The LaSalle B&B was created by Clark and Rose-Aimée Butler in their home. The house was originally built by Tom Snook. The Tom Snook house is next door to one of the oldest remaining historical houses in Fort Wayne, the 1842 house of Civil War hero Sion Bass.

The story of Tom Snook is one of American upward mobility. He was a carpenter in the City Directory in the 1890’s who began to list himself as a home-builder at the turn of the century. He built this house for himself in 1901 with thirty-two rooms, forty rooms including the basement out of which he worked. The third floor was originally intended for servants. The stairs from the third floor bypassed the more private quarters on the second floor to go directly to the first floor and basement.

A Fort Wayne Department of Planning staff report notes that “the structure was build c. 1900 in the Queen Anne/Free Classical Style, with some Colonial Revival features. This cross-gable house…has a very complex shape, with a variety of bays, windows, and dormers. Because the house was built as a double house, it has two small porches that face West Washington Blvd… The property is located on the portion of the West Central Historic District that is listed on the National Register of Historic Places.”

The first-floor exterior is natural wood, but someone with sufficient energy is free to someday remove the vinyl siding on the second- and third-floor exteriors for a more authentic restoration.

Tom Snook built it as a rambling duplex, but with the overall symmetry interrupted by small differences between the two sides of the fire wall down the middle. In part, the differences may be explained by the fact that he designed the details of the house as he went along, and in part by him using materials (like inlaid floor design) left over from other jobs. He also had a tendency to favor slightly more select materials and greater dimensions on his side of the house. He kept the other half empty until his daughter began living there after World War I.

In 1930, he cut the house in sections and moved it around the block to make way for a new commercial building. He lived in the house until he died in 1934. It was then subdivided into smaller apartments until Clark and Rose-Aimée Butler moved there in 1990. Mrs. Butler operated a dance school on the third floor until she took a full-time position as Youth Director of the Fort Wayne Ballet in 1996.