Author Bess Streeter Aldrich was born in a house on this site on February 17, 1881. The house that she was born in was demolished, and the house that is currently on this site was its replacement. Bess wrote thirteen novels and 160 short stories during her distinguished career. Her best known books include Songs of Years, The Lieutenant's Lady, Miss Bishop, and A Lantern in Her Hand.

She attended school in Cedar Falls and graduated from the Iowa State Normal School in 1901. She taught in Boone, Marshalltown and Salt Lake City before returning to Cedar Falls as assistant to the superintendent in the Normal School's primary training school. She was married to Charles Aldrich in 1907 in the house that stood on this site. The couple lived in Tipton for two years before settling in Elmwood, Nebraska. Bess died in 1954.

Of the house that stood here Aldrich later wrote:

Our home in Cedar Falls, Iowa, was plain and comfortable. It was started out to be a white-painted, white shuttered type of eastern wing and ell house, but in my time, additional bedrooms had been built ontoand atop it, so that its design was no longer catalogued in any architectural books, its painting a practical gray and the bedrooms numbering seven.

The house that stands on this site is a private residence.