DECATUR - For years, Rick Miseles has wanted to see the inside of the "Spanish hacienda," as it is informally known, at 805 W. Main St.

One of seven stops on the annual Heritage & Holly Historic Home Tour on Friday evening granted the Mount Zion man's wish.

He and his wife, Jeannie, and his sister-in-law Karen Harding of Decatur admired everything from the dining room, with its built-in china hutch and its wrought iron gate to keep children out until dinner time, to the four Chihuahua puppies under the Christmas tree, complete with bows.

"There are so many little touches," Miseles said. "I knew it had to look as different inside as it does outside."

The proud hosts were the Rev. Dow and Debbie Moses and their daughters Jermara, 12, and Destiny, 10, who bought the Spanish eclectic style home three years ago from a family that created their own little corner of Europe in Decatur in the Roaring Twenties.

"It has a woman's touch," Debbie Moses said, pointing out the three closets on the main floor and nine on the second floor, all that light up inside when opened.

Other features include leaded arched windows and tile imported from Spain in the living room fireplace and the floor of the sun room. The Moseses also have done major restoration to the exterior, refinished the hardwood floors and remodeled the kitchen and bathrooms to get the four-bedroom house ready for market.

The masonry stucco is one of two houses built on the southeast end of the 800 block of West Main Street in 1927 to replace the childhood home of Fao and Arthur Wait.

The brothers partnered with Ira Cahill in 1908 to incorporate Wait-Cahill wholesalers and shared a driveway and garage between their respective homes at 805 and 815 W. Main St.

Fao and Naoma Wait made 805 W. Main St. their home until their deaths - his in 1974 at age 92 and hers in 1983 at 102 - and their daughter Charlotte Wait Holder lived there most of her life, until she died in 2004 at 97.

Her nephew, 52-year-old Jack Wait Jr., said the home's archways and openness were unique for its time but things he took for granted as a boy.

"I always liked being there," he said in a phone interview from his home in Mound, Minn. "It was all I knew."

tchurchill@herald-review.com|421-7978