Along Old Route 40 in Greenup, Illinois, part of the National Historic Road that acted as a highway for covered wagons and pioneers, is a large, stately brick home. Ever since I can remember, the home has been abandoned which I’ve always thought was sad. This year we learned that the house and property had been sold and they were going to tear the house down. The bricks would be salvaged, as would the famed, curved front staircase. Since my cousin and I have a slight obsession with exploring abandoned places we made a point to check out the old Ward house. We never entered the structure as it was incredibly unsafe.
Here are my photos:
After our exploration, we went to the Cumberland County Historical Society in Greenup. It turns out that the home was built in 1875 by bricks made by Mr. Ward himself, on his own land with his own clay. Five generations of the Ward family lived in the house until it was abandoned in the late 1970s.
JM Ward owned a department store and you can read his ledger here. Other ancestral info about the Ward family can be found here.
This home would have been quite grand in its day. There were double sash, weighted windows, plastered walls and ceilings, wallpaper, thick brick walls, that gorgeous staircase and even a widow’s walk on the roof.