EVANSVILLE, Ind. (WFIE) – Walk down First Street, or past Willard Park, and you’re walking through the story of Evansville itself.
The Reitz Home Museum on First Street looks much the same as it did more than 150 years ago. The home was built in 1871 by John Augustus and Gertrude Reitz, immigrants from what was then Prussia, now Germany.
The lumber baron’s legacy
John Augustus Reitz became what historians call the ‘lumber baron’, running a sawmill that, for a decade, produced more square feet of lumber than anywhere else in the country.
“As you go through the house, it’s kind of as if the family had just gone out and you’re kind of giving a glimpse and walking through what they would have seen when they were here,” said Joseph Lutz, executive director of the Reitz Home Museum…