We’ve featured many of the J.B. Hostetler portraits in this space, but our collection of the Studio’s images also includes a few photographs of area residences.
If you are headed up Brady Street hill as a participant in the Bix 7 this July, or otherwise, be sure to take note of the house at 701 (Brady and 7th Streets, NW corner).
This handsome home, called “Highview,” was built in 1907 for Maria Agnes McGee and Leander (Lee) L. Beauchaine.
Lee Beauchaine was the operator of the Slate House, saloon and hotel at the Davenport end of the Government Bridge, from 1894 until Prohibition began. He first came to the city in 1890 as a traveling salesman for a Detroit tobacco company.
In 1892 he married the notorious “Mamie” or “Biddy” McGee. She was the likely owner of the house at 701 Brady, having acquired multiple Davenport properties that she rented to prostitutes. As Sharon Wood notes, McGee was different from other local brothel-keepers, a savvy landlady who “pursued rather than drifted into vice…” to gain wealth. (The Freedom of the Streets: Work, Citizenship, and Sexuality in a Gilded Age City, p. 98).
Mamie and Lee’s marriage was not without strife. The couple’s many violent “rows” at the Slate House were reported in the local newspapers. She threatened to divorce him more than once. Ultimately, they stayed together until Lee’s death in 1927. On a trip to Ireland in 1906, the pair experienced a religious awakening, and returned to Davenport repentant. Occupying the Brady Street residence was perhaps a move towards greater respectability, as was adopting a daughter in 1915. Marie Katherine Beauchaine attended the Immaculate Conception Academy in the city and was married to Ray Hinds in April 1937.
Mrs. Beauchaine was certainly proud of her home: She was the winner of a Christmas light display contest in December 1927.
Other than a few reports of break-ins, not much more is known about the property itself. Mamie McGee Beauchaine lived at 701 Brady Street until her death in 1949.
Stay tuned for more stories behind the houses photographed by J.B. Hostetler!
(posted by Katie)
