The Julia Ballance House was constructed in 1885 for Julia Schnebly Ballance, who was sixty-nine years old. Julia Schnebly came to Peoria with her parents in 1835 from Maryland and soon afterward married Charles Ballance, an early Peoria pioneer. Charles Ballance was a lawyer, teacher, surveyor, real estate developer, mayor of Peoria, colonel of a Civil War regiment, historian, and writer, and he published the 1870 History of Peoria. In the house, built some years after her husband's death, Julia Ballance lived until her own death in 1899. A portion of Randolph Street, adjoining Roanoke Street, and a portion of Columbia Terrace became Peoria's first historic zoning district. Randolph Street contains one of Peoria's best collections of Victorian structures, largely unchanged from their original construction. The Roanoke-Randolph Historic District is part of the West Bluff Historic District, which was entered on the National Register of Historic Places in 1976.