Among the photos from the Louis Flora collection donated to Historic Bremen is one of the house at 303 N Center St, a house where (the back of the photo indicates) his great-grandfather James Bates had lived at one time and which was later owned by Ada Dietrich and also Dr H B Furst.
A little digging in the Bremen Enquirer reveals the house was built in 1891 by H G Hess, who came to Bremen in 1889 to be the cashier at the new Union Bank. It was bought in quick succession by Jacob Beyler, then James Bates, and then J R Dietrich, who gave it to his son Urban. The piano-and-later-car-dealer and his wife Ada owned it for many years until selling to the new dentist in town, Dr Furst, in 1949.
The house has changed a great deal over the years. Most of those changes must have come in 1911, when Urban Dietrich did extensive remodeling, as reported in the Enquirer. The result is grand and charming.
Note the limestone inserts in the brick, which are still visible even tho they’ve been painted along with the brick.
Today, this beautiful house is owned by the Buck family.
Historic Bremen 
07/10/2019 at 11:38 pm
You should talk to the guy that owns the house on 308 center st. It’s a beautiful home, I believe it was owned by j. R. Dietrich
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07/11/2019 at 1:02 am
That’s right. I don’t know the family that owns it now. They’ve never come into the history center. That house will be on our motor tour on July 28, tho. We recently got a pretty good picture of it back in the 1910s.
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