The home at 1025 George St. in Alton is just as much a time capsule as it is historic. And it’s on the market for $495,000.

Prominent Altonian Isaac Scarritt built the house more than 150 years ago in 1860, and the interior of the former businessman’s home honors its timeless past.

The house has seven bedrooms, four and a half baths and 5,860 square feet of living space. Its best known amenity is 12 fireplaces and six chimneys. There are also ornate features such as ceiling medallions, a plaster archway and impressive woodwork. Outside, there is a two-car garage, gazebo, covered porch and fenced yard.

Scarritt was a financier who was president of First National Bank, president of the Board of Insane Asylum in Jacksonville, Illinois, a trustee at Blackburn University, and secretary of the Board of Education for Alton school.


He had a working relationship with a young Abraham Lincoln, and his father, Nathan Scarritt, was one of the original settlers of what is now Godfrey.

According to Isaac Scarritt’s obituary in the Dec. 24, 1873 edition of the Chicago Tribune, he died from “congestion of the brain.”

Scaritt obitScaritt obit 24 Dec 1873, Wed Chicago Tribune (Chicago, Illinois) Newspapers.com