245 E Water St

From the National Register nomination

One-story frame building with weatherboard siding and a metal-sheathed gable roof. The building stands on a high American-bond basement, and it has a scalloped vergeboard in the eaves and gables (a watered-down Gothic Revival treatment). A small vent at the west end of the basement has vertical wood bars set at an angle. Inside a brick chimney rises on the east gable end. From the north side extends a lower frame garage wing with a front-gambrel roof and a late 20th century remodeling with a bow window, a cornice with dentil-like ornament, and reused half-round classical pilasters. The Ott Dependency stood behind the 1850s Ott House at 254 Newman Ave. (now gone). According to a 1972 survey by I. L. Terrell, the "original slave or servants quarters remain now converted into a garage." In 1860 the Ott household included silversmith Henry Ott (b. ca. 1805), who owned $6,000 in personal estate, and merchant Samuel M. Ott (b. ca. 1815), who owned $10,000 in personal estate (personal estate as defined by the federal census could include slaves). The 1885 Lake map appears to show the dependency. The Thompson family "colonialized" the main house ca. 1911, and it may have been they who added the gambrel-roofed garage wing on the north side (the wing appears on the 1924 and 1930 Sanborn maps). The main house burned in 1975. Richard Chew remodeled the building. Now Gravity Group. (Joseph Bowman; Daily News-Register, December 30, 1975)