Built in 1882, the home of Samuel H. & Isabel Smith Elkins House at 315 N. 10th St. now houses Village Glass Works, a fitting tenant.

Village Glass Works specializes in custom stained glass and specializes in the repair and restoration of stained and leaded glass windows and lamps, according to its website, in addition to other glass-related services including classes.

Village Glass Works also is Columbia’s oldest continuously operating stained glass studio, established in 1976, and moved into the Elkins House in 1996 — the same year the house was placed on the National Register of Historic Places.

Like Keiser Street which is now Wilson Street, Tenth Street was once known by another name — Christian College Avenue. The Elkins House was on a wide street which connected Christian College, now Columbia College, with the town. The neighborhood originally featured many such large homes.

The house is in the Italiante style, comparable to both the 1877 Maplewood Home and the 1870 Sanford Conley House of 1870, located at 3700 Ponderosa Drive and 602 Sanford Place on the University of Missouri campus.

The home has had varied use. Built by Samuel H. Elkins, called a venture capitalist in the National Register of Historic Places nomination form, he late became Columbia’s Postmaster. He died in 1909. In 1925, his widow sold the house to C.F. and Madge Edmonston. In 1935, by then widowed, Mrs. Edmonston turned the home into a boarding house. In 1969, Clifford and Frances Hanks bought the home and converted it into an apartment building.

In 1995, the current owners Mike Koonse and Tom Fiegel bought the house and rehabilitated the house and although converting it to commerical use, the NRHP form notes, they remained faithful to the integrity of the original features in the building. 

Village Glass Works is proud of the house and even suggests on its website to come by to shop or just to see one of the few remaining Italiante homes in Columbia. What could be better — shopping and seeing a historic old home.