From an email sent out to the Arbor District mailing list:
Many of you are probably aware that the Reef House on the NE corner of Poplar and Cherry Streets is for sale. Arbor District member Susan Metcalf is the agent for Sosanya Jones, who was recruited by Howard University. It's a wonderful opportunity for her, but a real loss to our neighborhood.
The Reef House was placed on the National Register of Historic Places by Jean Sternberg, wife of the founder of the SIU Press (1956), Vernon Sternberg. The house is thought to have been built by A.M. Etherton who built a number of the highly decorated Victorian houses that once dominated Carbondale's architecture. It's small but beautifully restored and upgraded. It's priced to sell at $89,900.
Jean and Vernon raised their family there. Vernon died of a heart attack apparently from shoveling snow in the historic "blizzard of 1979"; Jean died in 2006 at 86. Jean was an activist, being a founding member of the Humane Society, serving on a number of City boards and commissions during Carbondale's heyday in the late 1960s-early 1970s, and taking a deep history in local and regional history.
Gary and Susan Edgren bought the house from her estate in 2005 and did a wonderful job restoring it. Their son lived there until 2014 when Sosanya, a new faculty member at SIU, bought it.
With the Varsity Theater on Illinois, the Reef House on Poplar, and the Bucky Dome on Forest, Cherry Street embodies much of the history of Carbondale.
If you know someone who might be interested, Susan says she's holding an open house this Sunday, 3 to 5 p.m.
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