Progress made in the dining room.

Work is underway to bring new life to a Washington home once owned by one of Iowa’s most accomplished women.

Clay Whisler and Corey Ringle of Whisler Enterprise, LLC are renovating the house owned by Iowa’s first female Secretary of State and the founder of the Iowa State Patrol, Ola Babcock Miller. The couple have bought and renovated several homes around Washington and the over-century old house located at 429 South Marion Avenue will be their second Airbnb rental in the city, though Whisler swore at first he didn’t want to manage a property so large. However, when talking with the house’s previous owners who began rehabilitation last year he was then inspired to buy the property and continue the dream to provide a larger rental for families or groups of friends wanting to stay in Washington, while honoring the home’s legacy, “We want people to enjoy it like it’s a modern vacation rental, but we also want people to appreciate that there was some really cool stuff that was coming from Washington at that time and people that were coming from the area and that were involved in the area.”

Whisler and Ringle plan to have the four-bedroom house which also features two enclosed porches accommodate up to 14 people, with hopes to have one of the rooms be a tribute to the Iowa State Patrol. They already have several framed archived articles and magazine covers that feature Miller as well as her son-in-law George Gallup, another Iowa native and inventor of the Gallup Poll. They to have the house ready for rentals this July, and you can follow their renovation progress on The Ola Babcock Miller House Facebook page. You can hear more about the house during a two-part Halcyon House Washington Page on air and at kciiradio.com.

A yet-to-be repainted second-floor sleeping porch.

Whisler shows some of the archived publications of the house’s former inhabitants.