Belleville native buys historic downtown building for law office, loft apartment
A Belleville East High School graduate has acquired a historic building in downtown Belleville with plans to open a satellite office for his Missouri law practice.
Mark Milton, 40, of Warson Woods, Missouri, a St. Louis suburb, bought the 2 1/2-story brick building at 122 W. Main St. from retired attorney Jim Mendillo earlier this month.
“I’ve always been fond of Belleville,” Milton said this week. “That’s where I grew up, and I love Main Street.”
Milton is head of Milton Law Group in Kirkwood, Missouri, which includes three attorneys who specialize in civil and criminal tax law. He also owns a real estate company, Miltchester Properties.
Milton expects to spend $50,000 to $100,000 on mostly cosmetic renovations to the Belleville building.
“We don’t plan to make any structural changes,” he said.
Perhaps the biggest project will be updating and remodeling a second-floor apartment to create a “premier” residential space that includes a third-floor loft overlooking Main Street.
“I’m very excited about what (Milton is) doing with it,” Mendillo, 80, said. “He’s doing what I always wanted to do with it.”
The Greek Revival-style building with a brick cornice at 122 W. Main St. was constructed in 1865 by German immigrant J. George Seid, according to Bob Brunkow, historian for the Belleville Historical Society.
The former Belleville Weekly Advocate newspaper announced that Seid was opening a “first-class” grocery store on the first floor. At the time, it would have been customary for him to live upstairs.
“(Seid) went bankrupt in 1870,” Brunkow said. “We don’t know why it happened. We just know that it happened. The people who foreclosed were the people who sold him the lot and provided the mortgage.”
Other businesses on the first floor in the early days included a “secondhand” shop in 1884, a stove and tinware shop in the late 1880s and a five-and-dime store in the early 1900s.
“There was a back building at that time that may have been used as a tin shop,” Brunkow said.
The law firm formerly known as Freeark, Harvey & Mendillo (now Freeark, Dennis & Moskop) on Washington Street bought the building in 1985, mainly for the parking in back, Mendillo said. The attorneys later used it for storage and additional office space.
Mendillo took sole ownership in 2018. Most recently, the first floor housed a business called Massage Monkey for about two years.
Mendillo had planned to renovate the upstairs apartment, but he didn’t want to uproot the tenant, Richard Travous, who lived there 37 years before he died in February at age 84.
“He was a tenant and a friend,” Mendillo said.
Milton graduated from Belleville East in 2003 and earned an accounting degree from the University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign and a law degree at Saint Louis University School of Law before working as a trial attorney in the U.S. Department of Justice’s tax division in Washington, D.C.
Four years later, Milton returned to the St. Louis area and went into private practice.
Milton plans to name the Belleville building The Jefferson Building, after Jefferson Elementary School, where he spent his formative years before his family moved to Swansea.
“Opening an office on Main Street is more than a business expansion,” he stated in a press release announcing the purchase.
“It’s a homecoming. Belleville shaped who I am, from my days at Jefferson Elementary School to Wolf Branch to Belleville East. I am thrilled to join the vibrant Main Street business community and contribute to the growth and future of the city.”
This story was originally published April 15, 2026 at 5:30 AM.
