This large two-story brick and limestone structure was probably built about 1865 by John Lewis or his brother Allen Cleveland Lewis in the Italianate style. It was unusual in the Village of Bremen, now Tinley Park, because it was much larger than any other local home and was built of brick when the village's other buildings were wood frame structures. The Lewis brothers together owned more than 5,000 acres in Cook and Will counties, and John Lewis's railroad investments may have influenced both the building's location and its materials, with limestone likely from Joliet and brick from Blue Island along the Rock Island and Pacific Railroad line. At the time, Batchelor Grove Road, now Oak Park Avenue, and the railroad were the village's only two routes, and the house stood at their crossroads. John Lewis transferred the property to Allen in 1866, and Allen sold it in 1868 to Gerhard Bomhoff, the father-in-law of Carl Vogt. Neither Lewis brother is believed to have lived there permanently, likely using it at times as a hunting lodge. John Lewis died in 1874 and left most of his $350,000 estate to Allen; when Allen died in 1877, his estate was valued at $600,000, and he directed that it be invested until it reached $800,000 so a trade school, the Lewis Institute, could be established. The school opened in 1896 and merged with the Armour Institute in 1940 to form the present Illinois Institute of Technology. Bomhoff transferred the building to Carl Vogt in 1872, and Vogt's family lived there until 1899, when it was sold to Martha E. Bettenhausen. Family lore says she sewed $2,500 in gold coins into her petticoats on her trip to Chicago to buy the property. Her descendants, the James Fulton family and heirs, including former mayor and village trustee Kenneth J. Fulton and his brother Ron, were born in the house and owned it until 1987. The basement has served as a stable, a soda pop bottling plant, and an electrical contractor's office, and after 1900 the upper floors were converted from one home into four apartments. Aside from added bathrooms at either end of the wraparound front porch and two roof gables for more light and ventilation in the attic, the exterior has remained largely unchanged since construction, and the building was renovated for office use in 1992. Although local legend credited Carl Vogt with building it in 1872 as a speculative hotel or office building tied to a proposed railroad from Chicago to Decatur that was abandoned after the Great Chicago Fire of October 1871, the evidence now indicates that Vogt was instead the first resident local people remembered living there and the first German resident, leading to the mistaken belief that he built it.