John C. Lewis was born in Canada in 1837, and moved to the United States in 1855. He finally settled in Whitehall in 1861, working as a day laborer. There he met his wife Augusta Covell, the two were married in 1864. Lewis soon purchased a sawmill, sold it, purchased another, and began investing in timberlands. The couple moved briefly to Waukesha, Wisconsin, then moved back to Whitehall in 1878, when they built this house.[3]
The Lewises hired local builder L.L Marble to construct the house; work began in April 1878 and was completed by November. John Lewis lived in the house until his death in 1894. After this, ownership of the house was passed to his wife Augusta, who lived there until her own death in 1928. The Lewises' youngest daughter Florence inherited the house, and she lived there until the early 1940s. In 1944, Florence cold the house to local farmers William and Rose Hildebrandt, who converted the house from a single-family home into a nine-bedroom boarding house the called the Lakeview Rooms.[3]
In 1960, a water heater explosion killed the Hildebrandts and damaged the house; their son Carl took over the property and continued to operate the Lakeview Rooms for fifteen more years. In 1976, it was sold to the Blue Lake Fine Arts Camp, who used it as a community school for the arts, then as lodging for out-of-town actors, and then housing for camp faculty. In 2009, Greg and Debra Hillebrand purchased the house.[3] They restored the house, and in 2015 opened it as the Lewis House Bed & Breakfast became a reality in 2015.[4]
