Business magnate Robert Campbell, an Irish immigrant–turned–fur trader and businessman, and his wife, Virginia, moved into the house in 1854, about five years after a fire ignited by steamboats on the Mississippi burned nineteen city blocks, says Andrew Hahn, executive director of the Campbell House Museum. Lucas Place was a prestigious private residential enclave then and one of the first with deed restrictions that prohibited commercial development and required homes to be built back from the curb. Those restrictions gave the neighborhood a uniquely safe and pastoral appeal, as the location was removed from the congestion, noise, and coal pollution of the city’s center.
