It’s a house with history.

Once, the land on which it sits was part of the Elmwood estate, a West Main Street Italianate jewel built in 1820. Later, African-American shipbuilder Hull Anderson would purchase the property from Civil War General and Elmwood owner Bryan Grimes. Still later, members of the Rodman family would send an emissary to Liberia, to which Anderson emigrated in 1841, to clear the title for their purchase of the property.

And when Dr. John Croom Rodman married Olzie Whitehead Clark in 1905, Rodman’s father gave the couple the lot as a wedding present. They built their home there, on the Tar River, across West Main Street from the home where Rodman had grown up.

Right in the heart of Washington’s historic district, it’s been called home to only two families over the past 110 years: Rodmans and Austins.

The home is as unique as its history. It was built in the era of swinging windows and doors wide to capture the breeze coming off the river: a wide central hallway framed by doors leading onto front and back porches; high ceilings, wide doorways and original, oversized one-over-one windows. For the colder months, each room upstairs and downstairs had a fireplace — the original mantelpieces remain today.

Downstairs, the central hall opens to four spacious rooms, with the kitchen tacked onto the western side of the house. Upstairs doorways to another four spacious rooms lead off a landing large enough for a sitting area.

It’s 3,800 square feet — not including a full basement and finished attic — of elegant hardwood floors, walls capped with crown molding and architectural details, some tied into its owners’ history, that set this home apart from others.

Perhaps most noticeable is the staircase that climbs two stories to the attic level, its banisters, spindels, treads, risers and several newel posts crafted from pristine, unpainted oak. Rather than plaster beneath the stairs, the underside of much of it is also finished with oak.

But just inside the front door, there’s an office with built-in bookshelves that opens to the left of the central hall. To the right, tall pocket doors lead to a room the Austins used as a dining room, but the Rodmans used as a living room. What is an office today has always been an office — it was where Dr. John Rodman’s medical practice was located. The pocket doors on the opposite side of the hall were used to close off the rest of the home to visitors during the week.

“Both pocket doors were closed except on Sundays,” said Cheryl Austin.

One of those rooms closed off to patients — the Austins’ living room — has a wall facing the river. This wall does not follow a line, but instead gently curves from one side of the room to the other. Studded with three oversized windows, it arcs outward; its curve reproduced in the parallel curve of the porch.

“From what I understand, the back porch was made (to look) like the bow of a ship,” Austin said.

The view from that back porch, and an adjacent smaller one off the kitchen, is the Tar River, a wooded shoreline and, to the east, the U.S. Highway 17 Business bridge. Austin said her family enjoyed many years of watching the river activity from the comfort of the back porch: the years when East Carolina University’s rowing team would practice in the sheltered water; when Fountain powerboats would be test driven past downtown, before the no wake zone.

“We loved the bridge. We loved having all that going on,” Austin laughed.

After 30 years, the Austins have moved on, though Austin’s touch and artistic eye can still be found everywhere, from the paint schemes — stripes here, checkerboard there — to arched, cathedral-like windows remade into mirrors in the large bathroom upstairs.

“We just loved living there,” Austin said. “It didn’t have to be perfect; it was perfect for us.”