Est. 1901 · Moorish Revival Architecture · National Register of Historic Places · Mississippi River Heritage
William George Metz was born in Quincy in 1849, the son of a prosperous German-American pharmacist, and appears never to have worked in any formal employment. He inherited sufficient funds to pursue extended travel, and in the late 1890s he left Quincy for an extended tour through Morocco, Tunisia, and the Mediterranean. He returned with detailed sketches and a collection of furnishings.
He hired George Behrensmeyer, a newly graduated University of Illinois architect taking his first commission, to translate the sketches into a workable building. Construction began in 1900 with Herman Schachtsiek as prime contractor and the building was completed in 1901. The result is a two-story Moorish Revival structure whose exterior draws specifically from the Villa ben Ahben in Morocco. The main tower's latticework is modeled on the Giralda in Seville; the minaret replicates at reduced scale the one on the Mosque of Thais in Tunisia. Inside, the sky-lit courtyard's columns echo the Court of Dolls in Seville's Alcazar, and their twisted capitals reference the Alhambra in Granada.
Metz named the villa after his mother, Katharine. He lived there for roughly twelve years with his enormous dog Bingo — described by the official villa account as a Mastiff brought from Denmark, though widely repeated accounts identify the dog as a 212-pound Great Dane reputed to be the largest in America at the time. Whatever the breed, Bingo became locally famous. Bingo died (buried on the grounds), and Metz reportedly fell into a significant depression from which he never fully recovered.
Metz eventually left the villa and the property passed through various uses before being purchased by the Quincy Park District in 1929. It was listed on the National Register of Historic Places in 1979. The villa currently operates as the official Quincy Tourist Information Center and Great River Road Interpretive Center, open for tours with grounds available for event rentals.
Sources
- https://villakathrine.com/about/
- https://www.loc.gov/item/il1018/
- https://www.hauntedrooms.com/illinois/ghost-hunts/villa-kathrine
- https://www.whig.com/lifestyles/history/a-quincy-architectural-gem-the-villa-kathrine/article_48d33f1e-7261-11ed-9304-6b50ddb7af57.html
Phantom soundsApparitionsEVP
The paranormal tradition at Villa Kathrine is relatively specific and surprisingly consistent across different witnesses over a long period of time. Owners, renters, and caretakers reporting the phenomenon describe it the same way: the sound of a large dog's toenails — the particular clicking quality of long nails on hard tile — moving through the villa's rooms. The sound moves with purpose, the way a dog moves when it knows a space well — pausing, circling, returning to a starting point.
Bingo, the massive dog who shared the villa with George Metz for most of the twelve years Metz lived there, is buried on the grounds. Metz's response to the death was documented locally as severe. The villa's tile floors — the same surfaces that would have amplified the sound of the dog's nails during his lifetime — were among the building's most distinctive original features.
A formal paranormal investigation in 2009 documented activity beyond the dog-associated reports. Investigators noted anomalous readings in specific rooms and recorded audio that they described as responsive to questions. Whether those findings reflect anything beyond the villa's acoustically complex architecture is a question the records don't resolve.
Metz himself is sometimes reported as a secondary presence — felt rather than seen, associated with the upper rooms he occupied in his later years at the property. No dramatic events mark his time in the villa; the atmosphere of loss and solitude that followed Bingo's death is the emotional context that local historians and paranormal researchers alike point to as the villa's underlying register.
Notable Entities
Bingo (George Metz's Great Dane)George Metz
