‘The Pink House’ sat vacant for decades. Now Aviston’s police chief is renovating it.
Some people consider the Victorian-style home on East Logan Street in Aviston a piece of architectural history, dating back to the early 1900s, when the village was a bustling railroad hub.
Others see it as an eyesore, citing its deteriorated condition and hot-pink paint that stands out from blocks away.
For Mike Kuhl, it’s an adventure.
The Aviston police chief and his wife, Kristina Kuhl, bought what locals call “The Pink House” in December and started a major renovation. They want to make it a showpiece.
Clearly, Clinton County residents are intrigued.
“We had an open house, and over 240 people walked through,” said Mike Kuhl, 49, of Carlyle. “Well, those were the ones who signed the guestbook. We don’t really know how many walked through. People had never been inside the house, and they wanted to see what it looked like.”
The Kuhls had advertised the open house on social media. They have more than 900 followers on their Instagram page, @pinkhouse2021.
On a recent Saturday, Mike and Kristina Kuhl were standing in the front yard with sons Brendan, 20, and Tanner, 17, and Brendan’s girlfriend, Grace McIntyre. All wore matching pink T-shirts.
That was enough to attract a steady stream of visitors, including retiring Aviston Mayor Dale Haukap, the two candidates vying to replace him in April’s election and Linda Kues, 86, a former postmaster whose family has owned several businesses in town.
“I love it,” Kues said of the renovation project. “I can’t wait to see it done. The house has been sitting here (vacant) for a long time. It will be nice to see something happen.”
Foyer doubled as a barbershop
The 2 1/2-story, four-bedroom home at 31 E. Logan St. was built in 1907 for the family of George Heimann, owner of Aviston’s general store and part-owner of the lumberyard, according to Mike Kuhl.
Architectural features included stained-glass windows, gingerbread trim, a large front porch and a round turret with a pointed roof. It’s believed that the unusual exposed-aggregate siding on the lower level was original, along with scalloped wood siding above.
William Hegger bought the Victorian in the 1920s and put his barbershop in the large foyer.
Harold and Pat Gentz became the third owners in 1958. They were schoolteachers who later operated an antique shop and became active in the Clinton County Historical Society. Their three children, Vickie, Eric and Tina, grew up in the landmark home.
“Mom and Dad always had their friends over for parties, and back in the day, there were a lot of antiques in there,” said Eric Gentz, 64, of New Baden, vice president of an oil company, noting that life changed dramatically in 1975, when Tina was killed in a car accident.
Harold Gentz began having trouble climbing stairs in the late 1980s, so he and Pat moved into a smaller, one-story house.
But the couple didn’t have the heart to sell the Victorian, which sat vacant for more than 30 years. It fell into disrepair and became the target of vandals. Eventually, animals found their way inside.
That caused tension between the Gentzes and village of Aviston. Officials voiced concerns about safety and appearance. The home is in a particularly central location, across the street from railroad tracks that run through the business district.
In 2015, the village asked the family to repaint the home, which they did.
But something went wrong, and the scalloped siding didn’t turn out to be the same light peachy-pink color, according to Vickie Gentz, 56, of Centralia, a community resource specialist.
“The first time I turned the corner, I about died,” she said. “It was Pepto Bismol pink with white trim. It was really ‘The Pink House.’ All the kids in town started calling it ‘The Barbie House.’”
Family sells after 62 years
By the time Harold Gentz died in 2017, the outside of the Victorian didn’t look so good, but the inside was remarkably original.
It was full of 10-foot-high ceilings, exposed pine floors, unpainted woodwork with ornate scrollwork, pocket doors and a decorative fireplace with a cast-iron cover in the parlor. A massive three-quarter-turn staircase in the foyer led to a large upstairs landing.
Vickie Gentz and her fiance, Tommy Williams, 58, a retired carpenter-contractor, decided they would begin renovating the home.
The couple boarded up broken windows to keep vandals and animals out and removed the antique furniture, but illness and surgery pulled them away from the project. Then the village of Aviston sent a letter, requiring the family to fix a long list of problems or risk condemnation.
Around the same time, the Kuhls reached out to Eric Gentz, expressing an interest in “The Pink House.” They ended up buying it for $40,000.
“Mike and I are home-show fanatics,” said Kristina Kuhl, 48, a fifth-grade teacher in Carlyle. “We have literally based family vacations around home-show locations (in other states).”
Mike Kuhl has worked in construction for 30 years. He began serving as a part-time police officer in 2014 after attending law-enforcement academy.
Mike Kuhl worked for police departments in Trenton, New Baden, Albers, Germantown, Carlyle and Smithton and for the Clinton County Sheriff’s Department before becoming Aviston’s police chief in May.
The Kuhls have built new houses and rehabbed old ones. They recently sold their home in Breese and rented a place in Carlyle with plans to build in Aviston. But everything changed when they toured the Victorian on East Logan. Kristina fell in love with the staircase.
Also encouraging the purchase was son Brendan, who’s studying construction management in college.
“Going through this house built in 1907, it just seemed like an opportunity you don’t pass up,” he said. “I thought, ‘I’d like to see the old bones and learn how these houses were built.’”
Adding ‘modern conveniences’
The Kuhls are essentially gutting the Victorian, replacing electrical wiring and plumbing, adding insulation and installing new plaster walls. They’re thankful for the way the Gentzes protected historical features, using area rugs on pine floors and leaving woodwork unpainted.
Planned structural changes include tearing off an attached two-car garage that wasn’t original to the home and moving the upstairs bathroom to a larger space that served as a bedroom.
The dining room will be converted into a kitchen, and the original kitchen will serve as a workshop for Kristina Kuhl’s bakery business, Krissie Cakes.
Finally, the Kuhls want to partially undo a 1960s remodeling that replaced wood flooring on the porch with concrete and tile and installed wrought-iron banisters on the porch and balcony.
“We’re trying to bring it back as close to original as possible, with modern conveniences such as new electric, HVAC, plumbing and insulation, and we’re going to put in all new windows,” Mike Kuhl said. “The photos show that the originals were black.”
Vickie Gentz can’t help but tear up when she hears about the future of “The Pink House” because she wanted to be the one to make it happen.
On the other hand, the daughter of former owner Pat Gentz, now 90, acknowledges that the Kuhls seem better equipped to renovate the home, and she’s happy it will be saved from possible demolition.
Brother Eric Gentz feels the same way.
“I couldn’t pick better people to take interest in this house and restore it back to the way Dad had it,” he said.
Perhaps the only remaining question is, “Will the Kuhls change the color of the home?” Yes. Hot pink is a little much for the family’s taste. They’re looking at blues and grays with off-white trim, but they might work in some mauve if there’s public pressure.
This story was originally published March 13, 2021 at 7:00 AM.
