, 30-foot (9.1 m)-long exterior is decorated with cornices around the window lintels. Inside, the rooms open onto a central hallway that concludes with a stairway to the second floor of the central part of the house.^[3]

In 1974, the Monitor House was listed on the National Register of Historic Places because of its unusual architecture.^[1] Only two or three monitor houses, featuring an elevated center, are known to exist in Ohio, and the one in St. Paris is architecturally the most well-preserved;^[3] consequently, it is considered historically significant statewide.^[2] In contrast, a similar monitor house in Chillicothe, known as "Tanglewood," is only considered locally significant.^[4] The house in St. Paris was the first of over thirty places in Champaign County to be listed on the National Register; it is one of two in the village with this distinction, along with the Kiser Mansion on East Main Street.^[1]

• Josiah Quincy House, a monitor house in Massachusetts