• info@howardcountymuseum.org

  • 1200 West Sycamore, Kokomo,
    Indiana 46901

  • (765) 452-4314

Elliott House

Elliott House

Elliott House was built in 1889 and takes its name from its second owner, Matthew Elliott. He was a pioneer in the local glass industry, which grew out of the Indiana gas boom of the late 19th century. Elliott was born in Lancashire, England and came to Howard County in 1887 to work with Monroe Seiberling and supervise the building of the great Diamond Plate Glass factory in Kokomo. In 1890, he purchased the residence on West Sycamore Street and all its contents from Marc Williams.

In 1895, the Diamond Plate Glass plant fell victim to an economic crash and was taken over by Pittsburgh Plate Glass. Elliott was transferred to Pennsylvania for a few years but his family remained in Kokomo and he returned a few years later. Elliott passed away in 1919 and is buried in Crown Point Cemetery. His only child, George, worked for the Haynes Automobile Company for 12 years, then became a Vice President of Lincoln Finance Company.

In the late 1920s, Matthew Elliott's wife, Lulu Hull Elliott, traded the house for another owned by Mark Brown. Brown was manager of the Globe Stove and Range Company at the time and was responsible for remodeling the house from a Queen Anne Victorian to its present-day Tudor appearance. Brown moved on to Chicago and a position as President of Harris Trust Bank.

The Dow Harvey family moved into the house in 1930 after Dow became President of Globe American Corporation. The family suffered tragedy in 1935 when their youngest member fell from a second-story window and died from his injuries.

In 1953, Mark Brown sold the house to Indiana University and it was incorporated into the growing IU presence in Kokomo, joining the Seiberling Mansion and the Seiberling and Elliott carriage houses into the first campus of IU-Kokomo. In 1974, Howard County leased the building, using it as a Juvenile Intake Center until 1992, and in 1998 the county purchased the property and turned its management over to the Howard County Historical Society, becoming part of the county's history campus.