PERU – The large, two-story wooden house at 19 S. Huntington St. doesn’t stand out much in the quiet, residential neighborhood located just a few blocks from downtown Peru.
But John Kirk said the house shouldn’t fit in so well. He said it needs to stand out.
After all, the house was the place where Cole Porter, one of American’s most prolific and popular composers, was born.
“If you’re a fan of Cole Porter, this is a no brainer. You want to keep this place going,” Kirk said. “If you like Cole Porter, you want this house to be here for a long time.”
Kirk has been trying to do that since 2013, when he began leasing the property from Ole Olsen Memorial Theater, which in 2004 started a three-year renovation project to transform the previously dilapidated house into a three-room inn and museum dedicated to Cole Porter.
Today, the home is filled with antiques and Porter memorabilia. Kirk said he gets around 10 visitors a month who rent out one of the renovated and restored rooms, whose decorations are inspired by some of Porter’s most popular songs, “Anything Goes” and “Night and Day.”
But even though renovations on the house were finished just nine years ago, the place is need of a facelift, especially the exterior, he said. The yellow paint first put on in 2006 is starting to peel, giving the outside a shabby appearance.
“The inside looks great. It’s held up nicely since the renovations,” Kirk said. “But the outside needs some help. When you drive by, you wonder if the rooms look like what the outside looks like. It’s just not reflective of what we have going on inside the walls.”
He said that’s why he launched a Kickstarter campaign last month to raise money for renovations that will make Cole Porter’s birthplace worthy of its former resident.
The first phase of the campaign aims to raise just under $12,000 to pay for a new paint job on the entire outside of the house. Kirk said if the money is raised, he will hire a local painting company that has also completed projects on other Peru businesses like the Irish pub Smitty McMusselman’s and Cooley’s Bar and Grill.
The second phase will pay for a renovation of the outdoor patio area, which Kirk hopes to turn into a dining area in the summer where guests and visitors can sample cuisine from local chefs. Shrubs would also be planted around the patio to provide privacy to the area.
The $5,300 goal of phase two would also pay for showers to be installed in each of the three guest rooms. Kirk said each suite currently has a claw-foot tub, but guests have expressed how much more willing they’d be to visit if the rooms had showers.
Kirk said one of his long-term goals is to turn a room that’s known as Kate’s Parlor into a tap parlor, where they would serve beer brewed by Kirk Bros. Brewery, which is run by himself and his brother. He said a tap room would fit well with the house, considering Porter’s grandfather owned and operated a brewery in the early 1800s. That project would only be finished if the Kickstarter campaign significantly exceeded its fundraising goal.
Since Kirk began leasing the Cole Porter Inn in 2013, he’s operated it as a for-profit business. But profit has never really been his goal since he moved into the building, he said. In fact, the inn has not made him money since he took it over.
“It’s for profit, but it’s really just a hobby for me, because I don’t make any money,” Kirk said. “It’s an historical endeavor to keep this place up and running.”
Kirk has done his part to keep the inn going. He said between doing his own renovations and eating operating expenses, he’s put around $15,000 into the house.
But to make the project sustainable, Kirk said, he’s going to need to make money, and sprucing the place up should help attract more customers. As it stands now, around 18 people would need to rent rooms every month just to break even.
He said keeping Cole Porter’s birthplace looking nice isn’t just about money, though. It’s mostly about maintaining one of the city’s most interesting and marketable landmarks.
“I think it’s important to our community to have this house here,” Kirk said. “Not many towns have someone as famous as Cole Porter come out of them. When you live in a town like Peru, you wonder if people can ever make it big, and we had someone who did.”
He said even though Porter wrote most of his famous songs in the 1920s and 30s, his music is still an active part of the cultural landscape. In fact, not long ago, Kirk said he was watching an episode of “The Walking Dead,” and Porter’s song “I’ve Got You Under My Skin” came up in the show.
“You hear his songs on TV shows and commercials and movies,” he said. “It’s amazing how many things his music is in. But you don’t really notice it unless you know his music.”
Kirk said with Porter’s music still going strong today, his birthplace is one of the best places in the city to market as a destination spot. And with some financial help from the public, that cultural hotspot will look up to par for visitors.
“If we raise this money, the place is going to look amazing on the outside,” he said. “I think the people who drive by will be proud to say that’s a part of our history.”