For 50 years, it was the home of the local Christian Science Society. For 40 years after that, it’s been a place of business. Though this unique building on Market Street in Washington may no longer look the part, some would be surprised to know it started its life as a home.

Built in 1810 by Thomas Harvey Blount, the current home of Morris Insurance was once a fine dwelling, with high ceilings and tall windows, and a deep porch from which to watch Market Street traffic amble by on foot and on horseback. By the 1930s, though, it ceased to be a home and began the evolution to its modern version.  Now, the porch is no longer intact, and its interior walls have been reformed twice, but the bones of the prosperous residence still exist.

Crown moldings, chair rails, wide-planked pine floors grace the offices; another office boasts a simple wood mantelpiece. A staircase curves from first floor to second, and is said to have made the trip across the ocean in pieces to be reassembled in America.

“In my mind, it’s not unique as in ‘one of a kind,’ but there’s not many of them,” said Dick Barber, one of the Morris Insurance Agency owners.

Barber and Charles “Bud” Parker purchased the property in 1980 because the price was right and it was in a good location. With the help of builder Ralph Dramstad, they added walls to make spacious offices — walls that had once been removed to create a Reading Room, a large room lined with pews that the Christian Science Society used for services. They chose to preserve the building’s character, and reinfuse it with warmth and comfort, rather than simply turning it into an office building.

“We didn’t buy it out of any noble ideas,” Barber said. “I just personally embrace some of the historical features and was willing to spend my own money to get it the way I wanted.”

He said he wanted an office he cared about — where clients also feel comfortable — and he set about creating that place. Barber’s office is modeled after a gentlemen’s study in a Williamsburg home, complete with built-in bookshelves and cabinets, elegant window dressings and wooden blinds he found in the attic and had restored, then painted them himself.

“I’ve loved this office — it’s more than just an office,” Barber said.

For Joe Taylor, another Morris Insurance partner, the convenience of being in a central district, one where he can walk to and from work, is important. Taylor points out the quirks of the building: the square-headed and ancient nails they occasionally find popping out of the original siding; the beaded edges distinguishing older siding from new; the attic, where plaster ceilings curve over the second-floor HVAC duct work installed only eight years ago and where an old placard for a Christian Science lecture acts as a reminder of the building’s past.

It may be an insurance office, but its history is apparent. And it does have history: during the Civil War, Union troops used it as a hospital and common belief holds that’s the reason it was spared from the fire that decimated the rest of Washington when the Union Army left town. Prior to the turn of the 20^th century, a Beaufort County Sheriff Hodges tacked a receiving parlor onto the home’s southern wall, where he entertained those visiting on official business. In the 1930s, its exterior gave way to a new look, one more fitting to the Christian Science house of worship — a look it maintains to this day, far removed from the home it once was. The enormous double doors, suitable for a sanctuary, still grace its main entrance, but it’s unknown whether the doors are original to the house or came later.

There are other historical aspects that remain — ones that aren’t always easy to see, according to those who work at 321 N. Market St.

“We’ve had folks come in and talk about the spirits standing on the steps,” Taylor said.

Morris Insurance Agency’s Barbara Schatz has plenty of stories: footsteps upstairs and the sound of laughter when no one else is in the building, phones lighting up and outgoing calls being made with no help from those sitting at the desks; cold spots on the stairs and clients pointing out otherworldly presence.

“Many people have seen them,” Shatz said. “We had a psychic who came in to buy health insurance. She walked in and the first thing she said was, ‘This building is full of spirits.’”

According to Schatz, the woman then went on to say she could see a woman dressed in Civil War-era garb looking out the window in the stairwell. She said another local man won’t come to the office anymore — he’ll only call — because he was so disconcerted by the man’s face he saw in the same window every time he parked next door.

Wilma Anthony, who’s been with agency for 30 years, has dubbed one of the spirits “Beauregard,” a Civil War gentleman whose boots she regularly hears walking overhead, even though her office is in the single-story addition, so there is no overhead.

“They’re all friendly, thankfully,” Shatz laughed.

Living, and working, with the spirits is just part of the charm of a in a 204-year-old building with several past lives.